Year: 2015

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 5 – 11 January

Monday, January 5th
6-7:00pm Brownies/ Sparks – Parish Hall
7-7:30pm Confirmation Class – Room 206, King’s-Edgehill School

Tuesday, January 6th, Epiphany
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies/Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion – Coronation Room

Thursday, January 8th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, January 11th, The First Sunday after The Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Club Breakfast)
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

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After Christmas

The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962) does not provide a collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas, but specifies that the service for the Octave Day of Christmas “shall be used until the Epiphany.”

Jordaens, Holy Family with ShepherdsALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:15-21

Artwork: Jacob Jordaens, The Holy Family with Shepherds, 1616. Oil on canvas transferred from wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Octave Day of Christmas

“And all they that heard it wondered at those things
which were told them by the shepherds”

Wonder is one of the strong and great features of Christmas, and, of course, of Christianity and of Religion in general! Philosophy, too, it is said begins in wonder. The wonder of Christmas is about “this thing which is come to pass,” literally, this thing that has happened, “the shepherds say one to another,” saying in their own country fashion what John in his Prologue proclaims as the central mystery of Christmas, “the Word was made flesh”. For that is the wonder of Christmas.

The shepherds’ Christmas is about that sense of wonder and about their witness to what “the Lord hath made known unto us,” as they say. For “when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” What saying was that? “For unto you,” the angel had said to the shepherds in the fields, “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” This is the occasion for our wonder.

But what does it mean to wonder? It means to hold in awe and to ponder in our hearts and minds the meaning of what we have been given to behold. The truest sense of wonder is captured in the figure of Mary who “kept all these things,” all these things that were said about the child Christ, “and pondered them in her heart.” “Love is the weight of [our] soul[s],” Augustine said long ago, and the Latin word, pondus – weight – gives shape to the verb to ponder, namely, to weigh the meaning of things in our hearts and minds. It is the thing most necessary and yet for our culture and day, the hardest thing.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ

The collects for today, The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ, being New Year’s Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Of the Circumcision:

ALMIGHTY God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man: Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that, our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the New Year:

O IMMORTAL Lord God, who inhabitest eternity, and hast brought thy servants to the beginning of another year: Pardon, we humbly beseech thee, our transgressions in the past, bless to us this New Year, and graciously abide with us all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:15-21

Albertinelli, CircumcisionArtwork: Mariotto Albertinelli, The Circumcision, 1502. Oil on wood, Uffizi, Florence.

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