Tuesday, March 15th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I
Sunday, March 20th, Third Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Thursday, March 24th, Eve of the Annunciation
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme II
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through April 5th. Return to the Church for Holy Week & Easter.
The collect for today, the Second Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
The Gospel: St. Matthew 15:21-28
Artwork: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Christ with the Canaanite Woman and Her Daughter, 1909. Oil on canvas, Spelman College, Atlanta.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Gregory the Great (540-604), Bishop of Rome, Doctor of the Church (source):
O merciful Father,
who didst choose thy bishop Gregory
to be a servant of the servants of God:
grant that, like him, we may ever desire to serve thee
by proclaiming thy gospel to the nations,
and may ever rejoice to sing thy praises;
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 Lesson: 1 Chronicles 25: 1a, 6-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:42-45
Artwork: Spinello Aretino, The Apparition of St. Michael the Archangel to St. Gregory, c.1402-1403. Fresco, Cappella Guasconi, Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo, Italy.
One of the disciplines of Lent is the idea of “reading and meditat[ing] upon God’s Holy Word.” It is to that end that we have embarked upon a brief look at parts of the wonderful narrative of the story of David. It belongs to the further idea of “self-examination and repentance” that is part of the spiritual discipline of Lent as it is in other religions traditions as well. In one sense, the Chapel readings in this last week before the March break speak to an ancient question raised by Plotinus. “But we … who are we?” Or to put it in another way, where are our hearts?
In the story of David, we see the heart of David which God sees. But that connects to what we see in one another’s hearts as well as to the project of self-knowing, knowing even as we are known. Thus in the great narrative arc of David’s story, there is the powerful story of the friendship between Jonathan and David. This places the David narrative within the larger spiritual and intellectual traditions of reflection about the power and nature of friendship and to the idea of our friendship with the Good.
It looks back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, to the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Enkidu is created to be Gilgamesh’s second self such that Gilgamesh learns to see others not as things to be abused and exploited but as persons to be respected and honoured. The death of Enkidu awakens Gilgamesh to wisdom and to a deeper form of self-awareness. It sets him on the quest for wisdom. Homer’s Iliad presents us with the profound friendship between Patroclus and Achilleus. Aristotle will write in the Nicomachean Ethics about the power of friendship. Later, Cicero will write an important treatise, de Amicitia, Of Friendship, offering the idea that “friendship is nothing else than an accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection”. In the early 12th century, Aelred of Rievaulx in northern England wrote his famous de Spirituali Amicitia, On Spiritual Friendship, translating the more familiar phrase “God is love” as “God is friendship”. Friendship is a gift of God. The friend is “the companion of your soul, to whom you can entrust yourself as to another self,” an echo of the Epic of Gilgamesh. A true friend, he says “sees nothing in his/her friend but their heart”, echoing explicitly the story of Jonathan and David.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Priest, Friar, Poet, Doctor of the Church (source):
Everlasting God,
who didst enrich thy Church with the learning and holiness
of thy servant Thomas Aquinas:
grant to all who seek thee
a humble mind and a pure heart
that they may know thy Son Jesus Christ
to be the way, the truth and the life;
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:47-52
Born into a noble family near Aquino, between Rome and Naples, St. Thomas was educated at the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino until age thirteen, and then at the University of Naples. When he decided to join the Dominican Order, his family were dismayed because the Dominicans were mendicants and regarded as socially inferior to the Benedictines. Thomas’s brothers kidnapped and imprisoned him for a year in the family’s castle, but he finally escaped and became a Dominican friar in 1244.
The rest of Thomas’s life was spent studying, teaching, preaching, and writing. Initially, he studied philosophy and theology with Albert the Great at Paris and Cologne. Albert was said to prophesy that, although Thomas was called the dumb ox (probably referring to his physical size), “his lowing would soon be heard all over the world”.
His two greatest works are Summa Contra Gentiles, begun c. 1259 and completed in 1264, and Summa Theologica, begun c. 1266 but uncompleted at his death.
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the First Sunday in Lent.
