Month: April 2019

Prayers and liturgy

Leo the Great, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Leo the Great (c. 400-461), Bishop of Rome, Teacher of the Faith (source):

O God our Father,
who madest thy servant Leo strong in the defence of the faith:
we humbly beseech thee
so to fill thy Church with the spirit of truth
that, being guided by humility and governed by love,
she may prevail against the powers of evil;
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 Timothy 1:6-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:13-19

Francesco Solimena, St. Leo the Great going to meet Atilla

Leo is believed to have been born in Tuscany and served as a deacon and papal advisor before being chosen pope in 440. He is one of the most important popes of the early church because of his achievements in theology, canon law, and church administration.

Leo defended uniformity in church government and doctrine and bolstered the primacy of the Roman see in the church structure. In his letters and sermons, he argued that, as heir to St. Peter, the bishop of Rome holds a supreme authority over the church and all other bishops. This was not universally accepted during Leo’s papacy, but it strongly influenced the future course of the church.

His greatest accomplishment was as a theologian. When the Council of Chalcedon was convened in 451, Leo wrote a Tome to Bishop Flavian of Constantinople that contained a clear and cogent statement of the dual nature of Jesus Christ. He described Christ’s two natures, divine and human, as permanently united “unconfusedly, unchangeably, undivisibly, and inseparably”. When Leo’s letter was read aloud at the Council, the delegates cried, “Peter has spoken through Leo”, and his teaching was accepted as defining the doctrine of the Person of Christ.

Twice during Leo’s pontificate, Rome came under threat from barbarian invaders. In 452, Attila and his Huns advanced on Rome after sacking Milan, but Leo saved the city by persuading Attila to accept tribute and withdraw. In 455, however, he was not as successful dealing with Genseric, leader of the Vandals. Leo did persuade the Vandals not to destroy Rome and murder the populace, but they plundered the city for a fortnight and took prisoners to Africa. Leo sent priests and alms to the captives.

Leo was the first pope to be buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Artwork: Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), Saint Leo the Great Going to Meet Attila. Oil on canvas, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 10 April

If I be shaved, I shall lose my strength

April showers come in dazzling white in Nova Scotia! “April is”, as T.S. Eliot observes, “the cruellest month” and he never even visited the Maritimes! But this too shall pass. There are more important things to think about than the vagaries of the weather. In Chapel we have embarked upon the lenten discipline of a study of The Book of Judges.

The story of Samson is a major part of The Book of Judges and contributes to its overarching themes in and through the folkloric character of many of its stories. Samson is the proverbial strong man, the “Rocky” of the Old Testament, as it were, and yet as a judge in Israel, he is not defined primarily or essentially by his strength or by any human quality but by “the Spirit of the Lord”. That is the tension in the story of Samson within the struggles of the conquest of the “promised land”. Yet what looks like tribal conflicts is really about something deeper, about what defines Israel over and against the Philistines. One of the most famous passages is the story of Samson and Delilah.

What is that story about? It is about what truly defines Samson. He is from his birth, as he tells Delilah, a Nazirite. He has been dedicated to God and that dedication is expressed in terms of a set of defining disciplines such as not cutting his hair, not drinking wine nor eating grapes, and avoiding carrion flesh. In other words, he is defined by his relation to God. It is “the Spirit of the Lord” that matters and not his physical strength. What happens if we deny the principle that defines us? What happens if we trust more in our own strength rather than in the Spirit of the Lord who is radically other than the ‘gods’ of the Philistines? The Book of Judges is about those questions which distinguish and define Israel.

And while that theme appears in the context of violence and conflict, the deeper point is that something greater is at work in Israel than just tribal identities. In other words, being defined by God ultimately transcends the tribal. That lesson is part of the long, long journey of Israel’s learning what it means to be the people of the Law. Judges shows us how hard the journey of learning is and yet how necessary. It especially provides a necessary critique of human pride and presumption. In that sense it complements other works from other traditions that also present a self-critique of reason and human presumption.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Holy Week at Christ Church – 2019

Sunday, April 14th, Palm Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer

Monday, April 15th, Monday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Tuesday, April 16th, Tuesday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Wednesday, April 17th, Wednesday in Holy Week
7:00am Matins & Passion
4:00pm Tenebrae

Thursday, April 18th, Maundy Thursday
7:00am Penitential Service & Passion
7:00-8:30pm Holy Communion & Watch

Friday, April 19th, Good Friday
7:00am Matins & Passion
11:00am Ecumenical Service
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday

Saturday, April 20th, Holy Saturday
10:00am Matins & Ante-Communion
7:00pm Vigil with Lauds & Matins of Easter

Sunday, April 21st, Easter
7:00am Sunrise Service at Fort Edward
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer

Monday, April 22nd, Easter Monday
10:00am Holy Communion

Tuesday, April 23rd, Easter Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant

Passiontide. We enter into deep Lent. Already the focus is increasingly on the Cross, upon the Passion of Christ. His Passion is about his willing sacrifice for us, his willingness to be acted upon by our evil. But what does that really mean? “We see through a glass darkly”, Paul reminded us on the Sunday before Lent, Quinquagesima Sunday, even as the Gospel story about “go[ing] up to Jerusalem” was about Jesus telling us what was going to happen, telling us about the things of his passion, death, and resurrection. The point, at once disturbing and true to human experience, is that “they” – we – “understood none of these things”. The hope of the Quinquagesima Gospel was that like the blind man crying out from the wayside we might want to know, to see and to understand. But this meant that we obviously don’t see fully or clearly. Thus the Cross is veiled, especially in Passiontide, there before us but in the increasing awareness of its mystery, in the awareness of “the dullness of our blinded sight.”

