Month: December 2021

Prayers and liturgy

John West, Missionary

The collect for a missionary, in commemoration of The Rev’d John West (1778-1845), Priest, first Protestant missionary to the Red River Valley, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

John WestO GOD, our heavenly Father, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thy blessed Apostles and send them forth to preach thy Gospel of salvation unto all the nations: We bless thy holy Name for thy servant John West, whose labours we commemorate this day, and we pray thee, according to thy holy Word, to send forth many labourers into thy harvest; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 12:24-13:5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:13-24a

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Prayers and liturgy

John Wyclif, Scholar and Translator

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wycliffe, (c 1320-84), Scholar, Translator of the Scriptures into English (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 John Wyclif, 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 same Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:9-16

Madox Brown, The Trial of Wycliffe

Artwork: Ford Madox Brown, The Trial of Wycliffe A.D. 1377, 1893. Mural, Great Hall, Manchester Town Hall.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Becket, Archbishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Becket (1117-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):

O Lord God,
who gavest to thy servant Thomas Becket
grace to put aside all earthly fear and be faithful even unto death:
grant that we, caring not for worldly esteem,
may fight against evil,
uphold thy rule,
and serve thee to our life’s end;
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 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

George Richmond, The Murder of BecketThomas Becket was a close personal friend of King Henry II of England and served as his chancellor from 1155. When the Archbishop of Canterbury died in 1162, Henry, seeing an opportunity to exercise control over the church, decided to have his chancellor elected to the post. Thomas saw the dangers of the king’s plan and warned Henry that, if he became archbishop, his first loyalty would be to God and not the king. He told Henry, “Several things you do in prejudice of the rights of the church make me fear that you would require of me what I could not agree to.” What Thomas feared soon came to pass.

After becoming archbishop, Thomas changed radically from defender of the king’s privileges and policies into an ardent champion of the church. Unexpectedly adopting an austere way of life in near-monastic simplicity, he celebrated or attended Mass daily, studied Scripture, distributed alms to the needy, and visited the sick. He became just as obstinate in asserting the church’s interests as he had formerly been in asserting the king’s.

Thomas rejected Henry’s claim to authority over the English Church. Relations with the king deteriorated so seriously that Thomas left England and spent six years in exile in France. He realised that he had to return when the Archbishop of York and six other bishops crowned the heir to the throne, Prince Henry, in contravention of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rights and authority.

He returned to England with letters of papal support and immediately excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the six other bishops. On Christmas Day 1170 he publicly denounced them from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral. It was these actions that prompted Henry’s infamous angry words, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”

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Sermons

Meditation on Holy Innocents

“Take the young child, and his mother, and flee into Egypt”

Fuga in Egyptu, the flight into Egypt, is one of the more intriguing stories of the Christmas mystery and yet belongs to its most disturbing moment, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Nothing more apocalyptical, it seems, and certainly no story speaks so hauntingly to the hideous spectacles of destruction and violence which belong to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It brings out something of the deeper meaning of the Incarnation as providing the only real counter to human evil and wickedness.

The fuga in Egyptu is a salvation story within the salvation story of human redemption. It looks back to Exodus and to Pharoah’s attempt to control the population of the Hebrews through a policy of infanticide. Out of that story comes the birth of Moses, God’s instrument for the Exodus, the intellectual and spiritual journey of Israel which culminates in the Law. With Matthew, the flight into Egypt portrays Joseph as the instrument of the deliverance of the Holy Family from Herod’s wrath, envy, and fear about a potential rival to his power through a similar policy of infanticide.

That this story should be captured in one of the loveliest of the carols of the season reminds us of how the Christmas story is substantial and serious and not just sentimental. Puer Nobis Nascitur is a fifteenth century carol, though probably of much earlier origins, which emphasizes the sense of Christ’s birth as deliverance from evil in the form of the political. “Came he to a world forlorn, the Lord of every nation”. “Cradled in a stall … with sleepy cows and asses”, the carol suggests that the beasts “could see” what evil of man sees but rejects “that he of all men surpasses”.

Herod then with fear was filled:
‘A prince’, he said, ‘in Jewry!’
All the little boys he killed
At Bethlem in his fury.

