Year: 2018

Prayers and liturgy

Monday in Holy Week

The collect for today, Monday in Holy Week, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Philippe de Champaigne, Ecce HomoALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 63:7-9
The Beginning of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark
The Gospel: St. Mark 14:1-72

Artwork: Philippe de Champaigne, Ecce Homo, 1655. Oil on canvas, Musée national de Port-Royal des Champs, France.

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Sermons

Sermon for Palm Sunday

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Which word? “Hosanna” or “crucify”? Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, a week in which we immerse ourselves, especially in the classical Anglican understanding, in all four Gospel accounts of the Passion. These are further complemented by important and intriguing lessons and epistles as well as by the Office Readings of this week. To attend to these readings is to fulfill the Marian definition: “be it unto me according to thy word.”

Today is Palm Sunday but in a kind of providential wonder it is also The Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; though the celebration of that feast is deferred until after Easter on April 10th. As Luther notes, “Mary does not want us to come to her but through her to Jesus.” For over a millennium and a half, March 25th marked the beginning of the year, a year which is constructed entirely around the story of Christ: his coming to us, his going from us; his being with us. Aspects of that sensibility are readily apparent. We call the ninth month of the year, September which actually means the seventh month; the tenth month, October, means the eighth month; the eleventh month, November, means the ninth month; the twelfth month, December, means the ten month. All of this makes sense when you realise the significance of March 25th as The Feast of the Annunciation and therefore as marking the very beginning of the Incarnation of Christ. Nine months from today will be Christmas.

The Angel Gabriel’s salutation to Mary and her active acquiescence to the will of God as the God-bearer, or Theotokos, marks the radical moment of the Incarnation. Her Annunciation is his conception, humanly speaking, in her womb. That it seems to contradict the natural order of things is precisely the point. God is the God of nature but that does not tie him down to nature; in his sovereign freedom he acts in other ways not to destroy nature but to perfect nature. In a way, there is nothing more fitting than the concurrence of Mary’s Annunciation with Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

Through Mary’s ‘yes’ to God at the Annunciation, Christ has “tak[en] to himself our flesh, and by his incarnation [has made] it his own flesh ha[ving] now of his own although from us what to offer unto God for us” (Hooker). Without that understanding, Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection are utterly meaningless, a gruesome tale of cruelty and wickedness but of no redemptive truth or value. In a way, the whole history of the development of the Canon of the Scriptures and the Creeds, the whole history of the Church, arises from pondering on the mystery of Christ’s Passion and seeing in it the utter goodness of God and his will for our humanity.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Holy Week & Easter 2018

Monday, March 26th, Monday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Vespers & Communion

Tuesday, March 27th, Tuesday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Vespers & Communion

Wednesday, March 28th, Wednesday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
4:00pm Tenebrae
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, March 29th, Maundy Thursday
7:00am Penitential Service & Passion
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms
7:00-8:00pm Holy Communion & Watch

Friday, March 30th, Good Friday
7:00am Matins of Good Friday
11:00am Ecumenical Service at The Nazarene Church
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday

Saturday, March 31st, Holy Saturday
10:00am Matins & Ante-Communion
7:00pm Vigil with Lauds & Matins of Easter

Sunday, April 1st, Easter
7:00am Ecumenical Sunrise Service at Fort Edward
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer

Monday, April 2nd, Easter Monday
10:00am Holy Communion
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, April 3rd, Easter Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

Palm Sunday

The collect for today, the Sunday Next before Easter, commonly called Palm Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 2:5-11
The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Matthew
The Gospel: St. Matthew 27:1-54

Peter Paul Rubens, Christ’s Entry into JerusalemArtwork: Peter Paul Rubens, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, 1632. Oil on wood, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France.

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Sermons

Lenten Programme 4: The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation IV

`“Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 2.13)

Tonight we meet not only in the week of The Fifth Sunday in Lent, in other words, in Passiontide, but in the conjunction of the commemorations of Benedict, the founding father of Benedictine monasticism which shaped so much of what would become Europe and the intellectual culture of the Latin or Western Church, and Thomas Cranmer, who built upon that legacy as the architect of The Book(s) of Common Prayer that envisioned a Christian nation as a community of prayer. Both can be regarded as “doctors” – teachers – of the Church. But Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury and, as well, a martyr.

It seems fitting and in keeping with our Lenten series on The Comfortable Words and The Literature of Consolation that we give emphasis to the aspect of martyrdom, to the idea of comfort found even in suffering, captured in the text from 1 Peter and reflected in the Gospel reading from Matthew 16 about “deny[ing ourselves] and tak[ing] up [the] cross, and foll[owing Jesus]”.

“Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort.” These words belong to the Invitation to Confession in the Eucharistic liturgy of the Prayer Book, words which perhaps we hear as familiar and dear but don’t really think about and yet they connect two things, comfort with Confession, and comfort with the Sacrament of the Altar. In both those senses they suggest something of the significance of the Comfortable Words in the Prayer Book Communion liturgy. In a way, the Comfortable Words pick up from that succinct and rich phrase in precisely those two ways: at once in relation to the comfort of confession and to the comfort of the sacrament to which the confession of sins leads us.

