Christ Church

Dear Parishioners,

I want to offer some thoughts about the serious questions that belong to “end-of-life” issues. This has to do with dying and death and how we face such things from a Christian perspective, especially in the light of legislation about what is now called “medical assistance in dying” – M.a.i.d.

In 2016, I was asked to serve on a Diocesan Task Force to provide theological reflection on what was then called Physician Assisted Suicide. That term was then in the process of being changed to Physician Assisted Dying, reflecting the unease about the term suicide. Now the terminology has changed to Medical Assistance in Dying. These changes in terminology contribute, I think, to a certain ethical unease and confusion about our current situation, particularly after the passage of Bill C-14 legislating “the right to die.”

What is legal is not necessarily ethical and there are many, many questions about the so-called “right to die.”

While serving on the Task Force, I was asked to present some reflections on the documents produced by the National Church: first, a document called Care in Dying produced in 1998; the second, a draft of a subsequent document about Physician Assisted Dying produced in 2016, I believe. After the first paper, I was asked to prepare an article for the Diocesan Times about the classical and traditional theological understanding of dying and death that would appear alongside other points-of-view, which I did. But nothing happened and the Task Force seemed to fall into abeyance. I did send on the second paper to the National Church but never received any response.

On Saturday, May 26th, I served on a panel along with an ethicist, a gerontologist, and the Diocesan Hospital Chaplain, discussing M.a.i.d before a number of editors of Anglican Church papers in Canadian dioceses. In the light of that experience, I want to share with you these theological reflections that deal with the notion of autonomy, intentionality and causation, some of which also came up in the panel discussion. There is, for instance, an important difference between palliative care and M.a.i.d. The difference lies in intentionality, the intention to end a life via M.a.i.d and the desire to ease the dying via palliative care. The increasing medicalisation of death and dying means that people need to have some understanding of these processes and, more importantly, the principles that seem to inform them.

In this past year, I have focused on the rich tradition of consolation literature which is related to the theology of redemptive suffering which I think is central to Christian witness. The documents which I offer simply provide you with a way to think about these things and to be aware of the concerns. In many ways, the ideas of choice and control drive the current provisions and present certain challenges to pastoral care in dying. As priest and pastor, it is my obligation to try to provide pastoral care even in the difficult situations that are not consistent with Christian teaching. But it is equally important to provide some teaching. That is the point of making these things available to you. You may find the article to be the most accessible of the three.

As time permits, I may be able to provide you with some more materials and further reflections on these important questions. I hasten to add that thinking about death and dying is not about being morbid; it is part and parcel of the Christian understanding.

In Christ,

Fr. David Curry

Links to Fr. Curry’s writings referenced above (pdf format):

1. “As dying, we live: Some Reflections on Care In Dying”
2. “Some Theological Reflections on the Draft 2016 Document of the National Task Force of the Anglican Church of Canada on Physician Assisted Dying”
3. Proposed Article for Diocesan Times: “As Dying, We Live”
4. The three papers compiled into a single file.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Joan of Arc (1412-31), Virgin, Visionary, Patron Saint of France (source):

Holy God, whose power is made perfect in weakness: we honor thy calling of Jeanne d’Arc, who, though young, rose up in valor to bear thy standard for her country, and endured with grace and fortitude both victory and defeat; and we pray that we, like Jeanne, may bear witness to the truth that is in us to friends and enemies alike, and, encouraged by the companionship of thy saints, give ourselves bravely to the struggle for justice in our time; through Christ our Savior, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 3:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 12:25-30

Artwork: Pedro Américo, Joan of Arc, 1884. Oil on canvas, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janiero.

“How can these things be?”

This might well be our question after such a challenging, demanding and dauntingly robust exercise as saying together the Athanasian Creed, one of the three great Creeds of the Christian Faith! But perhaps the question helps to awaken us to the wonder of God.

“Blessed be God that he is God only and divinely like himself.” A phrase used by John Donne as a kind of meditative mantra, it captures something of the mystery and the wonder of this special day, The Octave Day of Pentecost, commonly called Trinity Sunday. And it is a most holy and special day, one of the most holy and special of days because it is, first of all, unique and, secondly, the ground and basis of all our days and all our life. It is simply a forthright celebration of God.

Trinity Sunday celebrates God himself, we might say, Deus in se, as distinct from thinking about God in relation to us, Deus pro nobis, which so easily turns into our concerns and our interests and our ways of thinking and doing which so easily becomes the basis for our thinking about God. It is as if God is made in the image of our thinking rather than our being made in the image of God and participating in the life of God. Trinity Sunday challenges us precisely on that score. “He therefore that would be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity,” as the Athanasian Creed puts it. To think God as Trinity is to think God in himself and only through that to begin to think God in relation to us.

The doctrine of the Incarnation, the doctrine of the redemption of our humanity, the doctrine of the Trinity: these are the three great and essential dogmas of the Christian faith, and the greatest of these is the Trinity, we might say. The distinctive and essential way of thinking God in the Christian understanding, it is the doctrine through which Christians can respectfully engage the other great monotheistic religions of Judaism and Islam, however much the Trinity is repudiated and denied by them, as well as engaging the other religions and philosophies of the world. In other words, the Trinity is not some speculative add-on to the other fundamentals of the Faith. It is the fundamental and essential doctrine without which all of the other principles of Faith are really meaningless and empty.

