Christ Church

“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people”

Click here to listen to an audio file of the Service of Mattins & Ante-Communion for Christmas Morn

Wonderful words. It has been a kind of challenge for me to think about how various scriptural passages in themselves might be understood to lead us into the whole mystery of Christ. This is a counter to the kinds of literal and fundamentalist readings of Scripture which overlook the deeper logic of the understanding. It is about what is in principle universal revealed in and through the conditions of the finite and the particular.

Christmas is the greatest expression of this idea though not in a triumphal way. It is enough to say that the Gospel simply makes explicit in a certain way what is present and moves in the great ethical traditions of the world’s religions and philosophies; things about which technocratic culture knows nothing and has nothing to say. There is no wisdom in technology, in the technocratic culture which we all inhabit. This does not and cannot mean denying or fleeing from the techno-world which we have created. It means finding ways to overcome the idolatries of the human imagination and the will to power which bring before us such a confusion of good  things and evil  things. The question is about us and about what defines us.

The whole of the Christmas mystery speaks to this concern. In the celebration of the Word and Son of God made flesh, something powerful and profound is being said about our humanity. It is captured quite movingly in the Christmas readings such as those for Christmas morning. This year, owing to the restraints imposed by Public Health, and, then, even more, the complete suspension of ‘in-person worship’ by the Bishop, Christmas Eve was, sadly, a ‘silent night’ in empty churches; so, too, the quiet of Christmas morn is the almost unbearable  silence of empty churches from which I am speaking to you. All we can do is to ponder the readings and pray the liturgy; we are reduced to reading and thinking about the great meaning of Christmas in our isolation and remove from one another. It is quite paradoxical that the celebration of Christ coming to us in the body of our humanity should take the form of our being disembodied and apart from one another. Does that mean a separation from the body of Christ?

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The collect for today, the Nativity of our Lord, or the Birth-day of Christ, commonly called 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: Hebrews 1:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 1:1-14

Artwork: Pietro da Cortona, The Nativity, c. 1656. Oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.

“And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth”

Click here to listen to an audio file of the Service of Vespers & Ante-Communion for Christmas Eve

“The poorest and emptiest season in nature [has] become the fullest and richest in grace,” the poet-preacher Lancelot Andrewes remarks. Christmas Eve is a time of gathering, indeed, “the greatest gathering that ever was or will be”. In the Christian imaginary, we are gathered together at Bethlehem, at once “least among the thousands of Judah”, as Micah states, and yet “not the least”, as Matthew counters. The poorest place has “become the fullest and richest in grace” where everything is gathered together and where “everything holds together, everything”, as a contemporary poet, Malcolm Guite remarks for both time and place. “The end of all our exploring”, our seeking and our desiring, as T.S. Eliot suggests “will be to arrive where we started/and know the place for the first time” (Little Gidding). For not only is “here all aright” but, even more, is “here the world’s desire”, as Chesterton’s lovely poem about the Christ-child puts it.

Yet Bethlehem, then and now, must seem a strange and confused place, a place of obscurity and uncertainty. All our Christmas efforts to dress it up are like so much tinsel and wrap that hide its lowliness and insignificance. What a great confusion of images, a virtual menagerie of creatures, a great cluster of improbable things all gathered together!  Bethlehem may but seem the mirror image of our own times of darkness and confusion, of fear and uncertainty, a place and a time where we are more scattered than gathered not just physically but mentally. Paradoxically, there is no mention whatsoever of Bethlehem in the readings for Christmas Eve; only in the hymns, which we are now not allowed to sing, even if the Bishop had not suspended our gathering together, is Bethlehem named, indeed, four times in three of the four hymns intended for use on this night. Yet Bethlehem captures our attention and at once shapes and controls our imagination through the great variety of creche scenes, ranging from the very simple and rustic to the exotic and artistically refined. They all seek to capture the humble scene of Christ’s lowly birth and its greatness.

