Day: November 13, 2019

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 13 November

They desire a better country

The reading in Chapel on Tuesday from Hebrews 11 & 12 provided an opportunity for further reflection on the significance of Remembrance Day, something which perhaps we are only beginning to understand. It is really about contemplating the devastations and destructiveness of the technology of war in its global extent, on the one hand, and the idea of sacrificial love, on the other hand. These are ethical considerations about the overarching nature of the Good. Contemplating the miseries of our humanity in its destructive disarray actually belongs to our felicity, to blessedness, such as the Beatitudes show.

In a post-Christian, and even anti-Christian, culture and even more in the climate of anti-intellectualism, I am struck by the paradox of the hold that an older and principled ethical and philosophical discourse still has in our current world. “They desire a better country” is the motto of the Order of Canada, the highest honorific in our country. The phrase comes from the King James Version of Hebrews, itself translated into English in the 16th and  17th centuries from the Greek. The motto has been latinized (but not by reference to the Latin Vulgate translation): Desiderantes meliorem patriam.

That idea of a desire for a better country catapults our thinking into a reflection upon the Good and to the ways in which the ethical shapes our thoughts and actions. This is a fundamental feature of the great philosophical and religious traditions of the world. It is about the challenge of acting in accord with virtue as Aristotle says. The traditions of moral philosophy presuppose our openness to what is transcendent, to what comes into us through, for example, illumination, purgation, and perfection that belong to our lives as “strangers and pilgrims” seeking “a better country, that is an heavenly.” We are reminded of “a great cloud of witnesses” of those who have sought to will the good and were willing to sacrifice themselves for principles and ideals which they considered worth dying for because they belong to what dignifies life.

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Prayers and liturgy

Charles Simeon, Pastor

The collect for today, the commemoration of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Priest, Evangelical Divine (source):

O eternal God,
who didst raise up Charles Simeon
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and inspire thy people in service and mission:
grant that we, with all thy Church, may worship the Saviour,
turn away in true repentance from our sins
and walk in the way of holiness;
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: Romans 10:8b-17
The Gospel: St. John 21:15-19

Charles SimeonCharles Simeon served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1782 until his death. His zealous evangelical preaching was bitterly opposed by parish leaders, but proved immensely popular and influential among Cambridge undergraduates. He supported the British and Foreign Bible Society and helped to found the Church Missionary Society. His curate Henry Martyn became chaplain of the East India Company and one of India’s best-known missionaries.

Historian Lord Macaulay wrote of him, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”

A meditation on the life of Charles Simeon, by John Piper, is posted here.

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