Month: December 2019

Prayers and liturgy

Ignatius, Bishop & Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ignatius (d. c. 107), Bishop of Antioch, Martyr (source):

Feed us, O Lord, with the living bread
and make us drink deep of the cup of salvation
that, following the teaching of thy bishop Ignatius,
and rejoicing in the faith
with which he embraced the death of a martyr,
we may be nourished for that eternal life
which he ever desired;
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 8:35-39
The Gospel: St. John 12:23-26

St. Stephen Church, Nessebar, Bulgaria, St. Ignatius of AntiochIgnatius, who became Bishop of Antioch c. 69, is a key witness of the early church in the era immediately following the apostles.

Nothing certain is known of his episcopate before his journey from Antioch to Rome as a prisoner condemned to death in the arena. Arrested during the persecution of the emperor Trajan, he was received in Smyrna by Bishop (later Saint) Polycarp and delegates from several other churches in Asia Minor.

While at Smyrna, Ignatius wrote letters to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, and Rome. Later, at Troas, he wrote to the churches at Philadelphia and Smyrna, and to Polycarp.

In his letters, Ignatius clearly affirmed Christ’s divinity and his resurrection from the dead. He encouraged all Christians to maintain church unity in and through the Eucharist and the authority of the local bishop, and he wrote against a heresy that contained elements of Docetism, Judaism, and possibly Gnosticism.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent

Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?

John the Baptist and Mary the Blessed Virgin are essential figures in the spiritual landscape of Advent. They meet together, as it were, on the Third Sunday in Advent and illumine the nature of what it means to be “the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” They do so through the conjunction of repentance and rejoicing.

What is the ministry of John the Baptist? It is the ministry of “preaching a gospel of repentance for the  forgiveness of sins,” as Mark and Luke tell us and to which Matthew also alludes. What does that mean? It means a form of self-awareness, an awareness of our faults and failings which is predicated upon the desire for wholeness or righteousness in us; in short, for truth. It complements Mary’s fiat mihi which is about being defined by the Word of God’s truth coming to her and through her to us. Repentance leads to joy, to the note of rejoicing signaled on this Sunday which is also known as “Gaudete” Sunday from the Introit taken from Philippians (and which also is the Epistle for next Sunday) and symbolised with the rose candle on the  Advent wreath. “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.” And why? Because “the Lord is at hand.”

But why is John in prison? Matthew only tells us several chapters later. He dared to speak truth to power. There is a confusion of Herods in the New Testament, all part of the Herodian dynasty, all related to Herod the Great of the Christmas story. Herodias was first the wife of Philip, also a Herod, but divorced him to marry his more powerful brother, Herod Antipas, who in turn divorced his wife to marry her. Herodias’ name is itself a feminine form of Herod. She was a Jewish princess with great ambitions but marrying Herod Antipas, whom Matthew calls, somewhat confusingly, Herod the Tetrarch, caused an outrage since it was a violation of Jewish law for a man to marry his brother’s divorced wife. As Matthew tells us, it was John the Baptist who said to him “It is not lawful for you to have her,” and so he was put in prison.

This leads to the famous story of the beheading of John the Baptist through the connivance of Herodias and her daughter Salome. Salome dances so pleasingly before Herod Antipas that he promised to give her whatever she wanted. Herodias prompts her to say, “the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The story has captured the imagination of many artists such as Caravaggio, Titian, and Artemisia Gentileschi, to name but a few. The phrase “one’s head on a platter” has become an idiomatic and hyperbolic expression for a very harsh punishment. Indeed. Obviously there is nothing new about our contemporary questions about “constitutional legitimacy” (quoting Habermas) or about ethical corruption in what Maclean’s calls our disordered world.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 16 – 22 December

Tuesday, December 17th, Comm. of Ignatius of Antioch
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme: Advent Psalms and Antiphons

Thursday, December 19th, Eve of Ember Friday
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, December 20th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 22nd, Fourth Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Sunday, December 29th
10:30am Christmas Lessons & Carols

