Year: 2018

Prayers and liturgy

King Edward the Confessor

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Edward the Confessor (c. 1003-1066), King of England (source):

Cartmel Priory, Saint Edward, King and ConfessorO Sovereign God,
who didst set thy servant Edward upon the throne of an earthly kingdom
and didst inspire him with zeal for the kingdom of heaven:
grant that we may so confess the faith of Christ by word and deed,
that we may, with all thy saints, inherit thine eternal glory;
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 31:8-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:35-40

Artwork: Saint Edward, King and Confessor, 19th-century stained glass, from the East window, North transept, Cartmel Priory, England. The saint is shown inspecting a model of Westminster Abbey, which was built during his reign.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 10 October

Why did it yield wild grapes?

Isaiah 5. 1-7 is a wonderful love-song and a lament. It serves as a commentary on the creation stories of Genesis 1 & 2 and the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. “Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard,” it begins. The poet is singing a song for God, the beloved, concerning his vineyard; the triple reflexives are poignant and moving. A most powerful passage, it reveals to us in an affective manner the contradictions of our humanity.

The imagery is remarkable. Creation is imaged as a vineyard; even more, as the poem unfolds, our humanity, viewed in terms of “Jerusalem,” “the men of Judah” and “the house of Israel,” is described as a vineyard. “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.” The agricultural imagery takes us back to the themes of thanksgiving for the harvest which can only happen when we work in concert with the goodness of the created order. What this poem also reminds us is that we only too often make a mess of the created order.

Here that is imaged in terms of a divine lament. “My beloved had a vineyard”– us. God looks to his vineyard to bring forth grapes but, instead, “it yielded wild grapes.” The story of the Fall has cosmic repercussions. We turn the goodness of the vineyard of creation into a wilderness. This is part of the human condition that is beautifully but convincingly set before us. The failure lies not with God and his vineyard but with our humanity. How? By denying the will and purpose of God for our humanity and our world.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Philip of Caesarea, Apostolic Man

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Philip of Caesarea, Deacon, Apostolic Man (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Philip the Deacon, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the peoples of Samaria and Ethiopia. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom, that thy Church may make known the immeasurable riches of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 8:26-40
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:18-20

Abraham Bloemaert, The Baptism of the ChamberlainArtwork: Abraham Bloemaert, The Baptism of the Chamberlain, 1620-25. Oil on canvas, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands.

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Prayers and liturgy

Paulinus, Missionary and Archbishop

Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Saint PaulinusThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Paulinus (c. 584-644), Monk, first Archbishop of York, Missionary (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Paulinus, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the people of northern England. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land evangelists and heralds of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop or Archbishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

The St. Paulinus stained glass was made by the firm of C.E. Kempe of London and installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1913. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Denys, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Denys (d. c. 258), Bishop of Paris, Patron Saint of France, Martyr (source):

Corrado Giaquinto, Martyrdom of St. DenisO GOD, who as on this day didst endow thy blessed Martyr and Bishop Saint Denys with strength to suffer stedfastly for thy sake, and didst join unto him Rusticus and Eleutherius for the preaching of thy glory to the Gentiles: grant us, we beseech thee, so to follow their good example; that for the love of thee we may despise all worldly prosperity, and be afraid of no manner of worldly adversity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-34
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:1-9

Artwork: Corrado Giaquinto, Martyrdom of St. Denis, c. 1759. Oil on canvas, Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Crotone, Italy.

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Prayers and liturgy

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Scholar (source):

Robert GrossetesteO God our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Robert Grosseteste to be a bishop and pastor in thy Church and to feed thy flock: Give to all pastors abundant gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may minister in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:28-32
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:10-15

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Sermons

Sermon for Harvest Thanksgiving

“For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven,
and giveth life unto the world”

Michaelmas is a feast of intellection, we might say, a festival of the gathering of the thoughts of God; such are the angels as the intellectual principles of the universe in its diversity and unity. Similarly, Harvest Thanksgiving celebrates a gathering, the gathering of the visible fruits of creation in an intellectual way to God, the invisible source and principle of all that we see and feel and taste and smell. It is a particularly significant festival for our agricultural communities where there is some sort of real connection to the land and a proper concern for the good of the land.

