Month: May 2020

Prayers and liturgy

The Ascension Day

The collect for today, The Ascension Day, being the fortieth day after Easter, sometimes called Holy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continuously dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-11
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:14-20

Jan Matejko, The Ascension of ChristArtwork: Jan Matejko, The Ascension of Christ, 1884. Oil on oak panel, National Museum, Warsaw.

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Prayers and liturgy

Dunstan, Archbishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Dunstan (909-988), Archbishop of Canterbury, Restorer of Monastic Life (source):

Norwich Cathedral, St. DunstanAlmighty God,
who didst raise up Dunstan
to be a true shepherd of the flock,
a restorer of monastic life
and a faithful counsellor to kings:
grant, we beseech thee, to all pastors
the like gifts of thy Holy Spirit
that they may be true servants of Christ and of all his people;
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: Ecclesiasticus 44:1-7
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

Artwork: Saint Dunstan, stained glass, Norwich Cathedral. Photograph taken by admin, 3 October 2014.

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Prayers and liturgy

Sermon for Rogation Sunday

Be of good cheer

Really? Is this some kind of cruel joke? Be happy in the midst of the uncertainties and fears of the current Covid-19 crisis? In the face of the fears of contagion and death, especially with respect to the elderly and to others who are vulnerable? And yet, what is signaled in the Gospel for the last Sunday of Eastertide (in its traditional reckoning), a Sunday commonly known as Rogation Sunday, speaks directly to the general question about how we face dark and difficult things. The Eastertide readings belong to a long and profound tradition of philosophical and ethical reflection about suffering and sorrow, about life and death. Tribulations ‘r us but they always have been. ‘All God’s children got problems’, as the old Gospel song says. At issue is how we face tribulations of whatever sort. This goes to the question of what it means to be human.

Far from being a cruel joke, what Jesus says here is deep wisdom. He bids us to be cheerful, not in flight from the world and its tribulations, but in the face of the things which confront us. It has entirely to do with how we see and think about things. That is why it is so significant that Jesus begins with what is really a kind of commonplace; “in the world ye have tribulation.” To be sure. How can he then say, “be of good cheer”? Because “I have overcome the world.”

This is the key point. Yet the very language of victory, of overcoming, suggests opposition and division, a ‘them versus us’ mentality, a conflict narrative. Is that what Jesus means? He means rather, I think, that he has overcome the separation of our humanity from the world and from one another because of our separation from God. Such are the radical teachings that belong to the idea of creation and the story of the Fall. The overcoming is human redemption accomplished by God in Christ through the humanity which he has assumed.

Nowhere is the deeper meaning of this shown than in the wonderful phrase which captures the whole logic of God’s engagement with our humanity and our world. Jesus says, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” “Because I go to the Father” is the great mantra of Eastertide. It signals nothing less than our being gathered into the love of God through Christ’s death and resurrection. Rogation Sunday shows us that this is cosmic. The whole world is gathered into God and returned to its truth in God. Rogation refers to the fundamental sense of prayer as asking, to what we desire which is the good which we seek for ourselves and for the world in the truth and goodness of God himself. The Easter mantra connects to the Our Father. As Origen, Augustine, Aquinas and a host of others remind us, nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures is God prayed to as Father. Here everything is gathered into the divine intimacy revealed through the words of the Son.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fifth Sunday After Easter

The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday After Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Master of the Housebook, Last SupperO LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:22-27
The Gospel: St. John 16:23-33

Artwork: Master of the Housebook, Last Supper, c. 1475-80. Oil on panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 13 May

Jesus wept

It has the distinction of being the shortest verse in the New Testament, at least in English translations. It also has the distinction of being one of three passages in the Gospels where Jesus meets us mourners in the presence of the deaths of those who are dear to us, and as such, it seems, dear to God.

The Gospels only come to be written in the light of the resurrection and reveal the power of that idea at work on human minds. It changes us and changes how we face hard and difficult things such as sorrow and loss, such as suffering and death. Thus these three passages read in Chapel show us something of the pattern of death and resurrection as it pertains to human experience. In this way, these passages connect to other powerful works of literature and religious philosophy that equally concern how we look upon suffering and death.

Jesus raises the twelve year old daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, who has just died. Mark gives us the word in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke: Talitha cumi – “little girl, I say unto thee, arise”. Jesus raises the only son of the widow of Nain as he is being carried to the grave. “When the Lord saw her”, the widow, “he had compassion on her and said, ‘do not weep’”. It is an amazing and touching scene. Do not always be weeping, he is saying. Compassion is an exceptionally strong and significant word in the New Testament. At a time when we are worried about things on the surface, about contagion through touch and by way of proximity with one another, this word refers to the inner core of someone’s being, to the heart, lungs, liver, bowels, or the womb.

It is in the heart of Jesus that he holds converse with the Father and gathers us into that eternal love. Compassion is the deep care and concern which we have for one another. The conjunction of seeing and having compassion appears in several places. Jesus sees the multitude in the wilderness and has compassion on them. Jesus sees the crowd and has compassion on them for they are like sheep without a shepherd. In the great parable of the Good Samaritan, “a certain Samaritan” sees the man who was wounded and lying half dead and has compassion on him.

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Prayers and liturgy

Florence Nightingale, Nurse

Arthur George Walker, Florence Nightingale monumentThe collect for today, the commemoration of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), Nurse, Social Reformer (source):

Life-giving God, who alone hast power over life and death, over health and sickness: Give power, wisdom, and gentleness to those who follow the example of thy servant Florence Nightingale, that they, bearing with them thy Presence, may not only heal but bless, and shine as lanterns of hope in the darkest hours of pain and fear; through Jesus Christ, the healer of body and soul, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 58:6-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:31-46

Artwork: Arthur George Walker, Florence Nightingale, Crimean War Memorial, 1910. Waterloo Place, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 August 2004.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cyril and Methodius, Missionaries

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cyril (826-69) and Saint Methodius (c. 815-85), Apostles to the Slavs (source):

O Lord of all,
who gavest to thy servants Cyril and Methodius
the gift of tongues to proclaim the gospel to the Slavic people:
we pray that thy whole Church may be one as thou art one,
that all who confess thy name may honour one another,
and that from east and west all may acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and thee, the God and Father of all;
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: Ephesians 3:1-7
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:15-20

Alphonse Mucha, Cyril and Methodius windowSt. Cyril and St. Methodius were brothers born in Thessalonica who went to Constantinople after being ordained priests. (Cyril was baptised Constantine and did not become known as Cyril until late in his life.) Around AD 863, Emperor Michael II and Patriarch Photius sent the brothers as missionaries to Moravia, where they translated into Slavonic the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. With his brother’s help, Cyril created an alphabet that later developed into Cyrillic, thus laying the foundation for Slavic literature.

German missionary bishops in the area celebrated the liturgy in Latin and opposed the brothers’ use of the vernacular. In 867, Cyril and Methodius participated in a debate in Venice over the use of Slavonic liturgy and were soon received with great honour in Rome by Pope Hadrian II, who authorised the use of Slavic tongues in the liturgy.

In 868, Cyril became a monk and entered a monastery in Rome, but died soon afterward and was buried in the church at San Clemente. Shortly after Cyril’s death, Methodius was consecrated archbishop of Sermium and returned to Moravia where he ministered for another fifteen years. He continued the work of translation and evangelisation, while continuing to face opposition from German bishops. Before his death in 885, he and his followers completed translations of the Bible, liturgical services, and collections of canon law.

St. Cyril and St. Methodius are honoured for evangelising the Slavs, organising the Slavic church, and pioneering the celebration of liturgy in the vernacular. For these reasons, in 1980 Pope John Paul II named them, together with St. Benedict, patron saints of all Europe.

Artwork: Alphonse Mucha, Cyril and Methodius window, installed 1931. Stained glass, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague. The window portrays the boy St. Wenceslas with his grandmother St. Ludmila in the centre, surrounded by episodes from the lives of Saints Cyril and Methodius.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter

And when he is come, he will reprove the world

It is a remarkable phrase that Jesus uses about the coming of “the Comforter, the Spirit of truth” who “will guide [us] into all truth.” What does it mean to “reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement”? The word runs a gamut of meanings from ‘convince’ and ‘refute’ to ‘examine’ and ‘question’, from ‘put to shame’ to ‘accuse.’ To reprove is about a kind of critical assessment of something that is not ethical. It implies a kind of judgement upon the world. Things are not quite as they should be nor even as we would like them to be. An understatement, to be sure!

We would all like Covid-19 to go away, perhaps even more for the fear of it to go away and never come again. And yet the language of the Epistle and Gospel for today is about the comings and goings of God which is somehow expedient, good or beneficial for us, whatever the times or circumstances.

Every good and perfect gift comes down from above, “from the Father of lights,” James tells us, while Jesus in the Gospel talks about going his way to the one that sent him, going to the Father, which means going away from the disciples such that they shall “see [him] no more” and “sorrow hath filled [their] hearts.” Yet that is said to be expedient or good for us because only so can the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, be sent unto us. What, we may ask, is going on in these readings? A confusion of motions, comings down and goings up? The comings and goings of God, the Son to the Father, and the Spirit as sent by the Son? What does it mean?

It all belongs to the radical meaning of Christ’s Death and Resurrection and to our participation in the divine life through these motions. The way up and the way down are one and the same. The ascent of our souls to God as the true end and desire of our being and God’s descent to us both in Christ’s Incarnation and in the coming down of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, are really one and the same, differentiated in time but united in the eternity of God. Time, as Plato famously said, is but the moving image of eternity (Timaeus).  These Eastertide readings offer a wonderful commentary, perhaps, on that philosophical insight. It is simply and profoundly about how we are embraced and participate in the divine life. Our comings and goings are gathered up into the comings and goings of God to us and with us but, more importantly, as belonging to the comings and goings of God himself, so to speak, since we can only speak in these human ways. The mystery of Easter gathers us into the eternal dynamic of the love of God.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday After Easter

The collect for today, The Fourth Sunday After Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St. John 16:5-15

Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Last Supper, c. 1760Artwork: Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Last Supper, c. 1760. Oil on canvas, Christian Museum, Esztergom, Hungary.

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Prayers and liturgy

Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop and Doctor

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-89), Monk, Bishop, Theologian, Doctor of the Eastern Church (source):

Alexey Tarasovich Markov, St. Gregory the TheologianAlmighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. John 8:25-32

Artwork: Alexey Tarasovich Markov, St. Gregory the Theologian, 1849. Oil on canvas, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

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