Month: September 2021

Prayers and liturgy

Jerome, Doctor and Priest

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Jerome (c. 342-420), Priest, Monk, Translator of the Scriptures, Doctor of the Church (source):

O Lord, thou God of truth, whose Word is a lantern to our feet and a light upon our path: We give thee thanks for thy servant Jerome, and those who, following in his steps, have labored to render the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people; and we beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may overshadow us as we read the written Word, and that Christ, the living Word, may transform us according to thy righteous will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 3:14-17
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-48

Anthony van Dyck, Saint JeromeOne of the most scholarly and learned early church fathers, St. Jerome devoted much of his life to accurately translating the Holy Bible from the original languages of Hebrew and Greek into Latin.

Born near Aquileia, northeast Italy, of Christian parents, Jerome travelled widely. He received a classical education at Rome and travelled to Gaul where he became a monk. He later moved to Palestine, spending five years as an ascetic in the Syrian desert. In 374, he was ordained a priest in Antioch. He then pursued biblical studies at Constantinople under Gregory Nazianzus and translated works by Eusebius, Origen, and others.

Travelling to Rome in 382, Jerome became secretary to the aged Pope Damasus. By the time the pope died three years later, Jerome had become involved in theological controversies in which he antagonised many church leaders and theologians. He left Rome under a cloud, returning to Palestine where he lived as a monk in Bethlehem for the rest of his life.

Over several decades, Jerome wrote biblical commentaries and works promoting monasticism and asceticism. Most importantly, he produced fresh Latin translations of most of the Old and New Testaments, based on the original biblical languages. This work formed the basis of the Vulgate, which remained the standard Scriptural text of the western church for over a millennium.

Artwork: Anthony van Dyck, Saint Jerome, 1615-16. Oil on canvas, Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections, Statements and other writings

‘Truth and Reconciliation’ Presentation at King’s-Edgehill

At every Chapel service we pray “that a spirit of respect and reconciliation may grow among all nations and peoples.” That is very much our prayer for the indigenous peoples of Canada and for all of us not just today but for the foreseeable future. Here is the Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn singing the first verse of Jesous Ahattonia, Canada’s first and oldest Christmas song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrd4Sw0peZg

The words which he is singing were originally written in the Huron/Wendat language by the French Jesuit missionary and martyr, Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, probably in 1642. He was a linguist who took the time and care to learn the language of the Wendat people and to appreciate their thought and culture in interaction with Christian ideas and themes.

We know and use this hymn at King’s-Edgehill in a later English translation (by J. Edgar Middleton, 1926). In singing it in the Wendat language, Cockburn builds upon the work of Brébeuf who, like many early and largely French missionaries, began the project of providing alphabets and thus a written form for the various first nations’ peoples, something which has continued even into more recent times with the Inuit. This shows a very different kind of relationship between cultures and languages than what took place in the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries with the Indian Act (1876 – the present) which makes the native peoples “wards of the state,” and, particularly, with the notorious Residential Schools programme (1876-1996). Such things reveal a much more aggressive and destructive form of imperial colonialism derived from Britain and America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Indian Act and the Residential Schools programme were intended to assimilate the native peoples into Canadian life but entirely and often brutally at the expense of the cultures and languages of the native peoples themselves. Assimilation was the buzz word of the times but in the view of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission it was “cultural genocide,” a policy undertaken “to kill the Indian in the child” (TRC Report, 2015).

The Residential Schools were “the most aggressive and destructive of all Indian Act policies” (Bob Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act, 2018, p. 52). It was a government programme managed by the churches – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, subsequently the United Church, and Presbyterian – and a government wanting to be freed from financial responsibility towards the native peoples. It was a sad and shameful time in our Canadian history that reveals a betrayal of care by those who were entrusted with the care of over 150,000 children, more than 6,000 of whom either died or disappeared. There were as well incidents of sexual and physical abuse. The numbers of the missing children are imprecise because neither the government nor the churches kept records, hence the heart-rending spectacle of the discovery of unmarked graves this past spring and summer. It is as if they didn’t matter, didn’t exist.

The Indian Act programme of assimilation was part of the so-called “progressive” thinking of the late 19th century in America and in Canada along with eugenics, racial theories about immigration, and discriminatory practices with respect to social services.

The Schools were chronically underfunded. “The buildings were drafty and unsanitary and food for the children was insufficient and often rotten … the schools were also breeding grounds for diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza” (Bob Joseph, 21 Things, p. 58). Most of the children died from tuberculosis. The problem, though known, highlighted for instance by Dr. Peter Bryce who called it in 1922, “a national crime”, was largely overlooked and denied. All to our shame.

Chief Robert Joseph, an outstanding native leader, provides a moving portrayal of the sufferings endured by many indigenous students who were forcibly taken from their families and communities and placed in Residential Schools far away from their homes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_jUXiOSbp4

We can only confess our own sins, not the sins of others, but that does not mean ignoring the mistakes and wrongs of the past and their legacy in the present. It also means a commitment to the reconciliation and the recognition of the indigenous peoples of Canada as full and integral members of Canada. Reconciliation is not an indigenous problem; it is a Canadian problem which can no longer be ignored but requires commitment to the difficult but essential process of reconciliation. In some ways, it is about dignity and respect towards the native peoples of Canada.

