The collect for today, the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
LORD, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1-11
Artwork: Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, Christ Healing the Sick, 1742. Oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Luke’s story of the one who turned back giving thanks is the classical and quintessential thanksgiving story. In Canada, the Thanksgiving Weekend is associated with Harvest Thanksgiving as well as the forms of National Thanksgiving. With the first, we give thanks for the harvest and with the second, we give thanks for the spiritual and rational freedoms which properly belong to our lives as citizens. Both forms of thanksgiving point us to the radical nature of thanksgiving as something spiritual and intellectual. A check on the idea of taking things and one another for granted.
Thanksgiving is the counter to all of the forms of privilege and entitlement, to the idea that somehow we are owed things like life and pleasure. It is profoundly about giving not getting and only through a recognition of what the American theologian and novelist Marilynn Robinson wonderfully calls “the givenness of things.” Thanksgiving recognises the spiritual nature of the natural world and of human affairs. As such it opens us out to a larger understanding of our humanity universally considered regardless of the particular cultures from which we come. It is an interesting point. We can only arise to things universal through the particularities of our cultures and lives. Thanksgiving reminds us that we are embodied beings and embedded in certain cultures with their distinctive histories and characteristics.
Thanksgiving, like learning, cannot be forced. It can only come from within as a result of a recognition of things without which belong to life itself. In the theological understanding it is really about God as life and the source of all the forms of life in which we find ourselves.
I am reminded of St. Francis of Assissi’s lovely Canticle of the Sun (c. 1225), one of the earliest literary works written in Italian. It is a lovely hymn of “praise to God with all his creatures”, Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brothers Wind and Air, Sister Water and Brother Fire, Sister Mother Earth and even Sister Death. The canticle looks back to Genesis, to creation understood as distinguishing one thing from another, as well as echoing the ancient Greek ‘physicists’, like Empedocles who saw nature in terms of a combination of complementary material elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire, for example. The canticle reminds us of the deep connection between the Creator and creation in ways that complement many of the indigenous cultures of Canada. There is a kind of intimacy and warmth to St. Francis’s Canticle of prayer and praise. It is humbling. “Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks and serve him with great humility”, it concludes.
The 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.
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
Artwork: Giovanni Bellini, St. Francis in the Desert, c. 1480, Tempera and oil on panel, The Frick Collection, New York,
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity.
We meet on Angel’s wings in Micahelmastide to ponder the mysteries of God’s love and of our lives as embraced in “the love of Christ which passeth knowledge”. Michaelmas belongs to a rich tradition of reflection about what it means to be human; in short, it contributes to a form of ‘theological anthropology’, to how we think and understand our humanity as grounded in God. So, too, in today’s readings, we are being reminded in profound ways that we are intellectual and spiritual creatures, creatures whose very being is caught up in the activities of knowing and loving. The interplay of knowledge and love contributes to a more comprehensive and a larger view of our humanity, to the ontology of love rather than merely power.
God’s question to Job is particularly suggestive and arresting. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth … when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job. 38. 4, 7). The morning stars and the sons of God are the Angels. They testify to the spiritual and intellectual nature of reality. We are one with the Angels in thinking the things of God in nature and in human affairs; we are together with them in the same house of the spirit, they above stairs and we below stairs, in Mark Frank’s lovely image. Angels, like us, are spiritual and intellectual beings but, unlike us, they are invisible and immaterial realities. We are embodied creatures; they are not. They are the pure thoughts of God in creation and in redemption, non spatial and sempiternal.
God’s question to Job echoes God’s first question to us in the Garden of Eden. “Where are you?” God asks (Gen. 3. 9). Not because he doesn’t know but because his question awakens us to self-consciousness, to the idea of knowing that we know. It is about who we are. Yet our awakening to self-consciousness happens through disobedience and separation, through contradiction and the denial of what we, in some sense, know; in short, through our presumption. ‘Adam, our humanity, is given a commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen. 2.17). The serpent, later identified as Satan, the Devil, the great dragon, asks the very first question of the Scriptures. “Did God say?” (Gen. 3.1) But we know what God said. The serpent is simply an aspect of our being as spiritual and intellectual creatures who seek to know. Such is our nature. Man by nature, Aristotle famously says, desires to know. But in what way? Everything turns on that question.
Sunday, October 9th, Harvest Thanksgiving / Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
Thanksgiving for the 140th Anniversary of the building of Christ Church, 1882-2022
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Events:
Friday, November 11th, Remembrance Day
11:00am Service at Windsor Cenotaph
12noon Service at KES Cenotaph
Saturday, November 19th
4:30-6:00pm Ham Supper, Parish Hall
The collect for today, the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Ephesians 3:13-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17
Artwork: Domenico Fiasella, Christ Raising the Son of the Widow of Nain, c. 1615. Oil on canvas, Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Remigius (c. 438-533), Bishop of Reims, Apostle to the Franks (source):
O God, who by the teaching of thy faithful servant and bishop Remigius didst turn the nation of the Franks from vain idolatry to the worship of thee, the true and living God, in the fullness of the catholic faith; Grant that we who glory in the name of Christian may show forth our faith in worthy deeds; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. John 14:3-7
Remigius was consecrated bishop of Reims, France, at age 22. The pagan Clovis I, who had married the Christian princess Clothilde, began his reign as king of the Franks about 20 years later, in 481.
Before entering combat against German tribes at Tolbiac, Clovis prayed to “Clothilde’s God” for victory. His soldiers won the battle, and Clothilde asked Remigius to teach the king about Christianity. Clovis was amazed by the story of “this unarmed God who was not of the race of Thor or Odin”. In the words of Remigius, the king came “to adore what he had burnt and to burn what he had adored”.
In 496, Remigius baptised Clovis in a public ceremony at Reims Cathedral. Three thousand Franks also became Christians. Under the king’s protection, Remigius was able to spread the gospel and build churches throughout Gaul.
Artwork: Jean Hélart, The Baptism of Clovis, 1670. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims.