Year: 2019

Prayers and liturgy

Willibrord, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Willibrord (658-739), Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle to the Frisians, Patron Saint of the Netherlands (source):

Cornelis Bloemaert, Holy WillibrordO Lord our God, who dost call whom thou willest and send them whither thou choosest: We thank thee for sending thy servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve thee, the living God; and we entreat thee to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of thy service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-9
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-9

Artwork: Cornelis Bloemaert, The Holy Willibrord, c. 1630, Copper Engraving.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints (tsf.) / Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

These are they which came out of great tribulation

The softness of a maritime October gives way to the grey barrenness of November. Leaves lie scattered on the wind in heaps of burnished gold and glowing amber; their autumnal beauty fading into the darkness of nature’s death. It is “that time of year,” as Shakespeare so wonderfully puts, “when yellow leaves or none or few, do hang/ upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang” (Sonnet # 73). Such is the twilight of nature’s year. Yet in the season of scattered leaves and in the culture of scattered souls there is a gathering, a gathering into fullness and glory. Such is the meaning of All Saints.

The lesson from Revelation signals the conclusion of the long journey of our souls as well as the nature of that journey of the mind to God, the itinerarium of the soul. It is a vision of the end of a kind of exodus, a going forth and return to the homeland of the spirit. It is the vision of the heavenly city, the gathering into truth of what otherwise remains scattered and broken, barren and empty. All Saints reminds us of who we are in the truth of God and of what we are called to be. The vision is redemptive of all that is scattered and broken, distracted and destructive in our confused and fearful world. It speaks to the confusions of souls everywhere. The vision is universal; “a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.” Beyond counting.

The gathering is into a communion of spirit united in prayer and praise, a community of angels and men; a community that extends beyond the present and embraces the past. The vision centers on the worship of God. But is this simply a flight from the world? A kind of escape from reality? No. The whole point is that the vision is the reality, the reality of the spirit without which our lives are empty and nothing.

The vision signals the redemption of images in the gathering of all things to the truth of their being. Ours is a culture obsessed with images and profoundly forgetful that images are not reality; they are only images of the real. Their truth is found not simply in themselves but in what they are and mean in truth. In Plato’s famous image of the Cave, we mistake the flickering images before us for truth. Only by being turned around do we embark upon the long process of education that leads us from the images to the things of which they are the images, and then to mathematical entities abstracted from them, and then to the forms or ideas of things visible and invisible, and ultimately to the realization of the Good as the principle upon which the whole structure of thought and being depends. Such is the  journey of the soul to God.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 4 – 10 November

Monday, November 4th
4:45-5:15pm World Religions – KES, Rm. 206
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, November 5th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

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

Sunday, November 10th, Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Monday, November 11th, Remembrance Day services
11:00am Windsor Cenotaph followed by service at KES Cenotaph

Saturday, November 16th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper

Saturday, November 23rd
7:00-9:00pm Newfoundland & Country Evening of Musical Entertainment

Sunday, December 8th
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols with KES.

I regret to inform you that Capella Regalis will not be able to come to Windsor this year.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twentieth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:1-14

Jacob Carl Stauder, Parable of the Wedding BanquetArtwork: Jacob Carl Stauder, Parable of the Wedding Banquet, 1720-21. Ceiling fresco, Monastery of the Holy Cross, Donauwörth, Swabia, Germany.

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Prayers and liturgy

Richard Hooker

The collect for today, the commemoration of Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher of the Faith (source):

O God of peace, the bond of all love,
who in thy Son Jesus Christ hast made for all people thine inseparable dwelling place:
give us grace that,
Richard Hookerafter the example of thy servant Richard Hooker,
we thy servants may ever rejoice
in the true inheritance of thine adopted children
and show forth thy praises now and for ever;
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 Corinthians 2:6-10, 13-16
The Gospel: St. John 17:18-23

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Prayers and liturgy

All Souls’ Day

The collect for today, The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, commonly called All Souls’ Day (source):

Dirk Bouts, ParadiseEverlasting God, our maker and redeemer,
grant us, with all the faithful departed,
the sure benefits of thy Son’s saving passion
and glorious resurrection,
that, in the last day,
when thou dost gather up all things in Christ,
we may with them enjoy the fullness of thy promises;
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 Thessalonians 4:13-18
The Gospel: St. John 5:24-27

Artwork: Dirk Bouts, Paradise, 1450. Oil on panel, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille.