Lent is about that journey of the soul with God into what God wants for us. But God’s goodness cannot be comprehended and grasped even partially without an awareness of our faults and failings, our sinfulness and wickedness which contribute to our brokenness.“The sacrifices of God”, the psalmist tells us, “are a broken spirit, / a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps. 51.17).  This is powerful wisdom, a deep theological truth, and one which shapes our journey into the Passion of Christ.

On Passion Sunday, the Epistle and Gospel bid us reflect on the meaning of human redemption in Christ’s sacrifice. The theme is atonement. What will it take to restore us to oneness with God? It has everything to do with Christ as the Mediator between God and man because he is both God and man. His mediation is about his death, his “giv[ing] his life a ransom for many”. What does this mean? That is our struggle. The struggle to understand what redemption means belongs to our real good in God’s love and mercy. It begins by learning our lack, our incompleteness, our brokenness.

We are like the mother of Zebedee’s children and her sons. We think we know what is best for us and for one another but as Jesus says we “know not what [we] ask”. This is Jesus’ verdict on our desires. We do not really know what is good for us. Our reason is clouded over and our will disordered. Such are the effects and the reality of sin. We can however engage with the struggle to learn what God wills to provide for us through the sacrifice of Christ and our participation in that sacrifice; in short, “to strive to strive” towards such things. Such is Passiontide and especially Holy Week. Everything is concentrated on the way of the cross; at once the way of our betrayals of divine love and the triumph of that love for us and in us.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 8 – 14 April

Tuesday, April 9th
6:00pm Prayers & Praises – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, April 11th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Friday, April 12th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, April 14th, Palm Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

The collect for today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, commonly called Passion Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

WE beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28

Hans Memling, The Virgin Showing the Man of SorrowsArtwork: Hans Memling, The Virgin Showing the Man of Sorrows, 1475 or 1479. Oil on oak panel, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

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Sermons

2019 Lenten Programme

Fr. David Curry has collected his four Lenten Programme addresses into a single pdf document. Click here to download “Thinking Sacramentally”.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ambrose, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast Day of St. Ambrose (339-397), Doctor of the Church, Poet, Bishop of Milan (source):

Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Ambrose of MilanLord God of hosts,
who didst call Ambrose from the governor’s throne
to be a bishop in thy Church
and a courageous champion of thy faithful people:
mercifully grant that, as he fearlessly rebuked rulers,
so we may with like courage
contend for the faith which we have received;
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 2:7-11, 16-18
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:35-37, 42-44

Artwork: Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Ambrose of Milan, c. 1626-27. Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts of Seville.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 3 April

I have opened my mouth to the Lord

Discipline. It is a loaded word, one which is freighted with a lot of baggage, and largely viewed negatively. I am sure it makes Mr. Faucher cringe to be thought about as the disciplinarian! But that is to overlook the positive and stronger feature of discipline as something essential to education and maturity. Discipline is really about learning.

In the spiritual traditions of the world’s religions and philosophies, there are those special times which are about a recovery and a renewal of the mind and soul in the ethical principles that belong to ourselves as embodied beings capable of grasping meaning and truth. Such things are about spiritual discipline.

Lent is a time for“self-reflection and repentance”, for “prayer, fasting and self-denial”, for “reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 615). To that end, we have embarked upon a series of reading from The Book of Judges, in part, because it provides a self-critique of human reason and presumption, a necessary check upon ourselves, somewhat akin to Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex. It offers a critical view of our humanity in its adolescence, we might say. One of its recurring themes is “the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” The other recurring theme which also ends the work is the phrase “in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did as was their wont.” There is the question about how the truth and order of the will of God in the Law are to be mediated to the people of Israel. In a way, The Book of Judges is a reminder, yet again, of the destructive folly of our humanity when left to our own devices. It reveals the necessity of the Law as the overarching set of ethical principles that shape individual and communal behaviour. Judges shows us what happens when we fail to attend to those principles. As such it recalls us to their necessity. It is a profound check on all and every form of humanism which thinks itself to be self-complete.

It is, to be sure, a pretty violent book with a number of pretty disturbing stories including the ugliest and most disturbing story in the whole of the Scriptures, the story of the Levite’s concubine (which we are not reading this year!). The Judges are motley collection of charismatic individuals raised up by God to try to return Israel to God. It is not about their personal qualities; they are all flawed and importantly so. Yet this awareness of the limitations of our humanity in itself is the important lesson. That awareness can only open us to the need for God’s will and grace in our lives.

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Prayers and liturgy

Richard of Chichester, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Richard (1197-1253), Bishop of Chichester (source):

St. Richard of ChichesterMost merciful redeemer,
who gavest to thy bishop Richard
a love of learning, a zeal for souls
and a devotion to the poor:
grant that, encouraged by his example,
we may know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly,
day by day;
who livest and reignest with the Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
ever one God, world without end.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25: 31-40

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