We will retreat to the Parish Hall for services in January, February, and March 2020.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the Third Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:2-10

Baciccio, Sermon of St. John the BaptistArtwork: Baciccio, Sermon of St. John the Baptist, c. 1690. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 11 December

Light in darkness

The last lesson in the Advent/Christmas Service of Nine Lessons and Carols is the beginning of John’s Gospel (Jn. 1.1-14), known as the Prologue (though technically it ends at verse 18). This year, too, our Carol Services on Sunday, December 8th, came at the end of the last week of classes. With the Prologue, we end where we began back in September at the first Chapel Services.  “To make an end,” as T.S. Eliot observes, “is to make a beginning” for “the end is where we start from.” He means an end in the sense of a first principle as that upon which the being and the knowing of all things depends.

The lesson from John is the great Christmas Gospel that shapes a whole way of understanding about the nature of God’s engagement with our humanity. It speaks profoundly to the darkness of our world and day about the light which is greater than the darkness. “And the darkness comprehended it not” as the King James’ Version puts it, signalling precisely the intellectual aspect of light, as if to say that the darkness is not able to understand the light. The light understands the darkness but the darkness does not understand the light. The darkness in this sense is the absence of light, a negative.

The reading from John is also known as the last Gospel referring to a medieval practice whereby it is read, often silently, at the end of the Mass. Such practices underscore the significance of the Prologue of John’s Gospel for our understanding.

It opens us out to the idea of an intellectual principle as that upon which everything depends in spite of our uncertainties and fears, our anxieties and worries. John is speaking about Jesus Christ entirely in terms of Word, Light, and Son, yet Jesus is not even mentioned by name in John 1.1-14. Word and Light in relation to the idea of God are intellectual and spiritual commonplaces with respect to a number of religious and philosophical traditions. Augustine will note that he learned the “Word” which was “in the beginning,” which “was with God,” and which “was God” from the libri platonici, the books of the Platonists. Word that is light in the darkness of ignorance and evil is not a concept unique to the Christian religion.

How that Word lives in us belongs to the Christian insight of the Word made flesh, the principle of the Incarnation, one of the essential mysteries of the Christian faith. Yet that mystery speaks to the various ways in which cultures and peoples attempt to understand themselves in relation to a first principle, to the various ways in which that principle may be realized in human lives; in short, to the way in which it lives in us. There can’t be life or knowledge without the principle of life and light. “The life was the light of men,” John tells us. This testifies to an insistence on the primacy of ideas, to the significance of the Light which is greater than all and every form of darkness.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Newsletter, December 2019

In Dulci Jubilo

It was an appropriate ending to the last week of classes and perhaps a good approach to this week of exams. The Advent/ Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols were held on Sunday, December 8th at Christ Church, 4:00pm, for Grades 7-11, and at Hensley Memorial Chapel, 7:00pm, for the Grade 12 prospective graduating class of 2020. One of the few events at the School that are mandatory for students and faculty alike, the pageant of Word and Song is a significant feature of the School’s educational philosophy. It has very much to do with learning to attend, being attuned, as it were, to ideas conveyed through words spoken and sung together.

A veritable platoon of servers and singers and readers provided key leadership in the services. The central focus is the readings taken from the King James translation of the Scriptures. Six of the nine readings were taken from the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament in the Christian understanding. They are powerful passages signalling light and hope and peace and joy in the face of darkness and despair, passages that point to the three readings from the Christian New Testament. The readers did an exceptional job of reading clearly and with understanding. The readers at 4:00pm were Will Larder, Alissa Pape, Vincent Armstrong, Mikaela Hinds and Will Mercer along with Head Girl, Ava Benedict and Head Boy, Evan Logan, who read at both services as did the Headmaster, Mr. Joe Seagram, and the Chaplain. Will Larder and Vincent are among the youngest students at the School; they read superbly as did all of the readers.