The Epistle reading from 2 Corinthians 6 lays out in a powerful and compelling way the forms of our response to the grace of God now which is “the day of salvation.” Our text is simply one part of a wonderful series of dialectical and paradoxical relations which have to do with who we are and how we see ourselves in the sight of God “as the ministers of God.” It provides a way of thinking the question which Plotinus (3rd c. AD) will later articulate but which actually belongs to all philosophy and life. “But we … who are we?”
The preoccupation with ourselves is an ancient and modern question albeit in different registers of meaning. The story of Narcissus for the ancient Greeks is a cautionary tale which has a certain modern resonance. It is really about the forms of self-obsession perhaps best illustrated in the ‘selfie culture’ of our contemporary world, not to mention the self-absorbed features of social media in general. Just as Narcissus drowns in the image of himself in the pond so in our contemporary world we are obsessed with ourselves and drown in the image of ourselves. In both cases we lose sight of who we are in the greater canvass of reality and, more importantly, in the sight of God.
“Know thyself,” the great Greek maxim of the Delphic Oracle, has its perfect counterpart in the Hebrew idea that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9.10; Ps. 110.10; Job 28.28). This is, I think, completely different from our modern self-obsessions which are entirely solipsistic and entirely self-involved, as if reality is only what is in our minds rather than in our engagement with what is greater than ourselves. To “know thyself” means to know your place within the world as an ordered whole, the cosmos, hence reality. “The fear of the Lord” is the wisdom which knows God as the principle of all things.
Lent seeks to clarify who we are by placing us more clearly and more fully in the sight and life of God. Paul’s wonderful rhetorical flow in the Epistle confronts us with the necessary interchange and back-and-forth of opposites; in short, the dialectic of human life as informed and transformed, or at least in the process of such a transformation, by virtue of our response to the grace of God. Paul is calling attention to our attitude of mind towards everything which we confront and experience. It offers a kind of coincidence of opposites as well as a sense of inner resilience and strength over and against the ups and downs of the world. In that sense it is really about facing suffering and learning from it. Such is the meaning of the Exodus in its fullest sense.
Tuesday, March 8th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Sunday, March 13th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Tuesday, March 15th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through April 5th. Return to the Church for Holy Week & Easter.
The collect for today, the First Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:1-11
Artwork: Eric Armusik, The Temptation of Christ, 2011. Oil on birch, Private collection.
The story of David and Goliath is perhaps somewhat familiar even in our post-Christian world of diminished biblical literacy. It is commonly treated as an image and metaphor for the underdog especially in the sports world but sometimes spills over into politics and international affairs. Already we see the way it is used in terms of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the big guy, Russia, over and against the little guy, Ukraine. But then those polarities get reversed by those who view things from the perspective of Russia, the little guy against the big Western world under American domination. Yet in all of these conflicting viewpoints, the image of David and Goliath always functions in terms of what is big and physically imposing against what is viewed as small and weak. And while there may be discrepancies of power, it is not always the case that things can be measured simply in such terms.
I am struck by how much the story is almost completely misread. It really follows directly upon what we saw last week about the anointing of David where the strong point is made that “the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance”, upon matters of strength and number, but “the Lord looks on the heart”. The story of David and Goliath makes exactly the same point.
In the context of a struggle between the Philistines and the Israelites, the giant Goliath challenges the armies of the Lord. He is a giant figure, to be sure, but what is greater than his bulk and strength, we might say, is his ego and arrogance, his presumption and boastfulness. It is not really about the underdog taking on the top dog. It is more about a clash of principles. What defines you? The braggadocio of a Goliath beating his chest or the Lord God of all reality who sees into your heart? The story is not simply about the little guy who takes down the big guy. It is about the spirit of the Lord in the heart of David. He has a hold of something far greater than himself.
The story is not without its amusement, especially with David putting on the armour of Saul and then not being able to move! Instead, he takes up his sling-shot along with five smooth stones. What moves him is at once a kind of courage born of his life as a shepherd protecting the sheep from bear and lion and of a confidence in the truth of God which Goliath has mocked and derided. David goes out against Goliath not “with a spear and a sword and a javelin” but, as he says, “in the name of the Lord of hosts.” He is armed from within. It is a contest of principles.
