Month: October 2021

Prayers and liturgy

Harvest Thanksgiving

The collect for today, Harvest Thanksgiving Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who crownest the year with thy goodness, and hast given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season: Give us grateful hearts, that we may unfeignedly thank thee for all thy loving-kindness, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional prayers of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God and heavenly Father, we glorify thee that we are once more permitted to enjoy the fulfilment of thy gracious promise, that, while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not fail. Blessed be thou, who hast given us the fruits of the earth in their season. Teach us to remember that it is not by bread alone that man doth live; but grant that we may feed on him who is the true bread which cometh down from heaven even Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour; to whom with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

O ALMIGHTY God, whose dearly beloved Son, after his resurrection, sent his Apostles into all the world, and, on the day of Pentecost, endued them with special gifts of the Holy Spirit, that they might gather in the spiritual harvest: We beseech thee to look down from heaven upon the fields, now white unto the harvest, and to send forth more labourers to gather fruit unto eternal life. And grant us grace so to help them with our prayers and offerings, that when the harvest of the earth is ripe, and the time for reaping is come, we, together with them, may rejoice before thee, according to the joy in harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 55:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 6:27-35

John La Farge, Angels Representing ThanksgivingArtwork: John La Farge, Angels Representing Thanksgiving, c. 1890-1900. Watercolour, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Harvest Thanksgiving on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

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

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Sermons

Sermon for Harvest Thanksgiving

“Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out”

The Prayer Book provides a rich collection of scriptural readings and prayers for services of “Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest” at Morning and Evening Prayer and for the Holy Eucharist. It is well worth taking a look at them in ‘A Form of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest’ (BCP, pp. 617-621). The suggested lessons from Deuteronomy in particular open us out to a theology of the land, of the places in which we find ourselves whether it is in the city or in the country. “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.”

The Canadian Thanksgiving weekend mostly focuses on the theme of Harvest Thanksgiving, though it is tied to the idea of a national thanksgiving day for Canada. The former is more ancient and universal and at once reminds us of the original rural aspects of the nation though not at the expense of the urban. In our current distresses and anxieties, Thanksgiving in itself and in terms of the harvest is a profound spiritual reminder of our connection to the land and to one another. It is a counter at once to the endless narcissisms of our age and to the utilitarian logic that results in our dominance and destruction of nature and ourselves. Harvest Thanksgiving which we celebrate today is actually a movable feast in our country parishes depending on the timing of the  harvest in its various moments. It is, more importantly, a strong affirmation of the goodness of creation and a reminder to us that the goodness of the land and of human labour derives entirely from the goodness of God.

We are blessed in our comings in and our goings out because of the going forth and return of God’s word in Creation and Redemption. In other words, our lives in and through our engagement with the order of creation (without which there could be no harvest) is really about our relation to God, the source and the end of all good things. And as the lessons from Deuteronomy teach us, the blessings of the fruits of creation depend radically upon our heeding the commandments of God. What does that mean? Nothing less than that the world we engage in is fundamentally intelligible and orderly; in short, good. God’s commandments are not arbitrary. In God, power and wisdom are one quite unlike what we experience in ourselves and in the disorders of our world and day.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 11 – 17 October

Tuesday, October 12th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, October 17th, Twentieth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, October 19th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Donna Leon’s My Venice and Other Essays (2013) & Antal Szerb’s Journey by Moonlight (1937, trans. from the Hungarian in 2000 by Len Rix).

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Prayers and liturgy

The Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity

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

O GOD, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:17-32
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:1-8

Benjamin West, Christ Healing the SickArtwork: Benjamin West, Christ Healing the Sick, 1794. Oil on paper mounted on canvas, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Denys, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Denys (d. c. 258), Bishop of Paris, Patron Saint of France, Martyr (source):

Michel Dumas, Martyrdom of Saint DenisO GOD, who as on this day didst endow thy blessed Martyr and Bishop Saint Denys with strength to suffer stedfastly for thy sake, and didst join unto him Rusticus and Eleutherius for the preaching of thy glory to the Gentiles: grant us, we beseech thee, so to follow their good example; that for the love of thee we may despise all worldly prosperity, and be afraid of no manner of worldly adversity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-34
The Gospel: St Luke 12:1-9

Artwork: Michel Dumas, Martyrdom of Saint Denis, c. 1860. Oil on canvas, Notre-Dame de Clignancourt, Paris.