Gathering the fruits and vegetables from the fields into the Church is an entirely spiritual activity. We aren’t feeding God, offering sacrifices, as if were, to some idol of our imaginations. We are honouring God as the source and truth of all that belongs to our lives physically and spiritually. This point cannot be emphasised enough. It is the counter to our materialism, on the one hand, and our complacency, on the other hand; a counter, too, to the deadly dualisms of our world and day. You cannot take the harvest for granted. While there is a physical aspect to our thanksgivings for food, for healing, and even for our social and political lives, thanksgiving itself is a profoundly spiritual and intellectual activity.

That is why the quintessential thanksgiving Gospel is actually the Gospel appointed for The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, which we heard five weeks ago. Look in your prayer books on page 240. Then look on page 308 and you find it again as appointed for Thanksgiving Day. That refers to the idea of a nationally appointed day of Thanksgiving, a thanksgiving for the rational principles that properly belong to our collective life without which our social and economic lives cannot flourish; itself a point worth pondering in our current confusions.

The Collect on page 307 wonderfully captures that larger sensibility. We “humbly thank” our merciful God and Father, “for all thy gifts so freely bestowed upon us.” Those gifts are clearly specified and are comprehensive in the sense that they pertain to every aspect of our lives. We thank God “for life and health and safety; for power to work and leisure to rest; for all that is beautiful in creation and in the lives of men.” Think and ponder on those words for a moment and see how they counter and challenge all forms of entitlement and complacency and every sense of whining and complaining. Notice how they open our eyes and our minds to whole different approach to life. Such ideas are only possible on the basis of the pageant of creation that Genesis 1 unfolds, that the Benedicite Omnia Opera sings, and that Isaiah proclaims in this morning’s lesson; all affirm the essential goodness of creation because of the goodness of God. But those ideas of thanksgiving, our thanksgiving for all manner of good things, are altogether secondary to our thanksgiving “for our spiritual mercies in Christ Jesus our Lord,” which ties together the themes of creation and redemption.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 8 – 14 October

Tuesday, October 9th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Wednesday, October 10th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Friday, October 12th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, October 14th, Twentieth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, October 16th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room: The Temptation of Forgiveness, by Donna Leon, and Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, by Mark Sakamoto

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Prayers and liturgy

Harvest Thanksgiving Day

The collects for today, Harvest Thanksgiving Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who crownest the year with thy goodness, and hast given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season: Give us grateful hearts, that we may unfeignedly thank thee for all thy loving-kindness, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O LORD, we pray thee, sow the seed of thy word in our hearts, and send down upon us the showers of thy grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit, and at the great day of harvest may be gathered by the holy angels into the heavenly garner; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 55:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 6:27-35

Thanksgiving is a special and wonderful celebration. It speaks to a deep-seated spiritual sensibility in our souls even in the confusions, uncertainties, and denials of all things religious and spiritual in our contemporary culture. Thanksgiving is fundamentally and essentially spiritual, especially in the Christian understanding.

Thanksgiving embraces at once Harvest Thanksgiving and National Thanksgiving, our thanks for the bounty of the harvest (whether or not there has been one!) and for the rational and spiritual freedoms that we enjoy (however much we ignore them!) in our nation and country. Those ‘thanksgivings’ are raised into the great thanksgiving, the Eucharist of the Son to the Father, re-enacted, recalled, and re-presented in “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” in the service of the Holy Eucharist. We are fed with the bread of life, which is Jesus himself who has come down from heaven to give life to the world. That life is about our participation in the Son’s Thanksgiving to the Father, the Great Thanksgiving.

The giving of thanks to God, the giving of thanks for what we have, and the giving of thanks with one another and sharing with one another speaks to the highest freedom and dignity of our humanity. We give articulate praise to God for the harvest, for the nation, for our communities, and for one another but, above all, for God himself. “Blessed be God that he is God only and divinely like himself” as John Donne prays. We are in George Herbert’s rich phrase, “the secretaries of thy praise”. Such is our return to God, a redire a principia, a return to the principle of our life and being.

Fr. David Curry

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Prayers and liturgy

The Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity

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

O GOD, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:17-32
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:1-8

Alessandro Magnasco, Christ Healing a ParalyticArtwork: Alessandro Magnasco, Christ Healing a Paralytic, 1735. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.

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