Month: February 2020

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 17 – 23 February

Tuesday, February 18th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room: The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Traditions and the Post-Glacial World (2018) by Patrick Nunn, and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) by Peter Frankopan.

Friday, February 21st
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders/Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, February 23rd, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – King’s-Edgehill Chapel

Upcoming Events:

Wednesday, February 26th, Ash Wednesday
7:00am Penitential Service
12 noon Holy Communion & Imposition of Ashes
2:35-2:45pm Imposition of Ashes – King’s-Edgehill Chapel

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Prayers and liturgy

Sexagesima

The collect for today, Sexagesima (or the Second Sunday Before Lent) from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11:21b-31
The Gospel: St Luke 8:4-15

Marten van Valckenborch, Parable of the SowerArtwork: Marten van Valckenborch, Parable of the Sower, between 1580 and 1590. Oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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Prayers and liturgy

Valentine, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for a Martyr, on the Feast of Saint Valentine (d. c. 269), Bishop, Martyr at Rome, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who didst bestow upon thy Saints such marvellous virtue, that they were able to stand fast, and have the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil: Grant that we, who now commemorate thy Martyr Valentine, may ever rejoice in their fellowship, and also be enabled by thy grace to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27

Bartholomeus Zeitblom, Scenes from the Life of Saint Valentine: St. Valentine in Prison; The Beheading of St. ValentineArtwork: Bartholomeus Zeitblom, Scenes from the Life of Saint Valentine: St. Valentine in Prison; The Beheading of St. Valentine, early 16th century. Oil on panel, State Gallery of Old German Masters, Augsburg.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 12 February

If I have not love, I am nothing

Love, it seems, is in the air, whatever that means. ‘Spirit Week’ at King’s-Edgehill School brings us to Valentine’s Day following upon the Headmaster’s Valentine Dinner and Dance on Thursday night. The challenge in Chapel has been to place the events of this week upon the foundation of divine love which seeks the perfection of all our human loves. This suggests that there is something radically incomplete about our human loves and that, no doubt, is a challenging concept to students and faculty alike.

On Monday and Tuesday, the reading in Chapel was St. Paul’s great encomium or praise of love from 1st Corinthians 13. “If I have not love, I am nothing.” Caritas. Charity, as the King James Version puts it, is love. In English the little word, love, has to bear a great weight of meaning. For the Greeks and the Latins, there are a host of words that express a sense of the different kinds of love, love as defined by its relation to the object of love. Therein lies the problem as Plato intuited in using, provocatively and deliberately, the word eros to speak about the movement of our souls to the truth. Eros which we associate with sexual passion and desire is used intentionally to highlight  “the passionate desire to know.” Brilliant.

So what do we mean by love? How do we think about love? For our culture, I suspect that the demand to think about love is exactly the problem whereas for earlier times not to think about love was precisely the problem. St. Paul’s great and profound praise of love is about the divine love which perfects our human loves. This recognizes the painful truth that our human loves are incomplete and even destructive. We often hurt those whom we love the most. So what Paul is saying here is quite important about the qualities of love. “Love is not boastful … love seeketh not her own …thinketh no evil … Love rejoices in the truth,” and so on. It is a powerful hymn of praise about the power of love which perfects our humanity and belongs to the building up of a community of love. 1st Corinthians 13 is “the still more excellent way” for the understanding of our lives together as a body, as a school, and for our self-understanding as well. “We see in a glass darkly; but then face to face.” Faith, hope, charity are the theological virtues which perfect the cardinal virtues or qualities of human excellence, the ancient virtues of temperance, courage, prudence and justice. Charity or love is the greatest of the three.

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Prayers and liturgy

Caedmon, Poet

The collect for a Doctor of the Church, Poet, or Scholar, in commemoration of Saint Caedmon (d. 680), Monk of Whitby, first English poet, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Caedmon, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St Matthew 13:9-17

geograph-263793-by-RichTeaSaint Caedmon is the first English poet whose name is known. Saint Bede the Venerable tells Caedmon’s story in Book IV, Chapter 24, of The Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Bede records that Caedmon was a herdsman who at an advanced age suddenly received the gift of poetry and song. Someone appeared to Caedmon in a dream one night and asked him to sing. In response, he spontaneously sang verses in praise of the God the Creator. When he awoke, he remembered the words of his song and added more lines.

He went to speak with Hilda, Abbess of Whitby. She and several learned men examined Caedmon and affirmed that his gift was from God.

