March, 2018 - Christ Church

12 March 201830 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

Gregory the Great, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Gregory the Great (540-604), Bishop of Rome, Doctor of the Church (source):

O merciful Father,
who didst choose thy bishop Gregory
to be a servant of the servants of God:
grant that, like him, we may ever desire to serve thee
by proclaiming thy gospel to the nations,
and may ever rejoice to sing 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: 1 Chronicles 25: 1a, 6-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:42-45

Artwork: Pedro Berruguete, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, c. 1495. Oil and gold leaf on wood, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona.

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11 March 201830 March 2026Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

“For he himself knew what he would do.”

This powerful Gospel story speaks profoundly to the nature of the Christian pilgrimage of faith. We are, to be sure, in the wilderness of modernity, but wilderness itself is such a significant image about sin and alienation. It is in the wilderness of our lives and experiences that we may learn the greater goodness of God. In the wilderness of our own insufficiency and incompleteness, we learn about God’s Providence and his provision for us.

God, and God alone, makes something out of nothing. God, and God alone, makes something great and wonderful out of such meagre provisions as “five barley-loaves, and two small fishes.” As Andrew says to Jesus, “what are they among so many?” We confront the radical insufficiency of our humanity considered in itself. On the one hand, this challenges the hubris and presumption of our technocratic culture in the idea that we can endlessly manipulate and dominate nature for ourselves without consequences for either ourselves or nature; on the other hand, this confirms our deepest uncertainties and fears precisely about our humanity and our domination of the world and ourselves which leads to a kind of paralyzing pessimism, to our dread and despair. This powerful story counters both our presumption and our despair.

In a way, this is the point of the story in John’s account of the miraculous feeding of the multitude in the wilderness, a Gospel story which along with the Epistle gives rise to the wonderful ways in which this Sunday is known as Mothering Sunday, Refreshment Sunday, and Laetare Sunday, the latter indicating the idea of rejoicing drawn from the introit anthem marking the mid-point of Lent which was Thursday past. None of these designations make much sense apart from these readings. It is also underscores the important point about rejoicing even in the midst of suffering which has been an emphasis in our Lenten Programme on The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation.

Jesus asks Philip about the great company “whence shall we buy bread that these may eat? (And this he said to prove him”, John suggests, adding “for he himself knew what he would do.)” John’s parenthetical remark opens us out to the radical meaning of God in Christ and Christ in us. It is about what he wants for us.

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11 March 201830 March 2026Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 12 – 18 March

Monday, March 12th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, March 13th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Wednesday, March 14th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Friday, March 16th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, March 18th, Passion Sunday/Fifth Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00 Evening Prayer

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, March 20th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme IV

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11 March 201830 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

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

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:26-5:1
The Gospel: St. John 6:5-14

Artwork: Bernardo Strozzi, The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, c.1630. Oil on canvas, Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

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9 March 201830 March 2026Events, Prayer Book Society

Notice of Cancellation of the PBSC NSPEI Quiet Day scheduled for Saturday, March 10th, 2018

Dear Friends,

Owing to the uncertainties of the weather for today and tomorrow, particularly in terms of temperature and precipitation, I think it advisable, in the interests of safety and to allay any anxieties about being on the road, to cancel the PBSC NS PEI Quiet Day that was to be held at King’s-Edgehill School on Saturday, March 10th, 2018 on the theme of The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation. Such are the realities of messy March! I will try to have the addresses posted on the Prayer Book Society’s website.

Blessings in the Miseries of March to you all!

Fr. David Curry

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8 March 201830 March 2026KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 5 March

God sent me before you to preserve life

It is a powerful and moving scene. “Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him,” and so he sends everyone away from his presence except for his brothers. He makes himself known to them. “I am Joseph, your brother.” It is a beautiful scene of reconciliation. We can feel the intensity of the moment and even more, the distress and dismay of his brothers. For in seeing Joseph, the brother whom they betrayed and thought was dead, they confront their own sin and evil. They confront themselves. And yet that is the good news and the real power of this remarkable narrative.

This week in Chapel we have continued with the story of Joseph. On Monday and Tuesday, we heard about the second journey of the brothers to Egypt to get grain, this time with their youngest brother, Benjamin, with them. Joseph and Benjamin are the two brothers from the same mother, Rachel. Joseph had not yet revealed himself to his brothers but sent them on their way with grain in the sacks and unbeknowst to them, their money. But in Benjamin’s sack, he had placed his silver cup. They leave but immediately, Joseph sends a servant after them to say, “Why have you returned evil for good? Why have you stolen my silver cup?” They are brought back to Joseph to face the consequences, knowing that if anything happens to Benjamin it will cause immeasurable sorrow to their father, Jacob.

Jacob is also Israel – one who strives with God. In a way, the story of Joseph reveals something of the true nature of our humanity’s struggles with God. The silver cup is an intriguing device and one which will have its antecedents in history and culture, particularly in terms of the Jewish Passover and the story of Christ at the last supper and the later significance of the chalice, the cup of the Passover. Christ will be betrayed at supper by Judas. And yet, that scene also marks the institution of the central Christian service of the Holy Eucharist, Mass, Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper – all different terms recalling the same event. The chalice, the cup, takes on a symbolic significance.

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7 March 201830 March 2026Prayers 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

Born 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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6 March 201830 March 2026Sermons

Lenten Programme 3: The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation III

This is the third of three Lenten meditations on “The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation”. The first is posted here and the second here.

“Rejoice with me, inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ”

Isaiah’s words of comfort and strength that mark the beginning of The Book of Consolation, chapters 40 through 55 of The Book of Isaiah, have their Christian counterpart not only in terms of Christ’s passion but also its application to us in our lives by way of St. Paul. Nowhere is that perhaps more clearly seen than in the wonderful words that belong to the beginning of his Second Letter to the Corinthians.

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2nd Cor. 1. 3-4). It is a wonderful and, dare I say, comforting passage and one which belongs to the consideration of consolation. Meister Eckhart, one of the masters of the Consolation Literature, begins his treatise The Book of “Benedictus”: The Book of Divine Consolation with these words from 2nd Corinthians. In the words which immediately follow in the fifth verse of 2nd Corinthians 1, the connection between comfort and consolation is made explicit, yet again, and yet again, through the reality and the dynamic of suffering. “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.” Suffering is paradoxically and inescapably an essential feature of the consolation literature.

We meet tonight in the commemoration of St. Perpetua and Companions, early third century martyrs. “Another liveth in me,” Perpetua is reported to have said, and that sense of the indwelling of Christ in us speaks to the profoundest theme of the consolation literature, the idea of our intimate participation in the goodness of God even in the face of suffering and death, such as the martyrdom of Perpetua and her companions. It is really all about Christ in us and us in Christ. Therein lies the greatest good, the greatest comfort and consolation.

And yet, so many things stand in the way of our realizing this truth, a truth predicated precisely on how we look at things, upon our assumptions about the good and about happiness.

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6 March 201830 March 2026Prayers 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

Perpetua, 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: Felix Louis Leullier, Combat Arena or Martyrdom of SS. Perpetua and Felicity, 1840, Private collection.