Fr. David Curry has collected his Holy Week and Easter meditations and homilies, based on the Scripture text, “What mean ye by this service?”, into a single pdf document. Click here to download “What mean ye by this service?”. These homilies were originally delivered and posted earlier this week on Palm Sunday through Easter Day.
This has been our text throughout the Passion of Christ and one which now carries us into this day and to the proclamation of this day: Christ is risen, Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord is risen, indeed, Alleluia! Alleluia! Now that’s a greeting! And one to be shouted out. It says a bit more than “Happy Easter” which might just as well mean, “May the bunny be with you!” Maybe even a chocolate bunny. Just saying. The great and ancient Easter greeting on this day is the proclamation of the Resurrection. Christ is risen. Alleluia! Alleluia!
And yet, the real meaning of this day, paradoxically it might seem, is that we are dead! For if we are not dead, then we shall not be alive. “You have died,” Paul tells us, “and your life is hid with Christ in God.” What this means is sacrifice in its deepest and truest meaning. Holy Week is about the Passion of Christ in all of its intensity but only so as to bring us to this day, the day of Resurrection, itself the fruit of the Passion and thus utterly meaningless without the solemn events of Holy Week and especially Good Friday. There can be no Resurrection without the Passion.
Bronwyn’s baptism is our Easter joy. Her baptism is a reminder of our vocation and calling, a reminder of the realities of death and life, a reminder of the radical new life of the Resurrection precisely through our dying to ourselves in order to live for God and for one another. She died and now she lives. And all because of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. That is the meaning of this service. We are dead so that we may live. Our life is not in ourselves. It is all Christ and all Christ in us. His sacrifice is love, a love made visible on the Cross and in his Resurrection.
The Resurrection is radical new life because it grounds us in the only life there is, the life of God in Christ. The Resurrection is the new and greater creation, the making of life and joy out of the nothingness of human sin and evil and of suffering and death. That is its radical meaning. God and God alone makes out of nothing both in creation and in redemption. The Resurrection is the greater creatio ex nihilo, the greater act of making new. The Crucifixion is not a gothic horror tale, a Stephen King shocker. It is graphic, to be sure, but it is the graphic portrayal of the nature of all sin and evil. We kill God. At least that is what all sin attempts, the attempt to deny the very principle of life upon which our being, our knowing and our loving completely and utterly depend. The Crucifixion makes that reality visible even as the Resurrection makes visible the overcoming of all sin. Both are the graphic lessons of love. Such is a new beginning just as Bronwyn’s baptism marks a new beginning, a new life, one made visible to us in the act of baptism.
Monday, April 22nd, Easter Monday
10:00am Holy Communion
Tuesday, April 23rd, Easter Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion
Thursday, April 25th
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms
6:00-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall
Friday, April 26th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall
Sunday, April 28th, Octave Day of Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Events:
Saturday, May 4th
7:00-9:30pm Nfld. & Country Evening of Musical Entertainment
Saturday, May 11th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Lobster Supper
The collect for today, Easter-Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962) :
ALMIGHTY God, who through thine only begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life: We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: Colossians 3:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 20:1-10
Artwork: Sandro Botticelli, The Resurrection, c. 1490. Tempera on canvas, Private collection (formerly at Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick.)
We can only know it retroactively, after the fact, as it were. The Resurrection is the great new creation, God’s redemptive act that restores and renews our humanity and the world. The Passion and the Resurrection are cosmic events, we might say, arguing for a much more intimate and closer relationship between our humanity and the natural world than what we currently experience in our disordered world. Like creation, we can only know the Resurrection after the fact and yet that only leads to a whole new way of thinking that means seeing everything before it in a new light. In a way, the Easter Vigil is about that whole new way of thinking and seeing things. It is about a recapitulation of the past seen now in the light of the Resurrection.
The ceremonies of the Vigil are traditionally long (three hours or more!), intense, symbolic, and fully participatory. Our country vigil, as I like to call it, is a concentrated version of the Great Vigil of Easter but contains most of the same elements except for the blessing of the Font and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Like the traditional Vigils of Easter, there is the lighting of the new fire in the darkness; the blessing and lighting of the Paschal (Easter) Candle; the singing of the Exultet or Paschal Praeconium, the great proclamation of the Resurrection parts of which derive from Ambrose; the reading of some (though not all) of the ‘prophecies’ – there are up to twelve!; the renewal of our baptismal vows; and, finally, the lauds of Easter morn. All rather simple but profound.
