Month: July 2020

Prayers and liturgy

William Wilberforce

The collect for today, the commemoration of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), English MP, Social Reformer, Abolitionist (source):

Let thy continual mercy, O Lord, enkindle in thy Church the never-failing gift of charity, that, following the example of thy servant William Wilberforce, we may have grace to defend the children of the poor, and maintain the cause of those who have no helper; for the sake of him who gave his life for us, thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Galatians 3:23-29
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:31-40

Sir Thomas Lawrence, William WilberforceArtwork: Sir Thomas Lawrence, William Wilberforce, 1828. Oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

Olaf, King and Martyr

The collect for a Martyr, in commemoration of Saint Olaf (995-1030), King and Patron Saint of Norway, Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Saint OlafO 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 Olaf, 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

Artwork: Saint Olaf, stained glass, St Olave’s Church, Hart Street, London. Photo taken by admin, 24 August 2004.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

Audio file of the Services of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 7

“How can anyone satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?”

“I can’t get no satisfaction,” Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones sang way back in 1965 in one of the great classics of rock’n roll. Yet what he sang long ago, the disciples hinted at even longer ago. Even if the song is, well, ungrammatical, and, no doubt, sexually charged, we get the point. Whether it is “useless information” on the radio, or dubious advertisements on the television, or “ridin’ round the world,” “doin’ this” and “signin’ that” in the parade of worldly fame and in the pursuit of sensual pleasure, such things just don’t satisfy. The phrase captures the human situation rather well. It serves to point to what we need and want and which is shown in the Gospel. We seek something more, something which only God can provide.

Today’s readings are particularly suggestive and wonderfully instructive about the realities of human life. Slaves to sin become servants of righteousness. How? By being freed from sin, the wages or outcome of which is death. How are we freed from sin? By becoming the servants of God. How is that accomplished? By “the free gift of God [which] is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Thus the wilderness of the world becomes a kind of paradise where we are satisfied with what the Lord provides for us; “bread in the wilderness.”

From slaves to servants. The shift in words is entirely about translation. It is really the same word that Paul uses throughout this passage from Romans; doulos in its various noun and verbal forms. In short, we are slaves either to sin or to righteousness, even slaves to God. Yet the transition from sin to righteousness signals something profound. Being slaves to God is our freedom. The classic Collect at Morning Prayer for Peace echoes the Epistle: “O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom” (BCP, p.11). Perfect freedom is found in our slavery or service to God “in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life.”

We live in the now of God through his Word and Sacrament. This is the counter to the false satisfactions of the ideology of progress which assumes that we are always  making everything better and better; always progressing upward and onward, always going forward, as we constantly hear. But neither is it simply its opposite, namely that we are always making everything worse and worse, regressing, as it were. These are two complementary yet contradictory ideologies that are duking it out in our current discontents. They are overly simplistic civilisational narratives united in one thing: no satisfaction. Either we haven’t got there yet in our attempts at progress or we are utterly condemned, forever and always, to misery and death, the death of ourselves and the natural world. These are the two competing narratives. No satisfaction either way.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Seventh Sunday After Trinity

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

LORD of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 6:17-23
The Gospel: St. Mark 8:1-9

Daniel Hallé, The Multiplication of Bread and FishArtwork: Daniel Hallé, The Multiplication of Bread and Fish, 1664. Oil on canvas, Saint-Ouen Abbey, Rouen.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. James the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of St. James the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O merciful God, that as thine holy Apostle Saint James, leaving his father and all that he had, without delay was obedient unto the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him; so we, forsaking all worldly and carnal affections, may be evermore ready to follow thy holy commandments; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 11:27-12:3a
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:32-40

José Casado del Alisal, Apparition of St. James Moorslayer in the Battle of Clavijo (23 May 844)Artwork: José Maria Casado del Alisal, Apparition of St. James Moorslayer in the Battle of Clavijo (23 May 844), 1885. Oil on canvas, Royal Basilica of San Francisco el Grande, Madrid.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Mary Magdalene

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, whose blessed Son did sanctify Mary Magdalene, and call her to be a witness to his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by thy grace we may be healed of all our infirmities, and always serve thee in the power of his endless life; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 13:27-31
The Gospel: St John 20:11-18

Caravaggio, Penitent Mary MagdaleneArtwork: Caravaggio, Penitent Mary Magdalene, c. 1595. Oil on canvas, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome.

