Month: February 2023

Prayers and liturgy

George Herbert, Priest and Poet

The collect for today, the commemoration of George Herbert (1593-1633), Priest, Poet (source):

George HerbertKing of glory, king of peace,
who didst call thy servant George Herbert
from the pursuit of worldly honours
to be a priest in the temple of his God and king:
grant us also the grace to offer ourselves
with singleness of heart in humble obedience to thy service;
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.
Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 5:1-4
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-10

The hymn, “Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing”, was originally a poem by George Herbert, published in The Temple.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither fly:
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out:
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

George Herbert was born to a wealthy family in Montgomery, Wales. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he appeared headed for a prominent public career, but the deaths of King James I and two patrons ended that possibility.

He chose to pursue holy orders in the Church of England and became rector at Bemerton, near Salisbury, in 1629, where he died four years later of tuberculosis. His preaching and service to church and parishioners contributed to his reputation as an exemplary pastor. He did not become known as a poet until shortly after he died, when his poetry collection The Temple was published.

He is buried in Saint Andrew Bemerton Churchyard.

Artwork: William Dyce, George Herbert at Bemerton, Salisbury, 1860. Oil on canvas, Guildhall Art Gallery, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion, First Sunday in Lent

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion on the First Sunday in Lent, from Fr. David Curry.

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Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

“Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God”

Lent begins, we might say, with the temptations of Christ as set before us in today’s Gospel. It ends on Good Friday with the crucifixion of Christ, with his being pierced on the cross. Between the Greek verbs for being tempted, πειραω, and for being pierced, πειρω, there is, we might say, merely an ‘alpha’ of difference. The words are closely similar; each alludes in some sense to the other. They belong to the radical nature of the Incarnation in terms of the pageant of human redemption. God’s engagement with our humanity includes the whole range of the human condition and thus its brokenness.

The Litany is the earliest part of the English liturgy translated largely from Latin litanies into English by Cranmer in 1544. It marks the beginning of what would culminate in The Book of Common Prayer. In the Litany, we pray to be delivered from various forms of sin and evil, from disorders both natural and human that belong to the fallen world and to ourselves, but we pray for deliverance only by the grace of God in Christ. The obsecrations or sacred entreaties in the Litany begin as follows: “By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, Good Lord, deliver us.”

The Litany is a way of praying the Scriptures as credally understood. In these petitions there is the unpacking of the essential doctrinal moments in the life of Christ. The “Incarnation” is the collective term and principle of all that belongs to the radical meaning of Christ as the Word made flesh, such as his “holy Nativity” which is the Christmas theme, followed by his “Baptism,” an Epiphany theme, but then immediately associated with his “Fasting, and Temptation,” the themes of early Lent. They, in turn, give way to his “Agony and bloody Sweat” recalling Gethsemane, his “Cross and Passion,” his “precious Death and Burial,” the themes of Holy Week. Out of those moments comes his “glorious Resurrection and Ascension,” his “sending of the Holy Spirit,” his “heavenly Intercession,” and his “Coming again in glory.” It is essentially a way of praying the Creed and highlights the inescapable interrelation of these themes.

“By thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation.” It is a powerful triplet of complementary and interrelated ideas. Christ is baptized for us even as his baptism is also an Epiphany of the Trinity and thus baptism incorporates us into the life of God through his being with us, even to the point of his being “made sin for us.” But what about his fasting and temptation? How is that an essential aspect of the Incarnation? Because it belongs to the larger pageant of redemption which is about God entering into our broken world and our broken lives to bring us back to himself. That turning back is repentance expressed and embodied in the activities and disciplines that belong to our being, as the Epistle puts it, “co-workers” with God in Christ.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 27 February – 5 March

Thursday, March 2nd
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I

Friday, March 3rd
7:00pm Guitar Trio Concert featuring Daniel MacNeil, Scott MacMillan & Emma Rush sponsored by Musique Royale. Click here for more information.