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Prayers and liturgy

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Scholar (source):

Robert GrossetesteO God our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Robert Grosseteste to be a bishop and pastor in thy Church and to feed thy flock: Give to all pastors abundant gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may minister in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:28-32
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:10-15

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 7 October

One turned back … giving him thanks

The Headmaster often says that Thanksgiving is his favourite festival of the year. I think I know what he means. It is so simple and pure, uncluttered and unencumbered by commercialisation. Already in the stores there is merchandise for Halloween and even for Christmas! Thanksgiving seems blessedly free of such hype.

Thanksgiving is profoundly spiritual and counters explicitly the narcissisms of contemporary culture. How? Because thanksgiving requires an acknowledgment of what is other than you; in short a kind of reflection and thoughtfulness about God, nature, and other people. It is actually universal to human culture and civilization on several different levels. The oldest and most common sense of thanksgiving has to do with harvest festivals, a recognition that the fruits of the earth and human labour cannot be taken for granted and that human labour requires our working with the order of nature. This is a profound kind of wisdom. It counters the tendency to take things for granted or, even worse, the idea of entitlement. It checks the assumptions, too, of our technocratic mastery of nature which has shown itself to be so destructive both of nature and of one another.

But beyond the wonder of harvest, there are other kinds of thanksgivings such as social and political thanksgivings, like national thanksgiving days or times in human history when a nation has a particular reason to pronounce a day of national thanksgiving whether it is for deliverance from some natural catastrophe or some political act of intended destruction, such as the Gunpowder Plot of November 5th, 1605, the attempt to blow up King and Parliament in England. The plot was foiled but the sense of the enormity of the attempt and the thought of the devastation and chaos it would have occasioned had a strong hold on the imaginations of the peoples of England in the 17th century such that it remained a national day of thanksgiving for deliverance for a very, very long time. In Canada, the Thanksgiving weekend precedes the Monday holiday which is Canada’s national day of Thanksgiving. In the United States, it occurs much later, in November. Different nations have different days of national commemoration. So thanksgiving embraces a range of concerns.

In every case, thanksgiving is essentially reflective and helps us to think about our relation to the created order and our engagement with one another. It is in that sense profoundly spiritual and is an essential feature of the religions and philosophies of the world. It is central to the Christian understanding as well as to Judaism and Islam because at the heart of thanksgiving is an active openness to God and to what comes from God in terms of creation and providence; an openness to the goodness of creation which is such a powerful idea in our times of negativity and fear about the world and about one another. The central act of worship for Christians is the Eucharist, a word meaning thanksgiving.

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Prayers and liturgy

William Tyndale, Translator and Martyr

Embankment Statue, William TyndaleThe collect for today, the commemoration of William Tyndale (c. 1495-1536), Priest, Translator of the Scriptures, Reformation Martyr (source):

O Lord, grant to thy people
grace to hear and keep thy word
that, after the example of thy servant William Tyndale,
we may both profess thy gospel
and also be ready to suffer and die for it,
to the honour of thy name;
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: St. James 1:21-25
The Gospel: St. John 12:44-50

Artwork: Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, William Tyndale statue, 1884, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London. Photograph taken by admin, 30 September 2015.

Inscription on bronze plaque:
William Tyndale
First translator of the New Testament into English from the Greek.
Born A.D. 1484, died a martyr at Vilvorde in Belgium, A.D. 1536.
“Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” – “the entrance of thy words giveth light.” Psalm CXIX. 105.130.
“And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his son.” I. John V.II.
The last words of William Tyndale were “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes”. Within a year afterwards, a bible was placed in every parish church by the King’s command.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Francis of Assisi

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Friar, Deacon, Founder of the Friars Minor (source):

O God,
who ever delightest to reveal thyself
to the childlike and lowly of heart,
grant that, following the example of the blessed Francis,
we may count the wisdom of this world as foolishness
and know only Jesus Christ and him crucified,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Galatians 6:14-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:25-30

Lucas Cranach the Elder, St. Francis Receiving the StigmataArtwork: Lucas Cranach the Elder, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, 1502. Oil on panel, Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

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