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Prayer Book Society, Statements and other writings

The Revd Dr. J.I. Packer RIP (1926-2020)

He was one of the giants of the Evangelical and Anglican world, like the California Redwoods which he used as an image for the Puritan theologians and pastors who had greatly influenced and shaped his life and ministry. A prolific writer of many books which spoke the Word of God in season and out of season to the contemporary world in its confusion and ignorance in Canada and beyond, his A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (1990) captures best perhaps the tenor of his soul and its quest. A work admired by the Revd Dr. Robert Crouse, it shows the maturity of vision and commitment to the qualities of the spiritual life to which Dr. Packer thought we are all called and which he saw in the wider traditions of spirituality reaching back to the Fathers and to Medieval writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux, but as grounded in the Scriptures; for him, the living oracles of God. He was one of a few Evangelical theologians, like Dr. Peter Toon, who understood and appreciated the doctrinal and spiritual qualities of the Common Prayer tradition and who remained committed to its promotion and use. He was an academic pastor of souls, a teacher and professor at Regent College for many decades, whose teaching has shaped the lives of many, many pastors and preachers. One of the Vice-Chairmen of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, his ministry reminds the Society of the richness and the depth of the reformed traditions that belong to the patterns of spirituality embedded in the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer.

The frontispiece to A Quest for Godliness from John Geree’s 1646 work on The Character of Old English Puritans is testament to Dr. Packer himself. “He was … [a man foursquare], immoveable in all times, so that they who in the midst of many opinions have lost the view of true religion, may return to him and there find it.” We give thanks to God for his life and ministry. May he rest in peace.

Humbly submitted,

Rev’d David Curry
Vice-Chairman, PBSC
July 20th, 2020

Other remembrances of Dr. Packer are posted at the websites of Regent College and The Anglican Planet.

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Prayers and liturgy

Margaret of Antioch, Virgin and Martyr

Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, St. MargaretThe collect for a Virgin or Matron, on the Feast of Saint Margaret of Antioch (289-304), Virgin and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD Most High, the creator of all mankind, we bless thy holy Name for the virtue and grace which thou hast given unto holy women in all ages, especially thy servant Margaret of Antioch; and we pray that the example of her faith and purity, and courage unto death, may inspire many souls in this generation to look unto thee, and to follow thy blessed Son Jesus Christ our Saviour; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 9:36-42
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:38-42

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

Audio File of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 6

“Jesus said, Love your enemies”

Today’s Gospel ends where the Gospel for Trinity IV began. “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” Both readings belong to the Lucan counterpart to the Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel. Christ’s Sermon on the Plain in Luke complements Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. Mountains and plains, death and life, friends and enemies. It seems that  we confront a series of binary opposites in these readings and yet something greater overrides and unites. It is mercy.

The radical nature of that mercy is shown in this Gospel. It is about reconciliation and reciprocity which is a dominant feature, it seems to me, of the great philosophical religions of the world but expressed most clearly and emphatically here. “Love your enemies,” Jesus says. The Gospel opens us out to one of the commonplaces of the ethical understanding that appears in other cultures, namely, the ethic of the golden rule. “As ye would that men should so unto you, do ye also unto them likewise.” The underlying assumption is that we properly and rightly seek the Good for ourselves and for one another.

As Plato notes no one seeks what is evil, only what is good, however mistaken we might be about what we think is good. But to command us to love our enemies takes that thought much further because it implies that opposition and enmity, antagonisms and even hatreds, still persist. To love your enemies is to love those who hate you. Love is in the face of those oppositions, not in their overcoming. Or to put it another way, to love your enemies requires transcending ourselves. It means to see ourselves in a new light and consequently to see others not just as enemies but as friends, as companions, as one with us in our common humanity. I in the other and the other in me.

I am trying to place this radical and essential Christian concept within a larger ethical framework because it is, I think, at once a commentary on the universality of the golden rule and an intensification of it in a most remarkable way. It is, at first glance, an impossible ideal. The question is how can it be possible to love our enemies? How is this impossible to be made possible? For if it is not possible then Christ’s commandment is mere nonsense.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sixth Sunday After Trinity

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

O God, who hast preparest for them that love thee such good things as pass man’s understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 6:3-11
The Gospel: St Luke 6:27-36

Claude Lorrain, The Sermon on the MountArtwork: Claude Lorrain, The Sermon on the Mount, c. 1656. Oil on canvas, Frick Collection, New York City.

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