Tuesday, March 23rd, Annunciation (transf.)
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme IV
Sunday, March 28th, Palm Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion with Palms
10:30am Holy Communion with Palms
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.
The collect for today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, commonly called Passion Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
WE beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28
Artwork: Arcangelo di Jacopo del Sellaio, Christ with Instruments of the Passion, c. 1485. Tempera on panel, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cuthbert (c. 634-87), Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary (source):
Almighty God,
who didst call thy servant Cuthbert from following the flock
to follow thy Son and to be a shepherd of thy people:
in thy mercy, grant that we may so follow his example
that we may bring those who are lost home to thy fold;
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: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St. Matthew 6:24-33
Artwork: Ernest-Ange Duez, Saint Cuthbert, 1879. Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The collect for today, the commemoration of Thomas Ken (1637-1711), Bishop of Bath and Wells, Non-Juror, Hymn Writer (source):
O God, from whom all blessings flow,
by whose providence we are kept
and by whose grace we are directed:
assist us, through the example of thy servant Thomas Ken,
faithfully to keep thy word,
humbly to accept adversity
and steadfastly to worship thee;
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.
With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962)
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-44
Ordained an Anglican priest in 1662, Thomas Ken served as rector in several parishes before becoming chaplain to members of the royal family and, in 1685, Bishop of Bath and Wells. A man of principle and strong conviction, he was one of seven bishops imprisoned for refusing to sign King James II’s “Declaration of Indulgence”, the purpose of which was to allow Catholics to resume positions of political power in England. After strong expressions of popular support by the people of London, Bishop Ken was quickly tried and acquitted.
King James II was forced to flee the country when King William and Queen Mary were invited to become co-monarchs of England. William and Mary demanded oaths of allegiance from all persons holding public positions, including the bishops. Thomas Ken and others (known as the Non-Jurors; the older meaning of “juror” is “one who takes an oath”, hence “perjurer” as “one who swears falsely”) refused to take the oath on the grounds that they had sworn allegiance to James and could not during his lifetime swear allegiance to another monarch without making such oaths a mockery. Bishop Ken took this stand as a matter of principle despite his strong disagreement with much that James had done. In 1690, he and the other surviving non-jurors were deposed.
(Most of the bishops of Scotland also refused the oath; William and Mary retaliated by disestablishing the Episcopal Church in Scotland and making the Presbyterian Kirk the established state church there instead.)
Bishop Ken was also a poet and hymn-writer. He wrote the text for the well-loved doxology “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow“, which is actually the last verse of his longer hymn, “Awake My Soul, and with the sun“.
A prayer of Thomas Ken:
God, our heavenly father, make, we pray, the door of this Cathedral Church wide enough to welcome all who need human love and fellowship and a Father’s care; but narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride, and lack of love. Here may the temped find help, the sorrowing receive comfort, the careless be awakened to repentance, and the penitent be assured of your mercy; and here may all your children renew their strength and go on their way in hope and joy; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Artwork: Thomas Ken window, Wells Cathedral, installed in 1885 to celebrate the bicentenary of his consecration as Bishop of Bath and Wells.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Joseph of Nazareth, Guardian of Our Lord, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Patron Saint of Canada, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD Most High, who from the family of thy servant David didst raise up Joseph the carpenter to be protector of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord: Grant that we may so labour in our earthly vocations, that they may become labours of love and service offered unto thee, our Father; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St. Matthew 1:18-25
Artwork: Georges de La Tour, Young Christ with St. Joseph in the Carpenter’s Shop, c. 1642. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Patrick (c. 390-c. 461), Bishop, Missionary, Patron of Ireland (source):
Almighty God,
who in thy providence chose thy servant Patrick
to be the apostle of the people of Ireland:
keep alive in us the fire of faith which he kindled,
and in this our earthly pilgrimage
strengthen us to gain the light of everlasting life;
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 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
The Gospel: St Matthew 28:16-20
Click here to read the prayer known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate.
Artwork: Franz Mayer & Co., St. Patrick Preaching to the Kings, 19th century. Stained glass, Cathedral of the Assumption, County Carlow, Ireland.
© Copyright Andreas F. Borchert and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
This is the third in a series of four Lenten meditations. The first is posted here and the second here.
