Month: December 2022

Prayers and liturgy

The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The collect for today, the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (source):

Geertgen tot Sint Jans, The Glorification of the VirginAlmighty and everlasting God,
who stooped to raise fallen humanity
through the child-bearing of blessed Mary:
grant that we, who have seen thy glory
revealed in our human nature
and thy love made perfect in our weakness,
may daily be renewed in thine image
and conformed to the pattern of thy Son
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Proverbs 8:22-35
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:26-28

Artwork: Geertgen tot Sint Jans, The Glorification of the Virgin, 1480s. Oil on panel, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Nicholas, Bishop

Jaroslav Cermák, St. Nicholas of BariThe collect for today, the Feast of Saint Nicholas (d. c. 326), Bishop of Myra (source):

Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who didst choose thy servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of thy grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
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 St. John 4:7-14
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:13-16

Artwork: Jaroslav Cermák, St. Nicholas of Bari, 19th century. Oil on canvas, Galerie Art Praha, Prague.

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Prayers and liturgy

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

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

“My words shall not pass away”

We live in the end times. That is actually a striking feature of Christian hope and witness because it is not simply about the passing events of the day but the constant hope of our looking to God now and always. In short, it is about our awakening to the eternal Word and truth of God as that by which “we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life”. Hope and comfort in the face of darkness and despair. Indeed, as Luke puts it, “this shall be a time for you to bear testimony” (Lk. 21.13). In other words, it is not simply the events and circumstances of our times that define us but how we face them.

That has very much to do with the witness of the Scriptures to “the God of patience and consolation”, “the God of hope”. In the Epistle reading from Romans, the word hope predominates. It appears four times. The resounding note of hope is emphasized as essential to the whole purpose and meaning of God’s Word written. “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,” Paul writes, referencing, paradoxically, the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament. The things written for our learning will come to include Paul’s words which comprise such a large part of the Christian Scriptures of the New Testament. There is an important emphasis on the theme of Revelation, what is mediated by God to us through the Scriptures.

Our readings this morning open us out to the doctrine of Revelation, to the idea of the Scriptures received and understood in the Church as “a doctrinal instrument of salvation”, to capture in a phrase both Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker. As such, the Scriptures are neither an arbitrary collection of texts nor a mere reservoir of information; instead, they set before us a whole way of thinking upon God and his will for our humanity. This is succinctly and wonderfully expressed in today’s Collect which is, perhaps, the most well known of the twenty-four original Collects composed by Thomas Cranmer. It reveals his distinctive signature of drawing upon the appointed Scriptural readings. It is about praying the Scriptures understood credally.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 5 – 11 December

Monday, December 5th
2:30pm Advent Christmas Service of Lessons & Carols for Gr. 10 & 11 – KES Chapel

Thursday, December 8th, Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme I

Sunday, December 11th, Third Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

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

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday in Advent

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

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 21:25-33

Jan van Eyk, Crucifixion and Last JudgmentArtwork: Jan van Eyk, Crucifixion and Last Judgment diptych, c. 1430–40. Oil on canvas transferred from wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 1 December

Light in darkness

There are few images more powerful and more universal than the symbolism of light. It is a feature of the religious and philosophical traditions of the world. We began Chapel this Fall with the first five verses of Genesis and first five verses of John’s Prologue. In both light is a predominant theme. With the pageant of the Services of Nine Lessons and Carol, we end the Fall term in Chapel with John’s Prologue in its entirety. It signals “the light which shineth in darkness and the darkness overcame (or comprehended) it not.” That light is the Word and Son of God who in the Christian understanding is the Word made flesh.

Advent is God’s Word coming to us as Light and Life. It awakens us to the intellectual and spiritual principle of reality which embraces, shapes and redeems the material and sensual world. It reminds us of the truth of our humanity as essentially intellectual and spiritual beings who are inescapably part of that world. To be reminded – note the word, re-mind – is the light in darkness, the darkness of ourselves and the world when we forget or deny the primacy of the spiritual and the intellectual. That forgetting or denial is a kind of violence that contributes to the many forms of violence against the world and one another that is part of the long, sad story of human folly and wickedness. The light of Advent is about the possibilities of hope and peace, of respect and compassion signaled in the greater reality of God’s light and truth.

God in Genesis speaks the world into being. “Let there be light”, the light which distinguishes one thing from another and relates each and every part of the created order to the whole of creation. Our humanity, too, is located within that ordered structure of reality, a reality which is neither completely mind-dependent – it is not just what is in our minds- nor is it completely mind-independent – we cannot remove ourselves from the picture. The theme of light is further developed in John’s Prologue as the Word and Son of the Father. Christ is the light of the world. Thus the imagery of light is critical to the Jewish and Christian understanding and to Islam – Allah is the light of the Heavens and the Earth, even light upon light (Quran 24).

For Hinduism, the feast of Divali is the festival of light, light as Dharma, the principle of essential law or order.. Buddhism literally means enlightenment; the Buddha is the enlightened one. Our School was founded in what has come to be called the Enlightenment, the term for late seventeenth and eighteenth century European culture. Education is about enlightenment, both the light of reason and the light of revelation, through which ideas come to us and become part of us. It is all part of our learning and maturing in understanding. But it means facing the darkness.

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