Year: 2019

Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday in Lent

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

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:1-11

Titian, The Temptation of ChristArtwork: Titian (Tiziano Vecelli), The Temptation of Christ, c. 1516-25. Oil on panel, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Aquinas, Doctor and Poet

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Priest, Friar, Poet, Doctor of the Church (source):

Everlasting God,
who didst enrich thy Church with the learning and holiness
of thy servant Thomas Aquinas:
grant to all who seek thee
a humble mind and a pure heart
that they may know thy Son Jesus Christ
to be the way, the truth and the life;
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:47-52

Filippino Lippi, The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas over the HereticsBorn into a noble family near Aquino, between Rome and Naples, St. Thomas was educated at the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino until age thirteen, and then at the University of Naples. When he decided to join the Dominican Order, his family were dismayed because the Dominicans were mendicants and regarded as socially inferior to the Benedictines. Thomas’s brothers kidnapped and imprisoned him for a year in the family’s castle, but he finally escaped and became a Dominican friar in 1244.

The rest of Thomas’s life was spent studying, teaching, preaching, and writing. Initially, he studied philosophy and theology with Albert the Great at Paris and Cologne. Albert was said to prophesy that, although Thomas was called the dumb ox (probably referring to his physical size), “his lowing would soon be heard all over the world”.

His two greatest works are Summa Contra Gentiles, begun c. 1259 and completed in 1264, and Summa Theologica, begun c. 1266 but uncompleted at his death.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 6 March

Return to the Lord your God

The words of the prophet Joel signal the whole project of Lent. It is all in the turning of ourselves to God. Such is repentance, “a kind of circling, redire ad principia,  to return to him from whom we have turned away” (Lancelot Andrewes).

What is that turning away? It is sin understood in terms of the separation of ourselves from the truth of our being and knowing and the separation within ourselves in the disconnect between our knowing and our willing; in short, the fatal separation of intellect and will.

Lent seeks the re-integration of our essential being, the re-integration of our knowing and our willing. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of that project precisely in terms of desire. “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also,” Jesus tells us in Matthew’s Gospel reading for today. What do we desire or cherish or treasure?

Lent is the pilgrimage of love in which love sets our loves in order. “Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” as the great penitential psalm of Lent puts it (Psalm 51.10). Such seeking is prayer. But it is predicated upon an awareness in ourselves that things are not as they should be or as we would like them to be either about ourselves or about our world and day.

The wonder of Ash Wednesday and Lent lies in the possibilities of the turning, the turning again and again to God. In our world and day, the question of the turning itself is the question for it implies the realization of our own incompleteness. In the folly of the autonomous self we think ourselves to be complete and whole. It is one of the paradoxes, even contradictions of our age which Ash Wednesday wonderfully counters. The Slovenian philosopher, Slovoj Zizek, observes this paradox or contradiction noting that we assume the complete autonomy of ourselves in the freedom to say and do everything and anything, even to change our sexual identities, to assert ourselves as selves, and yet, at the same time, we claim endlessly to be victims of one sort of perceived injustice or another. In other words, we assert our utter autonomy only to assert that we are constrained and limited by others.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ash Wednesday

The collect for today, The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Carl Spitzweg, Ash WednesdayALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 4:6-11a
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21

Artwork: Carl Spitzweg, Ash Wednesday, 1860. Oil on canvas, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany.

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Sermons

Sermon for Quinquagesima

“I will show you a still more excellent way.”

A journey. “A still more excellent way.” Lent is upon us. Lent, not lint. What does it mean? The word refers to the lengthening of the days. We are, believe it or not, looking towards spring after the bleak mid-winter, the brutal cold of February and now the messiness of March. The real spring is the spring of our souls in Christ’s resurrection. Yet that makes no sense apart from the readings and meaning of this day and without the lessons of Lent.

“We go up to Jerusalem” Jesus says. Not I. Not you. We go up. It is a powerful statement. Lent is nothing more than the concentration of our lives in Christ which is about our going to God, a going up, as it were. It is all about the radical meaning of Christ as “the way, the  truth and life”. We are being recalled to the journey of the soul to God but with Christ. That makes all the difference. And what is that difference? It is love. God is love.

This is not the sentimental, emotional and romantic love which distorts and conceals more than it reveals and heals. No. It is about the divine love moving in us. Nowhere is that signalled more profoundly, perhaps, than in Paul’s wonderful hymn to love.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, he lays out a consideration of what belongs to the good of the body,  to the good of our lives together socially and corporately for we have no life apart from our lives with and for one another. In chapter twelve, he lays out the rather traditional view that the human community finds its unity in justice with each part honouring what belongs to each part to do within the whole. Such a view is the constant counter to all of the forms of the autonomous individual which infect, destroy and betray our contemporary culture. The counter is our recognition and respect for each other, for the good of the individual within the good of the community, the body, particularly, the body of Christ, the Church. That is true and marvellous but at the end of chapter twelve he says, “I will show you a still more excellent way”. What is that way? It is the way of love.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 4 – 10 March

Monday, March 4th
4:35-5:05pm Confirmation / Bible Study – KES

Tuesday, March 5th, Shrove Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Wednesday, March 6th, Ash Wednesday
7:00am Penitential Service with Ashes
12noon Holy Communion with Ashes
2:35-2:45pm Imposition of Ashes – King’s-Edgehill Chapel.

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

Friday, March 8th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, March 10th, First Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Wednesday, March 13th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I

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Prayers and liturgy

Quinquagesima

The collect for today, Quinquagesima, being the Fiftieth Day before Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Spirit, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 18:31-43

Eustache Le Sueur, Christ Healing the Blind ManArtwork: Eustache Le Sueur, Christ Healing the Blind Man, first half of 17th century. Oil on panel, Sanssouci Picture Gallery, Potsdam.

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Prayers and liturgy

John and Charles Wesley

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wesley (1703-91) and Charles Wesley (1708-88), Evangelists, Hymn Writers, Leaders of the Methodist Revival (source):

Merciful God,
who didst inspire John and Charles Wesley with zeal for thy gospel:
grant to all people boldness to proclaim thy word
and a heart ever to rejoice in singing thy praises;
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: Isaiah 49:5-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 9:2-6

Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old ManHudson, Reverend Charles Wesley

Artwork:
(left) Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old Man, 1932. Oil on canvas, John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism, London.
(right) Thomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley, 1749. Oil on canvas, Epworth Old Rectory, Epworth, Lincolnshire.

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Prayers and liturgy

Chad, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Chad (d. 672), Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary (source):

Christopher Whall, Victoria and Albert Museum, St. ChadAlmighty God,
who, from the first fruits of the English nation
that turned to Christ,
didst call thy servant Chad
to be an evangelist and bishop of his own people:
grant us grace so to follow his peaceable nature,
humble spirit and prayerful life,
that we may truly commend to others
the faith which we ourselves profess;
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: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1,7-14

Artwork: Christopher Whall, St. Chad, c. 1905-10. Clear and coloured glass with paint and silver stain, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (Reduced replica of panel in Lady Chapel, Gloucester Cathedral.) Photograph taken by admin, 27 September 2015.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. David of Wales

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint David (c. 520-589), Bishop of Menevia, Patron Saint of Wales (source):

Holy Trinity Sloane Square, St. David of WalesAlmighty God,
who didst call thy servant David
to be a faithful and wise steward of thy mysteries
for the people of Wales:
in thy mercy, grant that,
following his purity of life and zeal
for the gospel of Christ,
we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom with thee and the Holy Spirit
be all honour and glory,
world without end.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-29

Artwork: Saint David, stained glass, Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London. Photograph taken by admin 20 October 2014.

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