The Penitential Psalms in the Pilgrimage of Lent
Christ Church, Lent 2021
Snakes, shamrocks and shillelaghs don’t make much of an appearance in the Psalms even on the Eve of St. Patrick’s Day. And no green beer. Yet something of the poetic quality and sensibility of the voices of the Psalms is captured in the rich lyricism of Irish spirituality, especially in St. Patrick’s Breastplate with its Trinitarian and Christocentric intensity as wedded both to Scripture and to God’s creation. “I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the Trinity,” it begins, and proceeds to rehearse the creedal essentials of redemption:
by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation,
his baptism in the Jordan river,
his death on cross for my salvation,
his bursting from the spiced tomb,
his riding up the heavenly way,
his coming at the day of doom.
Then it turns to creation:
bind[ing] unto myself today,
the virtues of the starlit heaven,
the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling winds tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea
around the eternal rocks.
In all of the events of our world and day, prayer seeks God’s embracing love:
the power of God to hold and lead,
God’s eye to watch, God’s might to stay,
God’s ear to hearken to my need,
the wisdom of my God to teach,
God’s hand to guide, God’s shield to ward,
the word of God to give me speech,
God’s heavenly host to be my guard.
These wonderful words sound the depths of the praying soul to God in ways which echo and draw upon the Psalms.
The voices of the Penitential Psalms are the voices of our hearts in prayer. Our Lenten project is to pray these Psalms in our hearts on the Way of the Cross. We began with Psalm 51 as sounding in a symphony all the heart-notes of repentance, harmonizing into one heart-song all the voices of penitence. Psalm 6 was then considered as the entrance Psalm into the Penitential Psalms precisely as a Psalm of Confession in the moment of the soul’s deep sense of its own opposition to God’s righteousness, known and experienced as the wrath of God.
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fourth Sunday in Lent.
The traditional readings for The Fourth Sunday in Lent have given rise to a number of titles or terms for this Sunday in such things as ‘Mothering Sunday,’ ‘Refreshment Sunday,’ and ‘Laetare Sunday’. The first and third derive from the significance of Jerusalem in both the Jewish and Christian understanding; Paul in Galatians speaks of “Jerusalem which is above which is free; which is the mother of us all,” our spiritual homeland, while the Latin Introit for this day is from Isaiah 66. 10, “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her.” The second term, ‘Refreshment Sunday,’ derives from the Gospel story of the feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness in John’s account. These folk titles and terms have a hold on the imagination yet are meaningless without these Scriptural references. Other folk customs and practices have grown up around them such as the tradition of Simnel cake eaten on this day, or Mi-Carême in the French Canadian tradition in which people put on disguises and go from house to house singing and dancing and looking for treats, a Lenten version of the Christmas traditions of mummering in Newfoundland and elsewhere.
These things all help to mark the midpoint of the Lenten journey. At best they serve to remind us that the pilgrimage of Lent is not just to God but with God in the wilderness conditions of human experience. They remind us of an essential feature of the pilgrim ways, namely that it is a blessing and a cause for joy and not some kind of grim and tiresome restriction. We might do well to remember that in the face of COVID-19 and the ups and downs of its restrictions. “Blessed are they whose strength in in thee,/ in whose heart are the pilgrim ways; /Who going through the Vale of Misery use it for a well;/yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings,” as Psalm 84 (vs. 5,6) teaches. This is the counter to what N.T. Wright calls our “late-flowering Epicureanism,” which may or may not be the same as the rather restrictive nature of Epicurus’s teachings which are at some remove from contemporary hedonism.
Yet such things can also distract us from the way in which these readings connect us to the deeper meaning of Lent as the way of the Cross and to our participation in the Passion of Christ. The blessing of the pilgrim ways is in Christ and in his Exodus, or going forth into the wilderness of our sin and darkness. This Sunday is not a reprieve or a rest-stop on the way to a happy-clappy Easter. It looks back and it looks ahead, not only back to Exodus and to Numbers in terms of the wilderness journey of Israel which is reworked in Christ, but also back to the lessons of the last three Sundays. It also anticipates and so looks ahead to Maundy Thursday and to the Passion itself at the same time as it highlights for us the sacramental means of our participation in Christ’s sacrifice throughout the whole of the pilgrim ways of our life.
Tuesday, March 16th, Eve of St. Patrick
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme III
Sunday, March 21st, Fifth Sunday in Lent / Passion Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Thursday, March 25th, Annunciation
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme IV
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.