The story deepens the theological idea of the Word made flesh coming to a world which “knew him not” and “unto his own who received him not”. It is the attempt to annihilate and destroy the one whose very coming and being as truth and goodness challenges all the pretenses of worldly power. It is an old story and one which sadly recurs over and over again in our world. The Holy Innocents are the nameless victims of the power games of those in authority. Their innocence lies simply in their powerlessness, in their inability to harm. In a way, the feast highlights a sad feature of ‘the city of man’ historically and in the global present; a world of many, many victims who are caught up in the machinations of political economic power and are destroyed. Most of them are unnamed by us.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Innocents’ Day

The collect for today, The Feast of the Holy Innocents, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths: Mortify and kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith, even unto death, we may glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 14:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 2:13-18

Alessandro Magnasco, The Massacre of the InnocentsWhen wise men from the East visited King Herod in Jerusalem to ask where the king of the Jews had been born, Herod felt his throne was in jeopardy. So, he ordered all the boys of Bethlehem aged two and under to be killed. On this day, the church remembers those children.

The Massacre of the Innocents is recorded only in St Matthew’s Gospel, where it is said to be fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah.

The church has kept this feast day since the fifth century. The Western churches commemorate the innocents on 28 December; the Eastern Orthodox Church on 29 December. Medieval authors spoke of up to 144,000 murdered boys, in accordance with Revelation 14:3. More recent estimates, however, recognising that Bethlehem was a very small town, place the number between ten and thirty.

This episode has been challenged as a fabrication with no basis in actual historical events. James Kiefer has a point-by-point presentation of the objections with replies in defence of biblical historicity.

This is an appropriate day to remember the victims of abortion.

Artwork: Alessandro Magnasco, The Massacre of the Innocents, 1710. OIl on canvas, Mauritshuis, The Hague.

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Sermons

Meditation on the Feast of St. John the Evangelist

“His witness is true”

The intellectual and the sensual are not set in opposition but reconciled in the truth and light of God. Such, we might say, is the witness of John the Evangelist, whose feast day is one of the feasts of Christmas, along with St. Stephen’s Day and Holy Innocents. All three are placed in the Prayer Book with the Christmas season thus inescapably integrated into the doctrine of the Incarnation and its meaning for us in our lives.

With John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and who, in a lovely image of intimacy,  “leaned on his breast” at the last supper, we have love-in-contemplation. But this contemplation is not a flight from creation and the world but the highest form of its redemption. Once again, as the Feast of Thomas at the end of Advent, and with yesterday’s feast of Stephen on the day after Christmas, we see the inseparable connection between Christmas and Easter.

The Epistle for today is from 1 John 1 and acts as a commentary on the great Christmas Gospel from the Prologue of John’s Gospel, itself a commentary and further extension of Genesis 1. “In the beginning God … in the beginning was the Word”, the Word which is God and is προς τον θεον, always towards God, the eternal Word in eternal motion, going forth and returning into the principle of its eternal repose. That Word is Christ incarnate “which was from the beginning”, from the principle, and which “we have heard”, “seen and looked upon”, and “handled”. That Word is “the Word of life”. Such is John’s witness signaled in the Gospel reading today from the last chapter of John’s Gospel which concerns the life of the Church following the Resurrection. His witness to the Resurrection is a further attestation of the Incarnation. The themes are inseparably connected.

In the darkness of nature’s year and in the darkness of the uncertainties and fears of our own world and day, John teaches us “that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” His witness is a profound insight into the radical nature of God as light and life, the twin themes which belong to the pageant of Christmas and Easter and which illuminate, shape, and inform the Christian understanding. It is a reflective, meditative, indeed, contemplative understanding of the mystery of God in himself and with us. That mystery, and this is John’s great witness, transcends and counters any and all forms of gnostic dualism; at once aware of the immensity of God in Christ whose words and deeds “even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written,” (the word is βιβλια, biblia), and yet intimately with us. To anticipate a later creedal statement, the Incarnation is “not by conversion of Godhead into flesh, but by taking of Manhood into God … not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person” (Athanasian Creed). Such is the legacy of the witness of John in a kind of direct succession of thought. It is revealed in a parentheses: “(for the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us)”. It is something made known which changes how we think about everything.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint John the Evangelist

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

MERCIFUL Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 1:1-5
The Gospel: St. John 21:19-25

Tilman Riemenschnieder, St. JohnJohn and his brother James (St. James the Greater) were Galilean fishermen and sons of Zebedee. Jesus called the two brothers Boanerges (“sons of thunder”), apparently because of their zealous character; for example, they wanted to call down fire from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritans. John and James, together with Peter, belonged to the inner group of the apostles who witnessed the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. It was John and Peter whom Jesus sent to prepare the final Passover meal.

