Year: 2017

Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Aquinas, Doctor and Poet

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Priest, Friar, Poet, Doctor of the Church (source):

Everlasting God,
who didst enrich thy Church with the learning and holiness
of thy servant Thomas Aquinas:
grant to all who seek thee
a humble mind and a pure heart
that they may know thy Son Jesus Christ
to be the way, the truth and the life;
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:47-52

Andrea da Firenze, Triumph of St. Thomas AquinasBorn into a noble family near Aquino, between Rome and Naples, St. Thomas was educated at the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino until age thirteen, and then at the University of Naples. When he decided to join the Dominican Order, his family were dismayed because the Dominicans were mendicants and regarded as socially inferior to the Benedictines. Thomas’s brothers kidnapped and imprisoned him for a year in the family’s castle, but he finally escaped and became a Dominican friar in 1244.

The rest of Thomas’s life was spent studying, teaching, preaching, and writing. Initially, he studied philosophy and theology with Albert the Great at Paris and Cologne. Albert was said to prophesy that, although Thomas was called the dumb ox (probably referring to his physical size), “his lowing would soon be heard all over the world”.

His two greatest works are Summa Contra Gentiles, begun c. 1259 and completed in 1264, and Summa Theologica, begun c. 1266 but uncompleted at his death.

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Prayers and liturgy

Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their companions (d. 203), Martyrs at Carthage (source):

O holy God,
who gavest great courage to Perpetua,
Felicity and their companions:
grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice
and be received into the garden of peace;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Hebrews 10:32-39
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:9-14

Gottardi, Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and FelicityPerpetua, Felicitas, and five other catechumens were arrested in North Africa after emperor Septimus Severus forbade new conversions to Christianity. They were thrown to wild animals in the circus of Carthage.

The early church writer Tertullian records, in what appear to be Perpetua’s own words, a vision in which she saw a ladder to heaven and heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Perpetua, I am waiting for you”. She climbed the ladder and reached a large garden where sheep were grazing. From this, she understood that she and her companions would be martyred.

Tertullian’s The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas is posted here.

Artwork: Giovanni Gottardi, Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, 1780-90, Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza.

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Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

“One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin”

The temptations which belong to the beginning of Lent connect to the end, to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. He who is pierced for us is tempted for us.

To be tempted and to be pierced are related words. The overcoming of temptation belongs equally to the overcoming of his being pierced, namely, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cross and the resurrection are obliquely, yet strongly, present in the temptations of Christ. There is a resurrection into the presence of the living Word and Spirit of the Father, but only through the burning love of the crucified, a love which is already signaled in the temptations of Christ read on the First Sunday in Lent.

To be tempted is to be drawn to think and act in ways which we know to be wrong and false. This implies as well that we are drawn away from what we know to be right and true. Our reason is beguiled; our will is seduced. We are at once deceivers and deceived.

Temptations are received in the soul. It is there that they have their force of attraction, drawing us to what we know in some sense we should refuse. But there is always a choice, a crucial moment of decision, whether to give in or withstand. This is the counter to all of the forms of determinism in our culture and day. The problem is not that there are temptations – these there must be – but how we face them. Sin, after all, does not lie in the temptations themselves, but in our yielding to them, whether inwardly in our thoughts or outwardly in our deeds. Temptations actually belong to the path of our spiritual journey to God and with God. They are, we might even say, necessary to the perfecting of our wills, to the matter of setting love in order. They belong to our freedom in Christ.

The temptations of Christ are our temptations. His will to bear them belongs to the divine will to redeem. The temptations of Christ clarify the meaning of all and every temptation. There is no temptation which does not fall under one or other of the temptations of Christ. Our understanding is clarified and our wills are fortified by reflecting on the temptations of Christ. They sanctify our temptations. They are made part and parcel of the way of perfecting grace in us. By virtue of Christ’s temptations, we are inwardly strengthened in resisting, even as the force of the temptations themselves is abated, because we can see them in Christ for what they are and how they can be overcome.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 6 – 12 March

Monday, March 6th
6:30-8:00pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, March 7th, St. Thomas Aquinas
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I: Redire ad principia: Lenten Sermons of Lancelot Andrewes

Wednesday, March 8th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Friday, March 10th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders/Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, March 12th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Choral Evensong at St. Paul’s, Halifax. Fr. Curry preaching (PBSC NS/PEI)

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, March 21st, Comm. of St. Benedict & Thomas Cranmer
7:00 Holy Communion & Lenten Programme II

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday in Lent

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

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:1-11

Ghiberti, Temptation of ChristArtwork: Lorenzo Ghiberti, Temptation of Christ, 1403-24. Gilt bronze, North door, Baptistery, Florence.