Caedmon became a monk at Whitby and composed a large body of poetry and song on many Christian subjects, including the Creation story, the Exodus, the birth, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the teaching of the apostles.

Unfortunately, almost none of Caedmon’s work survives. Only his Hymn, recorded by Bede in Latin and Old English, is known to us. Here is a modern English translation:

Praise we the Fashioner now of Heaven’s fabric,
The majesty of his might and his mind’s wisdom,
Work of the world-warden, worker of all wonders,
How he the Lord of Glory everlasting,
Wrought first for the race of men Heaven as a rooftree,
Then made he Middle Earth to be their mansion.

Source: Bede, A History of the English Church and People, translated by Leo Sherley-Price, rev. ed. 1968, Penguin, p. 251.

A humble and holy monk, Caedmon died in perfect charity with his fellow servants of God.

Photograph: Memorial to Caedmon, St Mary’s Churchyard, Whitby, North Yorkshire, Great Britain. The inscription reads, “To the glory of God and in memory of Caedmon the father of English Sacred Song. Fell asleep hard by, 680”. © Copyright RichTea and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

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Statements and other writings

Rector’s Annual Report, 2019

Click here to download the full Rector’s Annual Report for 2019 (in pdf format).

The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2018 can be accessed via this page.

Rector’s Annual Report for 2019
February 9th, 2020
“Go ye also into the vineyard”

The transitions from one season of the Church Year to another and even from one Sunday to the next are intriguing and instructive. They remind us of the necessity of the patterns and rhythms that belong to spiritual life and to the importance of regular worship, week in and week out. That sense of regularity and commitment has often been a challenge and a problem for the institutional churches, particularly in our rural parishes but also in our towns and cities. At issue is any sense of clarity and commitment to what the Church is and teaches. It remains the principal problem with respect to church attendance and, consequently, to the very existence of the institutional church in the form of parishes and dioceses.

For more than fifty years, parishes and dioceses have had to deal not only with that challenge but with a more modern problem, the re-defining of the churches as franchises of a centralized bureaucracy both at the diocesan level and in terms of the national churches. This ‘model’ replaces the idea of doctrinal unity grounded in the teachings embodied in liturgy and worship with conformity, first, to the ever-changing mantras and agendas of technocratic culture, and, secondly, to the excessive  burdens of a form of taxation that support centralized bureaucracies at the expense of the very existence of parishes themselves. Salvation by allotment alone is simply death by parochial suicide. In other words, faith is defined more in terms of belonging to the institutional structures and the finances required to maintain them than to the principles of Faith belonging to our history and theology. Belonging trumps believing.

While recognizing that polity – the order of the Church – is part of Christian identity since the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” is an article of Faith, the fatal subordination of parishes to the unrelenting financial demands of the centralized bureaucracies of the diocesan and national churches results in the unsurprising yet demoralizing collapse of Parishes and, by extension and consequence, to the diocesan and national structures themselves. This faux corporate model imitates the secular corporate culture of big business (i.e. Bishops as CEOs) but the model betrays the corporate life of faith centered on worship and service. And it is, quite simply, unsustainable. Having bled the Parishes to death, it is not surprising that the national church now forecasts that not much will be left of the Anglican Church by 2040. It is, sadly, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Needless to say, at Christ Church we remain committed to the principles of the Faith that belong to our corporate identity as “an integral portion of the One Body of Christ” united “in the fellowship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” expressed so wonderfully in the Solemn Declaration of 1893 which references clearly the Scriptures, the Creeds, and the “undisputed Ecumenical Councils” as the ground and basis of doctrine and spiritual life. That includes as well our commitment to ‘Bishops’ and to the diocese and the national churches even in their confusions, knowing that “they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God,” as Article XXI of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion pertinently puts it. In short, we recognize not the infallibility of the Church in its polity and structures but its fallibility, “wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture” (Art. XXI, BCP, p. 707).

As such we have tried to be faithful to what properly belongs to our corporate life without compromising the existence of the Parish to the demands of the diocesan and national churches and their agendas. What the Church is and teaches is not found in the pronouncements of Bishops and Synods both of which are properly subject to those same principles of the Faith that have been received in our Anglican polity.