Tonight’s readings give meaning and coherence to this range and confusion of images. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not”; “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” These are texts which remind us of the darkness of ourselves and our world, the darkness of ignorance and sin, that belongs to our betrayals of God and one another. And yet, they are essential to the greater gathering in the poorest and emptiest season and in the least of all places. And all because of what these readings tonight signify and hold out to view, namely, the one who is at the center of everything and in whom everything holds together. As Malcolm Guite puts it “everything holds together and coheres,/ Unfolding from the center whence it came./ And now that hidden heart of things appears,/ The first-born of creation takes a name.”

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The collect for today, Christmas Eve (source):

Almighty God,
who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance
of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer,
so we may with sure confidence behold him
when he shall come to be our judge;
who liveth and reigneth with thee
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Titus 2:11-15
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:1-14

Christmas Eve
(a poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti)

Christmas hath darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Artwork: Gari Melchers, The Nativity, 1891. Oil on canvas, Gari Melchers Home and Studio, Falmouth, Virginia.

I regret to inform you that the Bishop of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the Rt. Rev’d Sandra Fyfe, has issued a directive suspending all in-person worship in Anglican Parishes effective December 22nd, 2021 until January 12th, 2022, citing concerns about the spread of COVID-19 via the Omicron variant. The directive exceeds the latest restrictions of Public Health about the numbers of people allowed at faith services and the proscription about singing, measures about which we were acting in accord.

A lot of work and preparation has gone into the services for Christmas but I recognise that more often than not we have to patiently forbear many, many things in this vale of tears while continuing to find ways to glorify God and to care for one another. I will endeavour to provide audio services for Christmas Eve, Christmas Morning, and for the 8am Service on St, Stephen’s Day; these will be services of ante-communion and will include meditations.

It remains to be seen to what extent this directive will affect our end of year finances. I am very grateful for the amazing support that the Parish has demonstrated over the course of the ups and downs of COVID-19 and pray that we will continue to be strong in the faith. “This shall be a time for you to bear testimony” (Lk. 21.13), in quiet prayer, and in much patience with forbearance. As always there are blessings that are found even in our disappointments. For those wanting to submit envelopes and donations, please contact Kathy Cameron at 1-902-798-1876 to make arrangements.

I wish you all a blessed Christmas.

Fr. David Curry

“My Lord, and my God”

The Feast of Thomas closely aligns, at least in the northern hemisphere, with the winter solstice; the shortest day and the darkest night of the year. Its spiritual significance builds on that coincidence with nature to bring us to Christ, the Light and Life of the world, who comes to bring us out of the darkness of doubt and fear. Yet the story of so-called ‘doubting’ Thomas in the Gospel properly belongs to Easter and to the affirmation of the Resurrection, but his day of commemoration belongs to Christmas and thus to the affirmation of the Incarnation, to the bodily reality of Christ without which his suffering, death, and resurrection are illusory and meaningless. What Thomas says to the Risen Christ, who appears to him behind closed doors, “My Lord, and My God”, the Church says at Christmas about the Babe of Bethlehem, “My Lord, and My God”, the Word who is God and Lord made flesh, God with us. It is what we may say devotionally at Communion, too, at the elevation of the host. His words affirm the radical meaning of God’s engagement with our humanity in the intimacy of the body of Christ sacramentally.

The Feast of St. Thomas underscores the profound interconnection and interplay between Christmas and Easter, between Advent and Lent, in the dynamic and dialectic of their relation. John Donne wisely notes about Christ that his “Christmas Day and Good Friday are but the morning and the evening of one and the same day”. Each mystery is inconceivable without the other; they belong to the whole reality of Christ as Lord and God with us.

Thomas is the patron saint of scepticism which is a necessary part of our coming to faith and understanding. We may be apt to have a negative or sceptical view of scepticism and think that it undermines the assurances of belief. But belief that is mere assertion is empty and weak. What Thomas reminds us is the need for our serious engagement with the things of God being made known to us and thus to the questions about our knowing. It belongs, in other words, to the paradigm of fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding.

Neil Postman, an American philosopher and educator (d. 2003), argues for the development of a scientific or what he also calls a sceptical outlook as part of modern education and as one of the gifts of the Enlightenment, a period which some Christians often scorn and vilify as undermining or disparaging the Faith. Scepticism belongs instead to the deep quest for wisdom, to the idea of questioning. Quest and questioning go together; it is about the desire to know, something which Aristotle claims belongs to human nature. Without the questioning, we might say, there can be no real knowing. The questioning assumes the faith that things can be known which is not the same thing as saying that we know everything. Instead, it is the presupposition for our knowing.