Has anything been done? In 2005, a $1.9 billion compensation package was announced for former residential school students; in 2007, the largest class action settlement in Canada, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, was implemented. All of this built upon a growing awareness of the appalling sufferings of the native peoples in the Schools that began to come to the fore in the 1990s and which led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2007. Apologies were made by the United Church in 1986, the Anglican Church in 1993, the Presbyterian Church in 1994. In 2009, Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations met with Pope Benedict XVI who expressed sorrow for the abuse and deplorable treatment of indigenous students, and on September 24th, 2021, the Conference of Canadian Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church also offered an “unequivocal apology” for the wrongs and abuses done to those in their charge, and committing as of yesterday, $30 million towards reconciliation. Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of Canada in 2008; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017 extended a further apology to indigenous peoples in Labrador and Newfoundland who had not been included in the previous federal apology.

More needs to be done, certainly. The task of reconciliation remains before us and is, I think, quite movingly stated, again by Chief Robert Joseph, in words which touch upon the ideals and life of our School. It is his words which we need to hear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJQgpuLq1LI

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English and ToK Teacher
September 29th, 2021
Michaelmas

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Sermons

Meditation for Michaelmas

“And they overcome him by the blood of the Lamb”

The serpent of the Genesis story has become “the dragon,” “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world.” These are key images that reach back to the serpent’s cunning question, “Did God say?” The question seeks to undermine the truth that is known. Sin and evil is about that contradiction and division within ourselves between what we know and what we do, between our reason and our will. We are made in the image of God and are called to act accordingly. But what happens if we don’t?  We are rational creatures to whom God gives a commandment. But what happens if we disobey?

Both Genesis at the beginning of the Scriptures for both Jew and Christian and Revelation at the end of the Christian Scriptures show us that all evil is a negation and privative of the Good. It has no power in itself; it is always a distortion, a deception. The various terms for what opposes the truth of God reveal this contradiction either in terms of Satan as the tempter, trying to insinuate and undermine the order and truth of things, or the deceiver, trying to trick us, or Lucifer, the light-bearer who denies his very being, turning away from the light of God to be the Prince of Darkness. Evil arises from the turning away of rational creatures from God, the source of all being and knowing.

The lesson from Revelation is especially powerful because it makes it abundantly clear that “there was war in heaven,” not there is, and that evil has been radically overcome “by the blood of the Lamb,” a reference to Christ in his sacrifice and love for us. The strong reminder is that the Good is greater than all and every evil. What that means for us is to will that Good in our own lives as the counter to the sins and follies that so easily beset us. Michaelmas signals the victory of Good over evil and reminds us of the company we keep, “the angels moving the imagination and strengthening the understanding,” as Aquinas puts it.

To think is to think with the angels who are the thoughts of God in creation. They are the invisible reasons for the visible things of the created order. Paradoxically this reminder to us of the larger spiritual community of which we are a part “with Angels and Archangels and all the Company of heaven” is not a denial or a flight from the concrete world of our embodied existence. To think with the angels is to affirm our creation, our bodies, and our world, and not to be alienated from nature or our bodies through some sort of illusion. The Genesis point is emphatic; creation is good in its parts and as a whole. Evil comes from us when we put ourselves at the centre and try to will a lie, a deceit.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Michael and All Angels

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O EVERLASTING God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant, that as thy holy Angels alway do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 12:7-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 18:1-10

Tintoretto, Battle of the Archangel Michael and the SatanThe name Michael is a variation of Micah, and means in Hebrew “Who is like God?”

The archangel Michael first appears in the Book of Daniel, where he is described as “one of the chief princes” and as the special protector of Israel. In the New Testament epistle of Jude (v. 9), Michael, in a dispute with the devil over the body of Moses, says, “The Lord rebuke you“. Michael appears also in Revelation (12:7-9) as the leader of the angels in the great battle in Heaven that ended with Satan and the hosts of evil being thrown down to earth. There are many other references to the archangel Michael in Jewish and Christian traditions.

Following these scriptural passages, Christian tradition has given St. Michael four duties: (1) To continue to wage battle against Satan and the other fallen angels; (2) to save the souls of the faithful from the power of Satan especially at the hour of death; (3) to protect the People of God, both the Jews of the Old Covenant and the Christians of the New Covenant; and (4) finally to lead the souls of the departed from this life and present them to our Lord for judgment. For these reasons, Christian iconography depicts St. Michael as a knight-warrior, wearing battle armor, and wielding a sword or spear, while standing triumphantly on a serpent or other representation of Satan. Sometimes he is depicted holding the scales of justice or the Book of Life, both symbols of the last judgment.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

“Friend, go up higher”

It is not about ambition or pretension. It is about the hope of transformation. It conveys the sense that we are called to something more, that we have a destiny beyond what we know is before us but will not face, namely, the grave and gate of death. We are more though not less than our bodies and the circumstances of our lives which does not mean that we are in flight from either. Somehow going up higher happens where we are in our souls and bodies.