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Monday May 28th
6:00-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, May 29th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

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

Friday, June 1st
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, June 3rd, First Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Club Breakfast with the Ladies)
10:30am Holy Communion

The collect for today, the Octave Day of Pentecost, commonly called Trinity Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: We beseech thee, that this holy faith may evermore be our defence against all adversities; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 4:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 3:1-15

Artwork: Franz Anton Maulbertsch, The Trinity, c. 1785. Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Reflections: Cadet Church Parade. May 2018
‘Teach us to care and not to care’

I. Teach us to care and not to care

Icons are images that belong to the understanding. They point us to ideas and ways of thinking that shape our ways of doing and being.

The dominant and central icon in the School Chapel is the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. The dominant and central icon in the Chapel at the University of King’s College in Halifax, our sister institution, is an image of the boy Christ as Teacher among the Doctors of the Law. The dominant and central icon here at Christ Church is the image of Christ Crucified. These three images are interrelated and speak to the culture and life of the School.

They contribute to another icon, the images of Christ Pantocrator that are present and visible in the Chapel and here at Christ Church. Pantocrator means the ruler of all, a biblical and philosophical reference to God as the intellectual and spiritual principle of all reality. “God is the king of all creation” as the Psalmist proclaims. In the Christian understanding that is concentrated in the figure of Christ and powerfully so in the icon of Christ Pantocrator. A central aspect of the spiritual imagination of the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, icons are increasingly found in the churches of western Christianity as well. They help us to think about our life and our world as gathered to God.

As such these icons challenge the ways in which we use and abuse one another and our world through a kind of instrumental or technocratic reason, a reasoning which is about power and action but without regard to an ethical understanding. This is the “new barbarism,” as the French philosopher, Michel Henry terms it, a certain type of knowledge which is destructive of culture and humanity. These icons recall us to the transcendent principle of our knowing and our being that redeems all our doings and all our actions.

As the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor has noted, the question for our contemporary world is less about the  idea of what it is that is right to do and more about what it is that is good to be. This focuses upon a sense of ourselves in relation to the world and to one another that is not simply about using the world and one another which so often leads to abuse and destruction such as the last hundred years have shown in the devastations of war and the degradations of nature.

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“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”

Pentecost is a fascinating spectacle, perhaps even more fascinating than the fashion ‘fascinators’ of yesterday’s beautiful and moving royal wedding, a scene at once of pomp and circumstance and of piety and devotion, of joy and love. There is more to it than simply what meets the eye. Even more so with Pentecost.

It begins with the titles: “The Day of Pentecost Being the Fiftieth Day After Easter commonly called Whitsunday,” which at once recalls an ancient Jewish festival celebrating the first-fruits of the harvest of grain fifty days after the Passover and the Christian festival of Christ’s Resurrection, Christ being “the first-fruits of them that slept”. Pentecost has very much to do with the life of Christ in us, it seems, but that life is one that draws us into the very life of God as Trinity, the point which the Gospel makes clear. Through the coming down of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, Jesus says, “we,” meaning God, “will come unto him,” meaning those who “love [Jesus]” and “keep [his] words.” Only so will we find our abiding in the love of God.

The liturgical colour for this day in the tradition of the Church is red and yet Pentecost is commonly called Whitsunday, literally, ‘White Sunday’. That seems confusing and paradoxical. Why Whitsunday? Because this day, too, like Easter is about new life and new birth, a day in which baptisms and confirmations also took place, a day when souls were joined to the great spiritual company of the Church Universal “having washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” recalling Christ’s sacrifice and our participation in the work of human redemption. The colour red also refers to the tongues of fire which came down upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. And so it becomes the symbolic colour for the Apostles, meaning those who are sent having learned the things of God.

And if that is not confusing enough, we have the whole fascinating spectacle of Pentecost as “a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues, like as of fire,” “rest[ing] upon each of them.” Wind and fire are strange and evocative images, elusive and yet significant, that speak profoundly to the spiritual mystery of God. There is more to Pentecost than what meets the eye. More than appearance there is the reality of Pentecost and its meaning for us in our lives, our lives in the spirit, our lives as spiritual beings. The Holy Spirit is often symbolised as a dove, the dove of heavenly peace. The presence of the Holy Spirit with us and in us is symbolised as wind and fire; not to be sure, the winds of war and destruction nor the fires of technological progress which equally enchant and destroy us. No. It is the wind and fire of God that transform us. These are all images that teach and act as metaphors and similes for the reality of the Spirit.

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Monday May 21st
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, May 22nd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Wednesday, May 23rd
3:00pm KES Cadet Corps Church Parade
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, May 24th
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms

Friday, May 25th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, May 27th, Trinity Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

The collects for today, The Day of Pentecost, being the fiftieth day after Easter, commonly called Whit-Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

O GOD, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon thy disciples in Jerusalem: Grant that we who celebrate before thee the Feast of Pentecost may continue thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit, until we come to thine eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 2:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 14:15-27

Artwork: Ambrosius Benson, Pentecost, 16th century. Oil on panel, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Dunstan (909-988), Archbishop of Canterbury, Restorer of Monastic Life (source):

Almighty God,
who didst raise up Dunstan
to be a true shepherd of the flock,
a restorer of monastic life
and a faithful counsellor to kings:
grant, we beseech thee, to all pastors
the like gifts of thy Holy Spirit
that they may be true servants of Christ and of all his people;
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: Ecclesiasticus 44:1-7
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

Artwork: Roundel with Saint Dunstan of Canterbury, 1501-20. Colorless glass, vitreous paint and silver stain, The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.