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

ALMIGHTY and everliving God, who for the more confirmation of the faith didst suffer thy holy Apostle Thomas to be doubtful in thy Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly, and without all doubt, to believe in thy Son Jesus Christ, that our faith in thy sight may never be reproved. Hear us, O Lord, through the same Jesus Christ, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, now and for evermore. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 2:19-22
The Gospel: St. John 20:24-29

St. Thomas’s name is believed to come from an Aramaic word meaning twin, but it is not known whose twin he was. He is included in all the lists of the twelve apostles, but he is mentioned most often in St. John’s Gospel, where he is called “Didymus” (“twin” in Greek) three times (11:16; 20:24; 21:2).

St. Thomas appears to have been an impulsive man. He says he is prepared to go with Jesus to the tomb of Lazarus even if it means death (John 11:16). At the Last Supper, however, he confesses his ignorance about where Jesus is going and the way there (John 14:5). In response, Christ said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

After the resurrection, Thomas was unwilling to believe his fellow disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead (John 20:24). He would not believe, he declared, unless he actually touched the wounds. Eight days later, Jesus gave “Doubting Thomas” the evidence he had asked for, whereupon Thomas confessed him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus then pronounces a blessing on all who have not seen and yet believe.

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Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fourth Sunday in Advent.

“Thy word is a lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my path”

We have used this text as the basis of our Advent meditations which reach a kind of crescendo on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. The word of God is prophetically signalled in the witness of John who points us to the greater wonder of the Word with us, the Word as light in the various darknesses of our understanding. “He was not that light”, we will hear on Christmas Eve “but was sent to bear witness of that light”. Word as light has been our advent concern and interest.

Sarah Bakewell, in her wonderful and brilliant treatment of the essaies of Michel de Montaigne (wittily entitled, ‘How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer’), notes at the outset that “the Twenty-First century is full of people who are full of themselves”. A wonderful aperçu, beginning or opening, it strikes me as having a particular resonance and poignancy for our times. In one way, it is nothing new, and, against Bakewell, the interest in the self as a reflection of the other is not new as something invented by the forms of introspection seen in Montaigne. Yet her remark captures an aspect of our contemporary discontent. Beyond Wordsworth’s “the world is too much with us, late and soon”, we have a world full of those who are full of themselves.

Her opening statement provides an opening to our current concerns and difficulties where we are very much concerned about ourselves in ways that paradoxically undermine ourselves. A world that is full of people who are full of themselves is a world full of empty selves or non-selves, at once narcissistic and nihilistic. Today’s Gospel provides an interesting counter to one of the myriad of forms of self-contradiction in our self-obsessed age. It does so through the witness of John, who in response to being asked who he is,  consistently re-orients the question to the one who is greater than he without whom he himself is nothing. This is truly remarkable and without it we can make little sense of the Incarnation.

John is saying that he is nothing in himself. He is saying that he exists for another. Self and other are not pitted against one another in an endless rivalry and animosity. In a way, we are being reminded of the deeper logic of the law in terms of the inseparable qualities of the love of God and the love of neighbour. Even more, we might say with St. Felicity that “another shall be in me who shall suffer for me because I am to suffer for him”, to which the witness of John points us. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”. ‘Another lives in me’ is the counter to our being full of ourselves.

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Christmas at Christ Church 2021

Tuesday, December 21st, St. Thomas
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme III

Friday, December 24th, Christmas Eve
7:00pm Children’s Christmas Crêche Service
9:30pm Christmas Eve Communion Service

Saturday, December 25th, Christmas Day
10:00am Christmas Communion Service

Sunday, December 26th, St. Stephen
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Christmas Lessons and Carols

Monday, December 27th, St. John the Evangelist
10:00am Holy Communion

Tuesday December 28th, Holy Innocents
10:00am Holy Communion

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory,
the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth”

Services for January, February and March of 2022 will be held in the Parish Hall.