Month: December 2022

Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

RAISE up, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:4-7
The Gospel: St John 1:19-29

Alexander Ivanov, The Appearance of Christ before the PeopleArtwork: Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov, The Appearance of Christ before the People, 1837-57. Oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ignatius, Bishop & Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ignatius (d. c. 107), Bishop of Antioch, Martyr (source):

Feed us, O Lord, with the living bread
and make us drink deep of the cup of salvation
that, following the teaching of thy bishop Ignatius,
and rejoicing in the faith
with which he embraced the death of a martyr,
we may be nourished for that eternal life
which he ever desired;
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: Romans 8:35-39
The Gospel: St. John 12:23-26

Francisco Rizi, Martyrdom of St. Ignatius of AntiochIgnatius, who became Bishop of Antioch c. 69, is a key witness of the early church in the era immediately following the apostles.

Nothing certain is known of his episcopate before his journey from Antioch to Rome as a prisoner condemned to death in the arena. Arrested during the persecution of the emperor Trajan, he was received in Smyrna by Bishop (later Saint) Polycarp and delegates from several other churches in Asia Minor.

While at Smyrna, Ignatius wrote letters to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, and Rome. Later, at Troas, he wrote to the churches at Philadelphia and Smyrna, and to Polycarp.

In his letters, Ignatius clearly affirmed Christ’s divinity and his resurrection from the dead. He encouraged all Christians to maintain church unity in and through the Eucharist and the authority of the local bishop, and he wrote against a heresy that contained elements of Docetism, Judaism, and possibly Gnosticism.

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Sermons

2022 Advent Programme 2: “And she was troubled at this saying”

“And she was troubled at this saying”

The Ember Days are a special spiritual reminder of the primacy of the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit as the guiding principle of the Church’s life in each of the seasons of nature’s year. As Lancelot Andrewes observes, the sending of the Holy Spirit is really the alpha and omega of all our celebrations. Along with being special times for ordinations, they recall us to the purpose and meaning of the ministry: in the spring of Lent, in the summer of Whitsunday, in the Autumn, and now in winter, in Advent. For each, too, there is a special focus of spiritual intention. For Advent, it is Peace in the World which relates to the reading from Micah as the lesson along with the story of the Annunciation at the Gospel.

The lesson from Micah highlights the very powerful concept of “beat[ing] swords into ploughshares” and “spears into pruning hooks”, images of the transformation of the city at war into the city of peace, a peace which is ultimately found in our “go[ing] up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob” where “he shall teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” These are images which have their Homeric counterpart in the Shield of Achilles in the Iliad which depicts the city at peace and the city at war. The images here in Micah belong to the redemption of our humanity in our being restored to fellowship and life with God. It is very much about our learning the ways of God in whom alone we may find peace and joy.

It cannot be found simply in ourselves. We need these spiritual reminders precisely in the face of catastrophes and tragedies that we confront in our current war-torn world, a world of ‘the endless wars’, it seems, as the sad legacy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries especially. We confront the endless spectacle of humanitarian disasters and the horrors of war that is simply mind-numbing at the same time as we talk about world peace. How to think about such things? Only through prayer. Only through the sober and sombre reminder of the complexities and confusions of human sin and wickedness. Only through the radical message of Advent which counters all human presumption. The Advent Embertide calls to mind the message of Pentecost, namely that the human community and city has no unity in itself. Peace and unity can only be found in God and in God with us. Only through the co-inherence of our humanity with God and so with one another. Such is the burden of the story of the Annunciation tonight. For we, like Mary, are surely troubled in our hearts about the words we hear in the face of the world we experience.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 15 December

Journeys

Exams end the school term, or so it seems. Yet they are really a feature of the continuing and, we hope, never-ending journey of learning; in short, they are a basic feature of education and life.

In the Christian understanding, Christmas brings us to Bethlehem. But it is not just a destination, an ending. The pageant of Lessons and Carols as well as the Christmas crèche scenes concentrate a great crowd of images in Bethlehem: shepherds and kings, men and angels, a man and a woman, a woman and a child, God and Man, heaven and earth, and, at the very least in the biblical accounts, sheep, to which holy imagination has added a whole menagerie of animals! Bethlehem is paradise restored, we might say, with the idea of the harmony and unity of the objective diversities of creation. “High and low, rich and poor, one with another”, as the Advent Matin Responsory suggests. This contrasts with the subjective categories of radical indeterminacy in our contemporary confusions.

But Bethlehem is not an end-point but the beginning of a greater journey that encompasses within the Christmas mystery the flight into Egypt and then the journeys to Jerusalem. Bethlehem and Jerusalem are the twin poles of the Christian imaginary around which everything moves as in an ellipse. They are inseparably connected. As the poet/preacher John Donne nicely notes: Christ’s “Christmas-day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day”.

As has been noted on occasion in Chapel, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all religions of the logos, of the Word, albeit in different registers of understanding. For Judaism that is captured in the TANAKH, an acronym of Hebrew consonants representative of the Torah (Lawa), the Prophets (Nevi’im) and the Writings (Ketuvim) emphasizing the centrality of the Word as Law; for Islam, the Word is concentrated in the recitation of Allah to Muhammed, the Qur’an, the Word as Will; for Christians, it is the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the New Testament understood as witnessing to the concept of the Word made Flesh. Along with other world religions and philosophies there is an abiding focus on things written, on texts. One of the meanings of the word, religion, is re-reading (re-legere). The other is the idea of a bond (re-ligare) between God and humanity.