The servers at the 4pm service were Jacob Fines-Belcham, Alex Graham, Papa Ofori, Sarah Bell, Rendy Ashley, Owara Ofori and Lucas Martin, a wonderfully competent, confident and willing group. That service was greatly enhanced by a choir under the direction of Ms. Stephanie Fillman. They assisted in the singing of carols and hymns, at times by sweetly singing harmonies. The Advent Hymns and Christmas Carols sing the story of human hopes and human redemption in the tonalities of Advent expectation and Christmas rejoicing. In dulci jubilo, indeed, sweet joys, “the concord of sweet sounds.”

The 7pm service has an entirely different feel owing to the intimacy and the ambience of the Chapel. For our Grade 12s, it is their last carol service at the School, at least as students. The readers were Megumi Tsuji, Parker Kim, Aimee Cooper, Ohemaa Ofori, and Andrew Atwood, Head Chapel Prefect, along with Ava Benedict and Evan Logan, the Headmaster and the Chaplain. The servers were Makayli Paul, Ben Fleckenstein, Olivia Drava, Heavyn Beals, and Taewoo Kim. Mr. Owen Stephens was the organist at both services, providing different preludes and postludes for the two services.

I am grateful to all who helped and with those parents and family members who attended and showed their support and understanding of this kind of corporate activity so critical to a proper understanding of education. I especially want to thank the Chapel Prefects who have helped with the morning miracle of Chapel throughout the term. In dulci jubilo.

(Rev’d) David Curry,
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

Written for our learning

Truth is judgement. A central feature of the Advent season is God’s coming in judicio, in judgement. God’s Word coming to us is truth as judgment. How does that Word come to us? By what is spoken and hear, by what is written and read . What does it mean for that Word to be learned? There is teaching but what about learning? The real meaning of learning is captured most profoundly in Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation: “be it unto me according to thy word.”

Her word is the resounding and defining mantra of the Christian Faith. God’s Word is “a lantern … and a light” unto our lives as the Psalmist puts it (Ps. 119. 105), but only through its resonance in us. That resonance requires that we be attuned to that Word, as Archbishop Rowan Williams suggests, for in that attunement lies our atonement, our being at one with what is spoken and heard, with what is written and read.

Mary is the outstanding figure of the spiritual landscape of Advent. It is instructive to consider her role in relation to the spiritual emphasis on the parade of Scripture on this day which is sometimes known as ‘Bible Sunday.’ “Whatsoever things were written aforetime” Paul tells us, indicating the purpose of the Scriptures. They “were written for our learning.” This is wonderfully encapsulated in today’s Collect in Cranmer’s rich phrases, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” It means paying attention to that word coming in judgement as the Gospel shows: “look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Mary is the supreme example of what it means to attend and be attuned to God’s Word, to what it means to learn the Scriptures; in short, to be defined by the Word of God in mente and in carne, in mind and in flesh for both are in judicio, in judgement, too.

All teaching seeks the embodiment of what is taught. It is about ideas living in us, taking flesh in our lives, as it were. Mary hears. Mary questions, Mary commits. Her great ‘yes’ to God is essential to the Incarnation of Christ. The Word takes flesh in her and from her to be the Word made flesh, the incarnate Christ. She embodies the highest expression of what it means to be human. We are called to be good Marians, to be like Mary in her active acquiescence to the power and truth of God; in short, to let God’s Word written and proclaimed resound in us.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 9 – 15 December

Monday, December 9th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, December 10th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Friday, December 13th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 15th, Third Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, December 17th, St. Ignatius of Antioch
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the Second Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 21:25-33

Jacobello Alberegno, Polyptych of the ApocalypseArtwork: Jacobello Alberegno, Polyptych of the Apocalypse, 1360-90. Tempera on panel, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Nicholas, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Nicholas (d. c. 326), Bishop of Myra (source):

Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who didst choose thy servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of thy grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
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: 1 St. John 4:7-14
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:13-16

Domenichino, Saint NicholasArtwork: Domenichino, Saint Nicholas, 1609-12. Fresco, Cappella dei Santi Fondatori (Chapel of the Holy Founders), Abbazia di Santa Maria, Grottaferrata, Italy.

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