Year: 2015

Prayers and liturgy

Benedict Biscop, Abbot and Scholar

The collect for a Doctor of the Church, Poet, or Scholar, on the Feast of Saint Benedict Biscop (c. 628-89), Founder of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Scholar, Patron of the Arts, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962);

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Benedict Biscop, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:9-17

Norwich Cathedral, St. Benedict BiscopSaint Benedict Biscop is remembered as a church leader instrumental in preserving and disseminating Western civilisation during the so-called “Dark Ages”.

Born into a noble Northumbrian family, Benedict spent many years in Frankish monasteries, becoming a monk at the Abbey of Lérins, off the southern coast of France. He also travelled to Rome six times. At the conclusion of his third visit in 668, he accompanied St. Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek monk newly commissioned as Archbishop of Canterbury, to England. For two years, Benedict served as abbot of the monastery of St. Peter & St. Paul (later St. Augustine’s), Canterbury, but soon wanted to establish his own foundation.

Receiving papal approval to establish monasteries in Northumbria, Benedict founded the twin monasteries of St. Peter’s at Wearmouth in 674 and St. Paul’s at Jarrow in 681. He travelled to Rome and returned with an “innumerable collection of books of all kinds”. He also brought with him John the Chanter, Archcantor of St. Peter’s, Rome, who taught the monks the Roman liturgy and Gregorian chant.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Horden, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the commemoration of the Right Rev John Horden (1828-1893), first Bishop of Moosonee, Missionary to the First Nations of Canada:

The Right Rev. John HordenO God,
the Desire of all the nations,
you chose your servant John Horden
to open the treasury of your Word
among the native peoples of Canada.
Grant us, after his example,
to be constant in our purpose and care
for the enlargement of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Source of collect: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004, p. 456.

Born in Exeter, England, to humble Christian parents, John Horden resolved to be a missionary while a young boy at school and, when he was 23, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) offered him a post as a teacher and missionary at Moose Factory on James’ Bay. He and his young wife set sail on 8 June 1851, arriving at Moose Factory on 26 July.

Horden gave himself whole-heartedly to his task. Within eight months he was able to teach and preach to the indigenous people in the Cree language. In the summer of 1852, Bishop David Anderson of Rupert’s Land travelled 1500 miles to visit his new minister, initially planning to bring him to Red River for theological training. The young man’s conscientiousness and maturity were so impressive, however, that Bishop Anderson changed his plans, ordaining John Horden priest on 24 August.

Rev. Horden ministered to the James Bay Cree and Hudson Bay Company employees for many years, visiting indigenous peoples all around the James Bay region. He translated the Gospels, a hymnal, and a prayer book into Cree, and sent them to England for printing. Because no one was competent to proof-read the master copies, the CMS sent him a printing press and told him to print the books himself. Horden needed many long, frustrating days to teach himself how to assemble and operate the press. His printing press was soon producing other Christian literature in Cree. He also wrote a grammar of the Cree language.

In 1872, Bishop Robert Machray of Rupert’s Land decided that his diocese had grown too large and should be sub-divided. Thus, at Westminster Abbey on 15 December 1872, the Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated John Horden the first Bishop of the Diocese of Moosonee.

Bishop Horden continued to travel across his vast diocese. By the end of his life, most of the Cree of James Bay had been converted, as well as many Ojibwa, Chipewyan, and Inuit. Also, he laboured on translating the Bible into Cree until he died unexpectedly on 12 January 1893. He is buried at Moose Factory.

Biographies of John Horden are posted here and here.

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Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany

“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”

A scriptural text frequently used and emphasized by the Rev’d Dr. Robert Crouse, one of my teachers and the teacher of many clergy and many students spanning many generations and scattered over several continents, it speaks directly to the confusions of contemporary culture within and without the Christian Church, itself confused and uncertain about itself. It will not surprise you, I suspect, that my response to the disturbing events of terrorism in France, on the one hand, and the ethical debacle concerning the Dalhousie Dental School, on the other hand, is an echo of this text captured in one word, teaching.

Perhaps, repeatedly, as in teaching, teaching, teaching! But you will want to ask, teaching what? How can education make any real difference? You are right to ask. For if teaching is simply about getting ahead in the world, simply about success, simply about what serves consumer and economic culture, then it only contributes to the dis-ease that occasions all of the problems that we confront. Such teaching is little more than cultural conformity to the world; the very opposite of what Paul is talking about. “Be not conformed to the world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Not by blowing up people; not by misogynistic fantasies, but by teaching what belongs to the truth of Islam as opposed to the fanatics which defame and debase it and what belongs to the moral responsibilities of ethical communities. For that is what is at stake. It is not about particular groups or individuals who are offended but about offences against the ethical communities of our humanity itself.

This leads to a question too for the Christian Church. How to engage contemporary culture without simply accommodating its agendas? For that is where most Christian churches are, at least in the western democracies, and why they are dying if not dead. That is not to say that the business of the Church is simply to be oppositional and reactionary. No. At issue is how the Church engages the world in which it finds itself. That requires one simple yet difficult thing: knowing and caring about what the Christian Faith actually is and how it matters.