What does it mean? It means our participation in the fruit of the Passion, the Resurrection. We re-enact sacramentally the meaning of the Resurrection as God’s great re-creative and redemptive act. Life triumphs over death; light over darkness. It cannot be the extinguishing of the past but the past now as seen in a new light, in the light of the Resurrection. The Vigil imaginatively and scripturally celebrates the passover from death to life, from darkness to light, representing the whole history of salvation. The renewal of our baptismal vows – or in the case of Bronwyn, the rehearsal of the vows she will make tomorrow morning – reminds us that the great Vigil of Easter was precisely that time when converts to the Faith, young and old, individually and by family, were baptized and confirmed by the officiating bishop. In other words, we participate and recall our incorporation into the Body of Christ.
It is precisely in the wonder and joy of the Resurrection that we have journeyed with Christ in his Passion. The Resurrection shows us the underlying principle and power at work in the Passion of Christ; it is the compassion of God and the power of the divine life which recreates and renews even out of the nothingness of our sin and evil. Yet the Vigil, too, is about our joyous participation in that work of redemption at once sacramentally through the rituals of remembrance and by sacrificial service in our life and ministry together as priest and people. The Easter Vigil is, as Augustine remarks, “the mother of all vigils” and in a double sense as being the greatest of all vigils and as bringing to birth like a mother our faith. New birth. New life. Such is the Resurrection. It is all joy. All alleluias! “Rise heart! Thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise always.”
Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil 2019
We gather at the grave of Christ in silence. It is the quietest of times, the most peaceful day of the year in a way. All is done. “It is finished.” To be sure. All that belongs to the reconciliation between God and man is accomplished on the Cross. Today marks the peace of Paradise, as it were.
And yet the readings for Holy Saturday suggest something more that belongs to the radical nature of Christ’s sacrifice, to the radical nature of God’s desire to be reconciled with our humanity and world. Holy Saturday marks the creedal mystery of the Descent into Hell. What does that mean? It means the fullest possible extent of God’s desire to be reconciled with the whole of our sinful humanity.
Drawing upon imagery from Zechariah, our readings from 1st Peter this morning point to the idea of Christ going and preaching to the spirits in prison, in the darkness of Sheol. The work of human redemption extends far beyond our assurances about ourselves, far beyond the narrow limits of our world-view. The great icons of the Resurrection in Eastern Orthodoxy envision for us something of the great mystery of this day. Christ is depicted as drawing Adam and Eve and a train of others out of the grave, out of the pit of darkness. Such is reconciliation writ large, we might say.
At the very least, our gathering at the grave of Christ allows for the possibilities of something more. Of hope. Ultimately the reconciling grace of Christ for the whole of the world, for the whole of our humanity – such after all is its universal scope without which it is nothing – moves us to watch and wait expectantly. It will lead us to the vigil of Easter and to the radical outcome of that reconciling love in the Resurrection. Already in John’s Gospel we are made aware of that idea and the plans taken by the Chief Priests and the Pharisees who petition Pilate for a watch and a stone. Such is the fearfulness of our humanity in the limitations of our imagination and our reason. Such too is our folly in thinking that we can ultimately contain and restrict the will and actions of God. Already in the quiet mystery of Holy Saturday, Christ, the Word and Son of the Father, shows us that his reconciling sacrifice on the Cross is always something active and alive, and something, too, which speaks to the whole of our humanity. There is, we might say, the constant doing of what is done.
We watch and wait at the borrowed tomb of Christ, the tomb borrowed from Joseph of Arimathea. We watch and wait upon the Christ who “borrowed a body that he might borrow a death” (Athanasius), our death. That changes everything.
Fr. David Curry
Holy Saturday 2019
Matins & Ante-Communion
The collect for today, Easter Even, or Holy Saturday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
GRANT, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that, through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:17-22
The Gospel: St. Matthew 27:57-66
Artwork: Viktor Vasetsnov, The Deposition, 1901. Oil on canvas, Omsk Regional Museum of Fine Arts.