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Prayers and liturgy

All Saints’ Day

The collect for today, All Saints’ Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 7:9-17
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-12

Jean Fouquet, Adoration of the Holy Trinity by Saints and AngelsArtwork: Jean Fouquet, Adoration of the Holy Trinity by Saints and Angels, 1445. Illumination from “The Hours of Etienne Chevalier”, Musée Condé, Chantilly.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 30 October

To mask or not to mask?

To mask or not to mask? That is the question. I have to confess that I approach Halloween with a certain degree of trepidation, with a sense of uncertainty and unease about what we are doing and what it means. Ambiguity lies at the heart of the secular forms of Halloween albeit in different ways than what belongs to the festival, historically and spiritually speaking. The common ground to some extent is the blurring of boundaries which may (I stress the conditional) help us to think more fully about what it means to be human. The boundaries between human and nature, between human and animal, between human and machine, between male and female, between the living and the dead, between the grotesque and the cute, between the safe and the threatening in the frisson of the scary, are all deliberately blurred. Some people apparently like being frightened. All these things point to something more than our quotidian  experiences.

Halloween, literally speaking, means All Hallows’ Eve, the eve of the medieval Christian Feast of All Saints. All Hallows means All Saints, all the hallowed ones. The Lord’s prayer helps to make the point. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” we say at every chapel service. “Hallowed be thy name” means “holy be your name,” the idea of the holy which we explored last week in terms of the idea of holy spaces, places set aside for what has meaning. Halloween, religiously speaking, refers to the idea of the Holy and of our calling to be holy. It speaks in other words to the end or purpose of our humanity, something wonderfully captured in the Communion of Saints, the company of the holy ones who embody the hopes and dreams and aspirations of our humanity in its truth, a truth found in God.

The masks of this week are ambiguous. The mask or costume you wear either reveals or conceals some aspect of your personality. Take heed! This inherent ambiguity is the best part of the idea of a masquerade. What does this representation really mean? If someone dresses up as Winnie-the-Pooh is that a Christopher Robin fantasy, a comfortable childhood memory, or a mocking of Xi Jinping? Because of the latter references to the Winnie-the-Pooh are banned in China. But who knows? Who can say? The lines of meaning are blurred. There is a necessary gap between the appearance and the reality.

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Prayers and liturgy

James Hannington, Bishop, Missionary and Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of James Hannington (1847-85), first Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Missionary to Uganda, Martyr (source):

James HanningtonPrecious in your sight, O Lord,
is the death of your martyrs
James Hannington and his companions,
who purchased with their blood a road into Uganda
for the proclamation of the gospel;
and we pray that with them
we also may obtain the crown of righteousness
which is laid up for all
who love the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:14-18,22
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:16-22

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Simon and St. Jude the Apostles

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Simon the Zealot and Saint Jude, Apostles, with Saint Jude the Brother of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect for the Brethren of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O HEAVENLY Father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: We bless thy holy Name for the witness of James and Jude, the kinsmen of the Lord, and pray that we may be made true members of thy heavenly family; through him who willed to be the firstborn among many brethren, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. Jude 1-4
The Gospel: St. John 14:21-27

Federico Barocci, Virgin and Child with Saints Simon and JudeIn the various New Testament lists of the Twelve Apostles (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13), the tenth and eleventh places are occupied by Simon and Judas son of James, also called Thaddaeus.

To distinguish Simon from Simon Peter, Matthew and Mark refer to him as Simon the Cananaean, while Luke refers to him as Simon the Zealot. Both surnames have the same signification and are a translation of the Hebrew qana (the Zealous). The name does not signify that he belonged to the party of Zealots, but that he had zeal for the Jewish law, which he practised before his call. The translation of Matthew and Mark as Simon “the Canaanite” (as, e.g., KJV has it) is simply mistaken.

The New Testament contains a variety of names for the apostle Jude: Matthew and Mark refer to Thaddaeus (a variant reading of Matthew has “Lebbaeus called Thaddaeus”), while Luke calls him Judas son of James. Christian tradition regards Saint Jude and Saint Thaddaeus as different names for the same person. The various names are understood as efforts to avoid associating Saint Jude with the name of the traitor Judas Iscariot. The only time words of Jude are recorded, in St. John 14:22-23, the Evangelist is quick to add “(not Iscariot)” after his name.

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