In the lists of disciples, John always appears among the first four, but usually after his brother, which may indicate that John was the younger of the two.

According to ancient church tradition, St. John the Evangelist was the author of the New Testament documents that bear his name: the fourth gospel, the three epistles of John, and Revelation. John’s name is not mentioned in the fourth gospel (but 21:2 refers to “the sons of Zebedee”), but he is usually if not always identified as the beloved disciple. It is also generally believed that John was the “other disciple” who, with Peter, followed Jesus after his arrest. John was the only disciple at the foot of the cross and was entrusted by Christ with the care of his mother Mary.

After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, John, together with Peter, took a leading role in the formation and guidance of the early church. John was present when Peter healed the lame beggar, following which both apostles were arrested. After reports reached Jerusalem that Samaria was receiving the word of God, the apostles sent Peter and John to visit the new Samaritan converts. Presumably, John was at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). He is not mentioned later in the Acts of the Apostles, so he appears to have left Palestine.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen

“How often would I have gathered thy children together,
even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!”

Click here to listen to an audio file of the Service of Matins & Ante-Communion for the Feast of St. Stephen.

The Feast of St. Stephen marks the first day after Christmas and inaugurates the three Holy Days of Christmas which are a profound commentary on the radical meaning of Christmas. Christ would gather us into his love. If the Feast of St. Thomas affirms the radical nature of the Incarnation and the Resurrection of Christ by way of holy questioning about the intrinsic goodness of creation and of the body, then St. Stephen’s Day highlights love as sacrifice in forgiveness in the face of persecution. He is the first martyr and prototype of martyrdom in the Christian Church even before its coming to be. But the Feast of St. Stephen signals the deeper meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. God’s engagement with our world is in the face of its animosities and evils, but they are our animosities and evils. It means love as service and sacrifice in forgiveness.

“I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes,” Jesus says, ”and some of them you shall kill and crucify”. It is a strong critique of those in power and authority. While Stephen is the proto-martyr of the Church, his feast is equally a commentary on all institutions of power whether sacred or secular, to use a later terminology. More importantly, it is about the transforming power of forgiveness, the central point which Collect and Lesson explicitly reference and which is implicit in the Gospel.

Philosophy as learning to die is an ancient theme without which we cannot know how to live. Gilgamesh, in the great Epic which bears his name, is catapulted into the quest for wisdom by the death of his friend, Enkidu. “As my brother is, so shall I be”. He confronts his own mortality in Enkidu’s death which leads him upon the journey to see Utnapishtim “to question him concerning life and death”. It marks the beginning of a long, long journey of the understanding in human culture; in short, of philosophy as a way of life. But only by way of learning to die.

The Feast of St. Stephen, too, is about learning to die in order to live. His death, as the lesson from Acts makes clear, follows explicitly the pattern of Christ’s Crucifixion. As with St. Thomas, once again, we see the integral connection between Christmas and Easter, a connection which so many of the carols of Christmas also make. “Now ye need not fear the grave”, “Christ was born for this”, to cite but one example.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday After Christmas Day

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

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:18-25

Guercino, The Dream of St. JosephArtwork: Guercino (Giovan Francesco Barbieri), The Dream of St. Joseph, first half of the 17th century. Oil on canvas, Palazzo Reale, Naples.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Stephen the Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth, for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, may learn to love and bless our persecutors, by the example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 7:55-60
The Gospel: St. Matthew 23:34-39

Adam Elsheimer, Stoning of StephenAll that is known of St. Stephen’s life is found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6 and 7. He is reckoned as the first Christian martyr–the proto-martyr. Although his name is Greek for “crown”, he was a Jew by birth; he would have been born outside Palestine and raised as a Greek-speaking Jew. The New Testament does not record the circumstances of his conversion to Christianity.

Stephen first appears as one of the seven deacons chosen in response to protests by Hellenist (Greek-speaking) Christians that their widows were being neglected in the distribution of alms. The apostles were too busy preaching the word of God to deal with this problem, so they commissioned seven men from among the Hellenists “of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”, then prayed and laid hands on them. Stephen, the first among the seven, is described as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”. A few verses later, Stephen is said to be “full of grace and power [and] doing great wonders and signs among the people”.

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