It is called Good Friday? Why, we might ask? In so doing, we are really asking, “what mean ye by this service?” How is this good? The Passion of Christ reaches its fullest and inexhaustible intensity in the Crucifixion of Christ. And while we can only contemplate Christ’s Crucifixion because of the Resurrection, itself the fruit of the Passion, it is equally the case that without Good Friday, Easter has no meaning. There is a profound good that belongs to what we contemplate on this day.
We contemplate the real horror and meaning of human sin. There is lots of violence and nastiness, selfishness and self-regard, narcissism and nihilism, not to mention sheer stupidity and stubbornness, to go around in our world and day, more than we can take in and deal with, and yet this day shows us the greater evil which moves in all of the disorders of human hearts and minds since the beginning of time and even to the end of time. What is that? Simply our attempt to kill God.
That is the radical meaning of Christ’s Crucifixion. God in Christ gives himself into our hands so that we can do with him what we will. We have our way. It is not a pretty picture. Yet this is the real meaning of having our way, the real meaning of our vaunted claims to autonomy, the real meaning of all our assertions of control. It is not only destructive of one another through our domination and control of one another whether in passive aggressive ways so finely tuned or in the more brutal forms of active aggression. No. Good Friday bids us plumb the depths of satanic evil that is potential and real in all our hearts. Christ crucified shows us exactly the deep and radical meaning of sin. It is the attempt to eradicate altogether the very principle of our being and knowing and loving, the very principle of the being and knowing of all things – God. We who depend upon God for our every breath and thought and word and deed deny him and seek to annihilate him from the horizons of our minds.
It is utter folly, a delusion, a contradiction. Yet to confront this and to see this made visible before us is the only way in which we might discover the real truth and dignity of our humanity. We “look upon him whom [we] have pierced,” as our liturgy reminds us, drawing upon the words of Zechariah recalled by John. The point, as Lancelot Andrewes teaches, is that we in turn should be pierced; in other words, convicted in our consciences about the radical meaning of all sin. We pierce God. We kill God. To say that seems quite astounding but it is the deep logic of the Christian faith without which we cannot understand the radical nature of the Resurrection. What is the good of this day? It is Christ’s death. His death for us is freely embraced and endured for the sake of our being made new. And so we are broken-hearted in order to be made new.
The collects for today, Good Friday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before thee for all estates of men in thy holy Church, that every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, may truly and godly serve thee; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Epistle: Hebrews 10:1-25
The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint John
The Gospel: St. John 18:33-19:37
Artwork: Taddeo Gaddi, Crucifixion, c. 1360. Fresco, Sacristy, Santa Croce, Florence.
You may be forgiven for wondering, ‘which service?’ For Maundy Thursday is really a great jumble of services, a collection of rituals. There is the rite of the washing of the feet; there is the rite of the royal mandatum, a gift of money to the poor; there is the Judas Cup ceremony at Durham Cathedral; there is the institution of the Holy Eucharist in the Upper Room with his disciples “on the night,” this very night, “in which he was betrayed”; there is the stripping of the altar; there is the watch in remembrance of Christ’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane. “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” “What mean ye by these services?”we have to ask.
And yet the connecting thread of meaning is clear. It has altogether to do with the power of the concept of sacrifice, a concept so much misunderstood that it now belongs less to its profound religious and spiritual sensibilities and more to the pathologies of the therapeutic culture. Sacrifice here is not about calling attention to oneself, about victimhood; it is entirely about the giving of oneself for the sake of others. Such is love. Such is true agency. Such is true love. Love is not love if it is not sacrificial love. It is entirely about putting oneself freely and utterly on the line, not counting the cost. It is love without calculation. It is simply love.
“What mean ye by this service?” This is our text throughout Holy Week. It concentrates for us the purpose of our rather intense and demanding Holy Week observances. Nothing could be more counter-culture. The places are few and far between that undertake such a demanding regime. And yet, it really all begins with Maundy Thursday, the day of the new commandment, novum mandatum. Maundy is simply the englishing of the Latin word, mandatum, which means commandment. A new commandment. That is the unifying theme. The new commandment is “that you love one another as I have loved you.” That is our vocation and challenge: that our loves should be nothing less and nothing more than God’s love moving in us. That new commandment is simply service as sacrifice. And that is what unites the diverse services of this holy day.