They echo, too, perhaps, the words of St. Paul at the outset of his Second Letter to the Corinthians, words of blessing in the midst of struggles and sufferings. “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.” That is consolation writ large! Two nouns and three verbal forms, yet all about comfort extended and received, but, most importantly, grounded in God. The Greek word for comfort is translated in the Latin as consolatio. It is, perhaps, not by accident then that Meister Eckhart, an astute and original thinker on every aspect of the Christian Faith philosophically and here pastorally considered, should entitle his two early fourteenth century treatises on Consolation with Paul’s opening word, “Benedictus.” The first treatise, “The Book of Divine Consolation” begins with these words from Paul, words which not only begin but underlie the argument of both treatises which together present in a concentrated way almost the whole of the tradition of consolation before him.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Holy Week at Christ Church – 2018

Sunday, March 25th, Palm Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer

Monday, March 26th, Monday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Tuesday, March 27th, Tuesday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Wednesday, March 28th, Wednesday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
4:00pm Tenebrae
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, March 29th, Maundy Thursday
7:00am Penitential Service & Passion
7:00-8:30pm Holy Communion & Watch

Friday, March 30th, Good Friday
7:00am Matins & Passion
11:00am Ecumenical Service
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday

Saturday, March 31st, Holy Saturday
10:00am Matins & Ante-Communion
7:00pm Vigil with Lauds & Matins of Easter

Sunday, April 1st, Easter
7:00am Ecumenical Sunrise Service at Fort Edward
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer

Monday, April 2nd, Easter Monday
10:00am Holy Communion

Tuesday, April 3rd, Easter Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8pm Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

Benedict, Abbott

Piero della Francesca, St. BenedictThe collect for today, the Feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-550), Abbot of Monte Cassino, Father of Western Monasticism (source):

O eternal God,
who made Benedict a wise master
in the school of thy service,
and a guide to many called into the common life
to follow the rule of Christ:
grant that we may put thy love above all things,
and seek with joy the way of thy commandments;
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: Proverbs 2:1-9
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:27-33

Artwork: Piero della Francesca, St. Benedict (detail, Polyptych of the Misericordia), 1444-64. Oil and tempera on panel, Museo Civico di Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, Italy

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury, Reformation Martyr (source):

Hensley Chapel, Cranmer WindowFather of all mercies,
who through the work of thy servant Thomas Cranmer
didst renew the worship of thy Church
and through his death
didst reveal thy strength in human weakness:
strengthen us by thy grace so to worship thee in spirit and in truth
that we may come to the joys of thine everlasting kingdom;
through Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Advocate,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:9-14
The Gospel: St. John 15:20-16:1

Artwork: Thomas Cranmer, stained glass, Hensley Memorial Chapel, King’s-Edgehill School, Windsor, N.S.

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Anglican issues, Sermons, Theology

Fr. David Curry on Cranmer’s Eucharistic Liturgies, 1549/1552

An address delivered at the University of King’s College, Halifax, 19 March 2018.

Like eagles in this life

Thank you for the privilege of being with you and speaking with you this evening. It is nice to be back in familiar surroundings and in a place that has been so much a part of my own life. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Fr. Gary Thorne for his ministry as College Chaplain here at King’s College and for his excellent labours in the challenge of opening young and inquiring minds to the wonders of the Gospel in its engagement with other religions and philosophies.

“We should understand the sacrament, not carnally, but spiritually,” Cranmer argues “being like eagles in this life, we should fly up into heaven in our hearts, where that Lamb is resident at the right hand of his Father which taketh away the sins of the world … by whose passion we are filled at His table … being made the guests of Christ, having Him dwell in us through the grace of his true nature … assured and certified that we are fed spiritually unto eternal life by Christ’s flesh crucified and by his blood shed.” An intriguing and suggestive passage, it conveys, I think, much of what belongs to Cranmer’s Eucharistic theology and which contributes to an Anglican sensibility, to use a much later term (19th century).

There are many others who are far more qualified than I am to speak on the matter of Cranmer’s liturgies.[1] Sam Landry has asked me to speak about “Cranmer’s alterations of the Liturgy (especially those of the very Protestant 1552 BCP),” as he put it and “how we might understand his theological project in relation to our own Prayer Book, which has re-introduced some of the practices which Cranmer removed.” These are important questions that speak to the many confusions that belong to our thinking about Cranmer’s reformed project. Not the least of which has to do with the word ‘Protestant’.

We might respond by asking, ‘which form of Protestantism?’ It is a problematic term, so much so that Diarmaid MacCulloch in his magisterial biography on Cranmer eschews its use almost entirely. The important point is that the First Edwardian Prayer Book of 1549 is just as ‘Protestant,’ if you will, (or ‘Catholic’ for that matter) as the Second Edwardian Prayer Book of 1552. Both reflect Cranmer’s basic Eucharistic theology at the same time as the two books reveal the pressures and tensions that were part of the reformed world in England and on the continent about which Cranmer was fully aware. There was constant debate about what constituted an adequate and proper reform. Cranmer himself was part of that debate which continued long after him.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cuthbert, Missionary and Bishop

Cuthbert window, St. Philip's VancouverThe collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cuthbert (c. 634-87), Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary (source):

Almighty God,
who didst call thy servant Cuthbert from following the flock
to follow thy Son and to be a shepherd of thy people:
in thy mercy, grant that we may so follow his example
that we may bring those who are lost home to thy fold;
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: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St. Matthew 6:24-33

Artwork: St. Cuthbert, stained glass, St. Philip’s Anglican Church, Vancouver.

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