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Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 12 – 18 January

Monday, January 12th
6-7:00pm Brownies/ Sparks – Parish Hall
7-7:30pm Confirmation Class – Room 206, King’s-Edgehill School

Tuesday, January 13th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies/Guides – Parish Hall
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, January 15th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, January 18th, The Second Sunday after The Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, January 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Peter Ackroyd’s Venice: Pure City and Donna Leon’s The Jewels of Paradise

Sunday, January 25th
4:00pm Choral Evensong – King’s College Chapel, Halifax (sponsored by Prayer Book Society NS/PEI)

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday After The Epiphany

The collect for today, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:1-5
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:41-52

Bramer, Christ Among the DoctorsArtwork: Leonaert Bramer, Christ among the Doctors, 1640-1645. Oil on panel, Private collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

William Laud, Archbishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):

St. Botolph's, William LaudKeep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servant William Laud, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: Hebrews 12:5-7,11-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:32-39

A Prayer for the Church by William Laud:

Gracious Father, I humbly beseech thee for Thy holy Catholic Church, fill it with all truth; in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in error, direct it; where it is superstitious, rectify it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it; where it is right strengthen and confirm it, where it is in want, furnish it; where it is divided and rent asunder, make up the breaches of it; O Thou Holy One of Israel. Amen.

Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. (Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004), p. 55.

Artwork: William Laud, stained glass, St. Botolph’s Church, Boston, England. Photograph taken by admin, 3 October 2014.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Baptism of Our Lord

The collect for today, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O HEAVENLY Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ did take our nature upon him, and was baptized for our sakes in the river Jordan: Mercifully grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may also be partakers of thy Holy Spirit; through him whom thou didst send to be our Saviour and Redeemer, even the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 42:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 1:1-11

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Baptism of ChristArtwork: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Baptism of Christ, c. 1473. Fresco, Sant’Andrea a Brozzi, San Donnino.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany

“When they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts;
gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”

Epiphany. Such a rich and wonderful word. It signals something intellectual, something grasped in the mind but in such a way as to move our hearts. Christmas gives way, finally, to Epiphany. But what is Epiphany? The after-glow of Christmas? The post-Christmas ‘hang-over’ as we enter into the dreaded and dreary bleakness of the winter? January, as the forgotten poet of Stanley, Nova Scotia, Alden Nowlan, reminds us is about the truth of winter, “a truth that all men share but almost never utter. This is a country where a man can die simply from being caught outside.”

So it is good to stay inside where challenges of another sort await us. They are the deep and great challenges of the Epiphany season. Our thoughts turn away from what has so easily become the cloying sentimentalities of Christmas, all tinsel and wrap, on the one hand, and so over-laden with impossible expectations, on the other hand. Our thoughts are turned from the God made flesh to the God who came in the flesh. We are awakened to the mystery of God. We turn, as the 17th century Anglican Bishop John Cosin puts it, from considering “His coming in the flesh that was God” to “His being God that was come in the flesh”; in short, “to turn ourselves from his humanity below to his divinity above.”

The paradox is great. In making this turn we discover a far greater truth about our humanity. In thinking God we learn the deeper truth and meaning of ourselves. There is no greater truth for our sad and weary world where we are well along the way to losing our humanity. And in a myriad of ways: the nihilism of terrorism and consumerism; the techno-gnosticism which negates ourselves by the folly of turning ourselves into little more than digital apps; and the techno-scientific exploitation which wreaks such havoc upon the natural world and the human community. All signal a loss of our humanity through human arrogance and over-reach, on the one hand, and intellectual and moral folly and blindness, on the other hand.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Epiphany of Our Lord

The collect for today, The Epiphany of Our Lord, or The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, who know thee now by faith, may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:1-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 2:1-12

Wolffort, Adoration of the MagiArtwork: Artus Wolffort, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1615-20. Oil on canvas, Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp. Photograph taken by admin, 12 October 2014.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas

“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son
and shall call his name Emmanuel”
(Isaiah 7.14)

“When the fullness of the time was come,” as Paul puts it, “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” A powerful statement about the meaning of the Incarnation, the meaning of Christmas, it highlights at once the extravagant and wonderful idea of the intimacy of God’s engagement with our humanity and its meaning for us. God sent forth his son born of Mary that we might become the sons of God. His phrase captures the vocation of our humanity. God calls us into communion with himself through the Incarnation.

Matthew in the Gospel which accompanies the Epistle reading from Galatians tells us about the birth of Christ. Christmastide is all about the richness of the stories of the Incarnation and its purpose and meaning. The Nativity accounts are in Luke and Matthew but as direct and straightforward as they are or at least seem to be they are far from simple linear accounts. They are themselves profoundly poetic and philosophical.

It is easy to raise skeptical questions about the details of the Nativity. The stories are ones which have come down to us long after the events they relate. But it belongs to almost all forms of writing, including journalism, to create a narrative, a story with a meaning, to take the events or the so-called facts and put them into an order without which there is no story. At the heart of the Christmas story is that ordering of ideas by the Evangelists and others that open us out to a new reality, the reality of God’s intimate engagement with our humanity. There is, inescapably, the awareness of the something new and different, something which changes our entire outlook. With Paul it is the concept of the fullness of time; with Matthew, the sense of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

I know of no passage of Scripture about which so much ink has been spilled and to so little purpose than the passage from Isaiah that Matthew quotes. (more…)

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