Bethlehem in both these senses marks the beginning of the longer journey of the understanding. The metaphysical light which comes into the darkness of the world in Advent becomes the light of God within the world which teaches and illuminates our understanding in the midst of the complexities and confusions of human experience. Like exams, it is all part of the journey of education that belongs to a deepening of the understanding of our humanity.

A blessed Christmas break to all.

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy

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Events

Christmas at Christ Church 2022

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

Sunday, December 25th
10:00am Christmas Communion Service

Monday, December 26th
10:00am Mass of the Feast of Stephen

Tuesday, December 27th
10:00am Mass of St. John the Evangelist

Wednesday, December 28th
10:00am Mass of the Holy Innocents

Sunday, January 1st, 2023, Octave Day of Christmas, Circumcision, & New Year’s Day
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Christmas Lessons & Carols

O 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, we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come again to be our Judge; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, The Third Sunday in Advent

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent

“Art thou he that should come?”

The questioning of John the Baptist about Jesus as the Messiah is complemented by Mary’s questioning about the Annunciation to her which is about Christ’s conception. “The Lord is with thee” the Angel Gabriel said. “Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?” John asks in prison, sending two of his disciples to Jesus. Mary, as we will hear in this week’s Advent Ember Days, “was troubled at the Angel’s saying” wondering “what manner of salutation this should be”. It leads to her question recalled in the great pageant of Advent Lessons and Carols, “how shall this be seeing I know not a man?”

These questions highlight Advent as the season of questions opening us out to the kingdom of God and reminding us of the darkness of doubt and uncertainty. John the Baptist and Mary are the outstanding figures of the landscape of Advent. Their questions point us to the radical meaning of the coming of God’s Word in judgment and hope, in grace and salvation, in Word and Sacrament, and, ultimately, as the Word made flesh. That coming is at once in the body and in the mind. Holding the intellectual and the sensible together in creative tension is the meaning of faith: “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11.1). By way of John the Baptist and Mary we learn about the nature of our spiritual lives in faith. It is very much fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. And that requires repentance and rejoicing. Such is the witness of John the Baptist and Mary.

And such are the spiritual principles that define our souls in the pageant of Advent. “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel”, the refrain of the Veni Emmanuel exults, echoing the Introit Psalm for this Sunday, “Rejoice in the Lord”. But how? Through Mary. Only so is Christ “Emmanuel”, God with us who comes in the very substance of our humanity as the Word made flesh. Yet only so through Mary’s ‘yes’ to God, her strong affirmation of what defines faith: “Be it unto me according to thy word”. Mary’s Magnificat belongs to the high note of rejoicing on this Sunday known traditionally as Gaudate Sunday, one of the Latin words for rejoice. We repent with John the Baptist in looking towards and learning about the need for a Saviour. We rejoice with Mary in the mysteries of God’s coming to us. Both belong to the ministry of the Church in preparing and making ready God’s way to us and in us. How?

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 12 – 18 December

Tuesday, December 13th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, December 15th, Eve of Ember Friday (O Sapienta)
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme II

Sunday, December 18th, Fourth Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the Third Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:2-10

Gioacchino Assereto, St. John the BaptistArtwork: Gioacchino Assereto, St. John the Baptist, 1630. Oil on canvas, Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse.

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Sermons

2022 Advent Programme 1: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”

“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”

Elizabeth’s words of greeting to Mary eloquently express a significant doctrinal sensibility which belongs to orthodox Christianity. We cannot think of Jesus apart from Mary, nor Mary apart from Jesus. Mary appears in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles at a number of key doctrinal moments: Christ’s nativity, his crucifixion and even at Pentecost. In the liturgical life of the Church, the major feasts of Christ are complemented by a series of Marian festivals, a kind of parallelism. Her Annunciation is his conception which anticipates his nativity complemented by the commemoration of her nativity (September 8th). Mary and Jesus meet in the double-feast of Candlemas, at once the Presentation of Christ in the Temple and the Purification of Mary (February 2nd). His Resurrection has its counterpart in her Assumption, the Falling Asleep or Dormition of Mary (August 15th). Similarly, his conception at her annunciation is complemented by her conception which we commemorate this night (December 8th) whether with or without the adjective “immaculate”. It means pure or spotless which is part of the larger story of doctrinal reflection. Christ is like us in all respects except sin. Mary’s ‘immaculate’ conception is related to that idea which has to do with the nature of redemption.

As John Donne puts it in an extravagant sonnet, Annunciation, God “yields himself to lie/ In prison, in thy womb; and though he there /Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he ‘will were/Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try”. The underlying theological insight is that sin, both original and actual, is a negation of our humanity in its truth and purity. Christ assumes his humanity from Mary and as such, in this view, is pure. Christ is the eternal son of God, “that pure one,” as Irenaeus puts it, “opening purely that pure womb which regenerates men unto God and which he himself made pure.” The emphasis, once again, is on the necessary connection between Christ and Mary. Mary’s purity remains a major theme for Anglican divinity and appears in the proper preface for Christmas and the Annunciation. Christ “was made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin” (BCP, p. 79).

We meet to honour Mary, Virgin and Mother. She is, as one 17th century writer put it, “The Femall Glory” (Anthony Stafford). For it is through her that we are blessed by the fruit of her womb who in turn is blessed because Christ’s Incarnation is through her. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb”. But only as she says, “according to thy word”.

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