Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Sexagesima Sunday
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Sunday called Sexagesima.
Day: February 7, 2021
Rector’s Annual Report, 2020
Click here to download the full Rector’s Annual Report for 2020 (in pdf format).
The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2019 can be accessed via this page.
Rector’s Annual Report for 2020
“But that on the good ground are they which in an honest and good heart, having
heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”
February 7th, 2021
Patience. In many ways, it has been a year that has required great patience and perseverance, a year of trials, in part, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I say ‘in part’ because struggles and trials, difficulties and tribulations are a constant feature of human experience. The question really is about how such things are faced. That has been the question for Christ Church as a Parish and for the wider Church and culture as well.
Timothy Findley’s novel, “The Wars”, written in 1977, offers an important insight into how difficult and catastrophic things are faced which complements, I think, the Sexagesima Gospel. The point is not to take refuge in tragedy but “to clarify who you are through your response to when you lived”. This is wisdom, it seems to me. It points to the activity of our souls, to what is alive in us. As a Parish, we have weathered the sturm und drang, the storm and stress of the current concerns with COVID-19 quite well. Thanks to the hard work and leadership of the Parish Council, we have taken the courage to do two things: first, to spell out some of the potential scenarios for the future of the Parish; and, secondly, to articulate a Parish protocol in accord with the requirements of the Department of Public Health that have allowed us to be able to continue with “in-person worship”, to use the phrase du jour, responsibly, creatively, and with reasonable flexibility.
In the early days of the pandemic, we were closed but maintained contact with the Parish and with many ‘Friends of Christ Church’ via the Christ Church Connections. That has continued and developed even after we were able to be open again starting on Trinity Sunday in June. We were one of the few churches in the Diocese and in the Province that found ways to be open safely, with a reasonable set of protocols in place, and with a minimum of fuss. I am most grateful for the response of the Parish as a whole to these protocols, and for the trust and confidence that you have shown in the face of these troubling and uncertain times. The point is about carrying on faithfully in what belongs to our mission and life as a Parish in worship and teaching, in care and compassion. The mantra has been “be not fearful but careful”. We have been fortunate that the situation in this part of Canada and the Province has allowed us to continue.
Sermon for Sexagesima
“If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities”
Temperance is the virtue that concerns the mastery of our appetites, of our bodily desires. It is about self-mastery, but to what end?, we might ask, which is why it was coupled with parable of the labourers in the vineyard last Sunday about what is right; in short, justice. Courage, highlighted wonderfully and to the point of deliberate exaggeration, is set before us in today’s Epistle from 2nd Corinthians. It is complemented by Luke’s parable of the sower and the seed which considers the virtue of prudence; necessary, we might say, in relation to courage.
Courage speaks to our hearts. Cor is Latin for the heart. The cardinal or classical virtues belong to a way of thinking about the constituent elements of our humanity, about what it means to be human in terms of the activities of the soul. Thus temperance pertains to the body; courage to the heart; prudence to the mind; and justice to the proper relation of each of them without which, as Augustine suggests, the virtues become splenditia vitiae, splendid vices. Paul suggests something of this in his litany of courage, noting that he is speaking foolishly, even recklessly, even with a kind of madness. He is alluding to the problem of courage. Courage can be reckless folly if it is not tempered by prudence and justice. You can be brave but foolish.
Yet even that is not enough. The virtues undergo a kind of “sea-change into something rich and strange” (Shakespeare, The Tempest, I. ii) in these ‘gesima’ Sundays and in ways that belong to the itinerarium of our souls in the pilgrimage of Lent, itself the concentration of the journey of our souls to God within the span of forty days. In other words, these readings speak profoundly to the entirety of our lives in relation to God and one another. They reveal the deep struggles of the soul in the awareness of the limitations of its own activities. In that lies the awareness of the principle of the Good upon which all our doings depend and to which all our doings are ordered. As the Collect trenchantly puts it, “we put not our trust in any thing that we do.” This opens us out to the power of God and to the movement of God’s grace in us. Such is the transformation of the virtues into the forms of love. Divine love seeks the perfection of our human loves in and through the reordering of the virtues to their end in God.
Week at a Glance, 8 – 14 February
Sunday, February 14th, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Tuesday, February 16th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Christ Unabridged: Knowing and Loving the Son of Man: Essays (2020) and J.I. Packer’s A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (1990)
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.
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
Artwork: Vincent van Gogh, The Sower, 1888. Oil on canvas, E.G. Bührle Foundation, Zürich.