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Sermons

Sermon for Septuagesima

Go ye also into the vineyard

In the bleak mid-winter, it must seem strange to be talking about vineyards. Yet, our province increasingly abounds with more and more vineyards, not to mention hops and craft beer! And while this seems to be a new phenomenon, we should remember that over a thousand years ago, the Maritime provinces, as we call them, were known by the Norse explorers as Vinland – Wine Land. The Medieval Labours of the Months tagged to the signs of the Zodiac sculpted on many a medieval cathedral portal or depicted in stained glass windows or painted in Books of Hours recall us to a profound connection to the land, a connection to the seasons and the human labours that attend them. February is often depicted as a time to sit by the fire while March is the time to tend the vines. Yet that labour too will vary across Europe in accord with climatic zones and climate changes. So perhaps the idea of going into the vineyard even in February is not so strange after all.

It is here an image for the spiritual life and for our reading in the vineyard of the text, the Scriptures. Reading nature in the Book of Nature, and reading the Scriptures means learning about God revealed and made known through both. It is not by accident that the Sunday and Daily Office readings begin today with our reading through Genesis. The point is the connection between land and God. In thinking about creation and about the land we are recalled to the Lord of the vineyard who is the Lord of our souls. Isaiah speaks about Israel as the Lord’s vineyard – something of God’s planting from which God seeks the fruit of righteousness and holiness. It is an image of the greatest intimacy; indeed, a love song. “My beloved had a vineyard … He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes … he looked for righteousness, but behold, a cry!” Isaiah explains the image. “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel … he looked for justice, but, behold, bloodshed.”

It is in that context that perhaps we can begin to appreciate the radical meaning of the Gospel for Septuagesima Sunday which inaugurates the season of pre-Lent. In so many ways, it marks the beginning of the struggle to internalize what we have been given to see about Christ in the fullness of his divinity and in the revelation of God’s will for our humanity. The Gospel of the labourers in the vineyard belongs to that task and challenge. It makes the point that the justice of God is far more and far greater than the justice of man and yet belongs to the divine good for our humanity, a greater form of goodness than what belongs to the limits of human justice.

Last Sunday marked the interesting conjunction between Candlemas and the end of the Epiphany season, thus pointing us towards Lent and Easter. Apart from that providential coincidence of considerations, it was also the day that one of the great men of letters, the Franco-American scholar, literary critic, writer and philosopher, George Steiner died. In 1974, he gave the Massey Lectures entitled “Nostalgia for the Absolute.”

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 10 – 16 February

Monday, February 10th
4:45-5:15pm Confirmation/Inquirers’ Class – KES
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, February 11th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, February 13th
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms

Friday, February 14th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders/Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, February 16th, Sexagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, February 18th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room
The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Traditions and the Post-Glacial World (2018) by Patrick Nunn, and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) by Peter Frankopan.

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Prayers and liturgy

Septuagesima

The collect for today, Septuagesima (or the Third Sunday Before Lent) from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people; that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:1-16

Domenico Feti, The Parable of the VineyardArtwork: Domenico Feti, The Parable of the Vineyard, c. 1618. Oil on wood, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 5 February

A light to lighten

The transition from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, is an ancient and universal feature of education, itself a kind of enlightenment. In the fearful confusions of our world and day, we forget about its power and necessity. Yet, it is in our face through the readings in Chapel this week. The reading from the Prophet Malachi, proclaiming the idea of the Lord “whom ye seek” coming “suddenly to his temple,” was poignantly juxtaposed with Luke’s account of Christ’s first coming to the Temple forty days after his birth.

In the Christian understanding, it is a double-barrelled feast, a festival of Mary and a feast of Christ, his presentation – a kind of dedication of the first-born to God – and her purification – a kind of thanksgiving to God for childbirth. Presentation and Purification go together. It concerns how we are prepared for truth, for its presence in our lives. A refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap are Malachi’s images about the refining of metal, on the one hand, and of sheep’s wool, on the other. In the face of the truth of God, all that is not and not of God is stripped bare and made pure. Only as purified can we be awakened to the light that enlightens our humanity, the light which is life.

This week marks an intriguing and important transition, at least for the churches of the Western Christian world. It is the transition, the turning point, from Christmas, the festival of light, to Easter, the festival of life. February 2nd is not so much about groundhogs and their shadows, except to say that without light there can be no shadow. Candlemas, as the Presentation of Christ and the Purification of May is commonly known, marks that transition.

The lessons are wonderful and profound, complex and yet simple. We are called to be light but only in the light of Christ, without which we are really only darkness, indeed darkness upon darkness, abyss upon abyss. “In thy light shall we see light,” as the Psalmist puts it, emphasizing at once the idea that human knowing depends upon God’s knowing and our participation in that knowing.

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