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Prayers and liturgy

Chad, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Chad (d. 672), Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary (source):

Christopher Whall, Victoria and Albert Museum, St. ChadAlmighty God,
who, from the first fruits of the English nation
that turned to Christ,
didst call thy servant Chad
to be an evangelist and bishop of his own people:
grant us grace so to follow his peaceable nature,
humble spirit and prayerful life,
that we may truly commend to others
the faith which we ourselves profess;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1,7-14

Artwork: Christopher Whall, St. Chad, c. 1905-10. Clear and coloured glass with paint and silver stain, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (Reduced replica of panel in Lady Chapel, Gloucester Cathedral.) Photograph taken by admin, 27 September 2015.

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Prayers and liturgy

John and Charles Wesley

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wesley (1703-91) and Charles Wesley (1708-88), Evangelists, Hymn Writers, Leaders of the Methodist Revival (source):

Merciful God,
who didst inspire John and Charles Wesley with zeal for thy gospel:
grant to all people boldness to proclaim thy word
and a heart ever to rejoice in singing thy praises;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 49:5-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 9:2-6

Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old ManHudson, Reverend Charles Wesley

Artwork:
(left) Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old Man, 1932. Oil on canvas, John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism, London.
(right) Thomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley, 1749. Oil on canvas, Epworth Old Rectory, Epworth, Lincolnshire.

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Sermons

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

“Turn unto the Lord your God”

We are the broken-hearted and the community of the broken-hearted. It is the condition of our blessedness. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit”, the psalmist, David, reminds us in his great penitential psalm, the “Miserere mei, Deus” (Ps. 51, “a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise”. And the prophet Joel bids us “rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God.” It is all about the turning in which there is the hope and the possibility of blessedness.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope

So begins T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, Ash-Wednesday, itself a meditation on the idea of our turning that is shaped not only by the psalmist and the prophet but by Dante’s Vita Nuovo, the new life, and by Lancelot Andrewes’ Ash Wednesday sermon of 1619 about the nature of repentance, and, even more, the nature of mystical theology. “Repentance itself is nothing else but redire ad principia, ‘a kind of circling,’” Andrewes observes, “to return to Him by repentance from Whom by sin we have turned away.” His text is from The Book of the Prophet Joel about “turning unto the Lord with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning”. The ways of purgation, illumination and union are set before us on this day of fasting and repentance, this day which marks the beginning of Lent.

To know ourselves as the broken-hearted is already the beginnings of the turn in us for it acknowledges, however obliquely and obscurely, the infinite and compassionate love of God; “for he is,” as Joel puts it, “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil”. It is a wonderful insight into the nature of God expressed in and through the images that belong to human emotions and assumptions and yet points us to the transcendent mystery and wonder of God. It is that idea which Eliot in his elliptical and elusive way wrestles with, a wrestling with God out of an awareness of human uncertainty and brokenness, presumption and confusion – a kind of seeking and hoping even against hope itself. And a kind of learning, or the very least, a wanting to learn. “Teach us to care and not to care/Teach us to sit still.” His poem undertakes a movement from “Because I do not hope to turn” to “Although I do not hope to turn”, which implies that a kind of turn is already underway. What makes the idea of the possibilities of turning is simply the reality of God himself. God turns to us in Jesus Christ who seeks our turning to him.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ash Wednesday

The collect for today, The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 4:6-11a
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21

Falat, Ash WednesdayArtwork: Julian Falat, Ash Wednesday, 1881. Watercolour, Private collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

George Herbert, Priest and Poet

The collect for today, the commemoration of George Herbert (1593-1633), Priest, Poet (source):

George HerbertKing of glory, king of peace,
who didst call thy servant George Herbert
from the pursuit of worldly honours
to be a priest in the temple of his God and king:
grant us also the grace to offer ourselves
with singleness of heart in humble obedience to thy service;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 5:1-4
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-10

The hymn, “Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing”, was originally a poem by George Herbert, published in The Temple.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither fly:
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out:
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

George Herbert was born to a wealthy family in Montgomery, Wales. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he appeared headed for a prominent public career, but the deaths of King James I and two patrons ended that possibility.

He chose to pursue holy orders in the Church of England and became rector at Bemerton, near Salisbury, in 1629, where he died four years later of tuberculosis. His preaching and service to church and parishioners contributed to his reputation as an exemplary pastor. He did not become known as a poet until shortly after he died, when his poetry collection The Temple was published.

He is buried in Saint Andrew Bemerton Churchyard.

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