The operative words are “friend” and “go up higher.” These words speak to the intimacy and nature of our identity in Christ, to the true form of our humanity in God, transhumanised, as Dante puts it, inventing a word in Italian (trashumanar) that has been transposed into English but now co-opted by contemporary identity politics in very different ways. But we are not what we might imagine in the vanity of our minds through the mechanics of re-imaging and refashioning our bodies as constituting our identities or in some sort of biological determinism which equally negates our freedom. Our identities as persons are not simply biological nor are they merely social constructs that shift and move like leaves on the wind. “Friend, go up higher” is about our vocation to Christ and in Christ. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Communion, we are identified with Jesus in his free-willing identity and sacrifice for us. It is about reclaiming the integrity of our being in Christ through the community of God and man realized in Christ.

Jesus calls us “friends” elsewhere in the Gospels, too. It is an especially potent statement that changes the nature of the relationship between God and man. He does so not just by way of a parable but more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. The wondrous thing that passes human understanding is that God has made us his friends even when we are his enemies. This turns the ancient world on its head. Friendship with God rather than a cowering fearfulness of God? It turns our world on its head. To suppose that we can create ourselves?  Sheer illusion. Yet we live in a hopeless and fearful world precisely because of such illusions. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness, our fear, and our illusions.

We are called out of ourselves and we are called to God. We are called to the service of God in our life together with one another in the body of Christ. It is really the purpose of our being here today, a purpose which extends into every aspect of our lives.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 27 September – 3 October

Tuesday, September 28th, Eve of St. Michael & All Angels
7:00pm Holy Communion

Sunday, October 3rd, Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity

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

LORD, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1-11

Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (attrib.), Christ Healing the SickArtwork: Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (attrib.), Christ Healing the Sick, before 1625. Oil on canvas, Private collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Bishop of Winchester, scholar, spiritual writer (source):

Lancelot AndrewesO Lord God,
who didst give Lancelot Andrewes many gifts
of thy Holy Spirit,
making him a man of prayer and a pastor of thy people:
perfect in us that which is lacking in thy gifts,
of faith, to increase it,
of hope, to establish it,
of love, to kindle it,
that we may live in the light of thy grace and glory;
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 Timothy 2:1-7a
The Gospel: St. Luke 11:1-4

A prayer of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes:

Thou, O Lord, art the Helper of the helpless,
The Hope of the hopeless,
The Saviour of them who are tossed with the tempests,
The Haven of them who sail; be thou all to all.
The glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us,
Prosper thou the work of our hands upon us,
Oh! prosper thou our handiwork
Lord, be thou within us, to strengthen us;
without us to keep us; above us to protect us;
beneath us to uphold us; before us to direct us;
behind us to keep us from straying;
round about us to defend us.
Blessed be Thou, O Lord our Father, for ever and ever. Amen.

Southwark Cathedral, Lancelot Andrewes TombGraphic: Tomb of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, Southwark Cathedral, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 October 2014.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 23 September

Did God say?

If creation and the natural order are good, indeed very good, then unde malum, from where does evil come?

Our reading of the opening chapters of Genesis has considered creation as orderly and in principle intelligible. We have asked ourselves about where our humanity fits in with respect to the pageant of creation. Genesis 1 argues that we are at once connected to everything in creation but are also uniquely said to be made in the image of God and are charged to act in the image of God the Creator in terms of our care and concern for creation. This, we suggested, counters the more modern idea of our exploitation, manipulation, and so-called technocratic dominance of nature.

The second Chapter of Genesis read on Tuesday complements the first chapter with respect to the place of our humanity. In a more intimate manner than the thundering and impressive pageant of Genesis 1, our humanity (‘adam) is said to be formed of dust from the ground into which God has breathed his spirit. Nothing could emphasize better the connection of our humanity to the natural world. In short, it humbles us. As we have noted before, the collective term ‘adam plays on the word ‘adhamah referring to the dust. We are dirt, as it were! Dust! But we are the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. Such is the dust of dignity, the dignity of our humanity. And in this account, ‘adam is given a commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To be given a commandment presupposes human rationality. It further confirms what it means to be made in God’s image. All good but, then, whence evil?

The story of the Fall in Genesis 3 provides an account of evil and in an intriguing way, namely, through the contrast of questions. The very first question in the Bible is that of the beguiling serpent, a symbol of human reason in denial and in contradiction with itself. Did God say? But we know what God said. The serpent insinuates another way of thinking, another interpretation, not to understand but to undermine what in fact is known. Thus we disobey and act contrary to what we know. The story reveals the age-old nature of the human condition in the conflict between reason and will, between what we know and what we do. Paul captures this dilemma succinctly and brilliantly: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7.19). It starts here with the questions of Genesis 3.

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