2015 - Christ Church

28 March 201530 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

Holy Week

There is a mysterious intensity to Holy Week that begins with Palm Sunday. It is the intensity of Christ’s Passion. In the Passion of Christ, our humanity is on display in all of its varied array and disarray, in all of our faults and failings, in all of our sins and foolishnesses. And yet there is a great good that is shown as well, a great good which ultimately speaks to human dignity restored. Holy Week shows us nothing less than ‘the height and the depth, the length and the breadth’ of God’s love for us. How will we respond? With indifference or with devotion?

I encourage you ever so strongly to make the effort. The fullness of the Passion is set before us this week from all four Gospels. This week, in a way, is one continuous liturgy. What kind of Easter can there be without Good Friday, without the fullness of the Passion, which this week presents us? “Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God.”

I remind you of the schedule of services for this week: the Morning and Evening Services held each day of Holy Week; especially, Wednesday’s 9:00pm Service of Tenebrae, meaning shadows or darkness, a short service of mostly psalm readings, which anticipates the Passion; Maundy Thursday which marks the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great holy days, in which we gather with Christ in the Upper Room and, then, go with him to Gethsemane; Good Friday which takes us to the Cross with Matins at 7:00am; the 11:00am ecumenical service at the Windsor United Church and The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday at 7:00pm; Holy Saturday which gathers us, first, to pray, at the grave, reflectively, with Matins & Ante-Communion at 10:00am, and, then, to watch expectantly with a short Vigil at 7:00pm, ending with the Lauds of Easter Day, leading us to the grand and glorious pageant of the Resurrection on Easter Day, beginning with the 7:00am Ecumenical Sunrise Service at Fort Edward, 8:00am & 10:30am Holy Communion services, and Evening Prayer at 4:00pm at Christ Church.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,
therefore let us keep the feast!

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26 March 201530 March 2026Sermons

Poets Preachers and the Passion of Christ: Four Lenten Addresses, 2015

Fr. David Curry has compiled his four Lenten addresses on Poets Preachers and the Passion of Christ into a booklet. Click here to download the pdf document.

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25 March 201530 March 2026Sermons

Poets, Preachers and the Passion of Christ – IV

This is the fourth of four Lenten reflections on Poets, Preachers and the Passion of Christ. The first is posted here, the second here, and the third here.

Poets, Preachers and the Passion of Christ IV

The Lenten project of penitential adoration undergirds the whole life of Christian Faith but it reaches a kind of climax in Passiontide and especially in the events of Holy Week. As we have seen from some of the poets and preachers of the Anglican tradition, the Passion is a central concern throughout the whole of the Christian year and contributes to the understanding of the Christian pilgrimage of faith in terms of the interrelated principles of justification and sanctification as well as glorification that inform the character of spiritual life. At issue is the constant task of understanding the Passion which can only happen through our constant reflection upon it.

But “they understood none of these things,” Luke observes in the Gospel reading for Quinquagesima Sunday. What things? The things of the Passion. Jesus tells the disciples what will befall him in Jerusalem and yet “they understood none of those things.” Part of the Lenten journey is about seeing and understanding. It is not by accident that the Gospel reading continues with the story of the blind man on the roadside between Jericho and Jerusalem, symbolic of the earthly and the heavenly cities respectively. The purpose of going up to Jerusalem with Jesus is about seeing and understanding the Passion of Christ more and more clearly.

The Annunciation frequently falls within the season of the Passion. Mary responds to the angelic salutation that she is to be the theotokos, the God-bearer with a question, “how shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” Her question is not about doubting but about understanding what God seeks for our humanity. Her question leads to her ‘yes’ to God, her “Be it unto me according to thy word.” But that means as well a commitment to the constant learning about God’s will and purpose for our humanity. As Simeon profoundly remarks at the occasion of Christ’s presentation in the Temple, “yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also; that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” His words point already to the Passion and to our learning and understanding what it means both for Mary and about us and for us.

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25 March 201530 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The collect for today, The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canada, 1962):

WE beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts; that, as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 7:10-15
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:26-38

Artwork: Peter Paul Rubens, Annunciation c, 1628. Oil on canvas, Rubens House, Antwerp. Photograph taken by admin, 12 October 2014.

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22 March 201530 March 2026Sermons

Sermon for Passion Sunday

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and consider my desire:/hearken unto me
for thy truth and righteousness’ sake”

I know. It is what we are all asking God for – less snow! Hear us, O Lord!

We live in a culture dominated by images. At their best, images can be icons of the understanding but they are really only as good as our understanding. One powerful image is the veiled cross. The cross at once present and yet not fully seen captures exactly the understanding that undergirds the pageant of the Passion.

We enter into Passiontide, into deep Lent where everything about the understanding of the Passion of Christ becomes more and more intense and more and more concentrated. As we have seen in our Lenten Programme on “Poets, Preachers and the Passion of Christ,” the Passion is a central theme throughout the whole year.

“The whole life of Christ was a continuall passion,” John Donne remarks even as Lancelot Andrewes notes that “Christ and His cross were never parted, but that all His life long was a continuous cross” This brings out an important feature of the Christian religion, though one which is often ignored or downplayed in the contemporary church. The point is this. The Christian Faith makes no sense apart from the Passion of Christ. It is altogether central. We can make no sense of Christmas without reference to the Passion. The Passion is what makes fully clear the meaning of the Incarnation. As Athanasius puts it, “he borrowed a body that he might borrow a death,” in that way having from us what to offer unto God for us.

This inevitably brings into play the theological doctrine of the atonement, a doctrine downplayed if not dismissed altogether. Even the most theologically minded of the philosophical atheists, like Slavoj Žižek, have the greatest difficulty with the idea of the atonement. And he is not alone. How does the Passion restore and make right what was wrong? What is the injustice that becomes justice in the sacrifice of Christ? “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5.21). Hymns, too, are often the conduit of theology, like our first hymn this morning, Venantius Fortunatus’ celebrated Passion Sunday Hymn, Vexilla Regis, from the 6^th century which offers the same teaching. “And there, to cleanse the heart of man,/ From out his side life’s torrent ran … “The priceless treasure, freely spent,/ To pay for man’s enfranchisement.” Still the questions raise all of our uncertainties, our doubts, and even our contemporary scorn and dismissal of Christianity.

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22 March 201530 March 2026Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 23- 29 March

Monday, March 23rd
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, March 24th, Eve of the Annunciation
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme IV: “Poets, Preachers & the Passion of Christ”

Thursday, March 26th
10:30am Ecumenical Service – Dykeland Lodge
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Friday, March 27th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
3:30pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home

Sunday, March 29th, Palm Sunday: Return to Big Church (tentative)
8:00am Holy Communion (with Palms)
10:30am Holy Communion (with Palms)
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, April 14th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: “The Spirit of Early Christian Thought” by Robert Louis Wilkens, and “Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius and the Library of Caesarea” by Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams

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22 March 201530 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

The collect for today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, commonly called Passion Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

WE beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28

Artwork: Altarpiece with skulls and instruments of Christ’s passion, 15th century, Jerusalem Chapel (Jeruzalemkapel), Bruges. Photograph taken by admin, 10 October 2014.

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21 March 201530 March 2026Prayers and liturgy