Sunday, March 5th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Looking ahead:

Thursday, March 9th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme II

Sunday, March 11th, Third Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, March 14th
7:00 Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, March 19th, Fourth Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

All services to be held in Parish Hall, January through March.

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday in Lent

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

Alessandro Magnasco, Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, Landscape with the Temptation of ChristArtwork: Alessandro Magnasco, Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, Landscape with the Temptation of Christ, c. 1715. Oil on canvas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Matthias the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Matthias the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles: Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:15-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:1-11

Stefan Lochner, Martyrdom of St. MatthiasThe name of this saint is probably an abbreviation of Mattathias, meaning “gift of Yahweh”.

Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after Judas had betrayed Jesus and then committed suicide. In the time between Christ’s Ascension and Pentecost, the small band of disciples, numbering about 120, gathered together and Peter spoke of the necessity of selecting a twelfth apostle to replace Judas. Peter enunciated two criteria for the office of apostle: He must have been a follower of Jesus from the Baptism to the Ascension, and he must be a witness to the resurrected Lord. This meant that he had to be able to proclaim Jesus as Lord from first-hand personal experience. Two of the brothers were found to fulfill these qualifications: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas also called the Just. Matthias was chosen by lot. Neither of these two men is referred to by name in the four Gospels, although several early church witnesses, including Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, report that Matthias was one of the seventy-two disciples.

Like the other apostles and disciples, St. Matthias received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Since he is not mentioned later in the New Testament, nothing else is known for certain about his activities. He is said to have preached in Judaea for some time and then traveled elsewhere. Various contradictory stories about his apostolate have existed since early in church history. The tradition held by the Greek Church is that he went to Cappadocia and the area near the Caspian Sea where he was crucified at Colchis. Some also say he went to Ethiopia before Cappadocia. Another tradition holds that he was stoned to death and then beheaded at Jerusalem.

The Empress St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, is said to have brought St Matthias’s relics to Rome c. 324, some of which were moved to the Benedictine Abbey of St Matthias, Trier, Germany, in the 11th century.

Artwork: Stefan Lochner, Martyrdom of St. Matthias, c. 1435. Oil on wood, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 23 February

Turn thou us and so shall we be turned

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent in the Christian understanding. It is an intentional period that emphasizes the idea of self-examination and reflection and the exercise of self-control by fasting and self-denial. It has its counterpart in the ascetic traditions of other religions and philosophies. This year, for instance, the Christian Lent and Easter and the Islamic observance of Ramadan will overlap; Ramadan begins on March 22nd and ends on April 20th with Eid al-Fitr. Lent began this Wednesday, February 22nd; Easter is April 9th.

Ashes are imposed on our foreheads as a sign of repentance which is the idea of our turning back to God from whom we have turned away. The ashes are imposed with the words which recall us to creation, to our being the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. In other words, Lent – an Old English term referring to the lengthening of the days – seeks our being renewed and re-created. It is the intentional journey of the soul seeking the good which is found in God and in the motions of God’s love.

The practices that belong to the disciplines of Lent involve the whole of our being: body, soul, and mind and as such are an important reminder of our lives as embodied beings and of our lives in community. The good that we seek for ourselves can never be a private good, a matter of mere self-interest. One of the great images against the good as self-interest is in Plato’s famous image of the Cave. The prisoners chained at the bottom of the cave mistake the images or shadows for reality. But in being turned around (how? By the eros or desire to know?), there is the discovery of the things themselves, the physical objects and events in time and space, and then, the ascent of the mind to mental realities such as in mathematics that are abstractions from the material world, and then to the Forms or Ideas that belong to the true knowledge of what things truly are. Beyond the line in the interrelation between knowing and being – different forms of knowing in relation to different forms of being – there is the Good which is the unity of the being and knowing of things as the principle upon which they depend. Going up the line is like going out of the Cave but here is the crucial ethical point.

The Good is for all and not just for the privileged few and all of the forms of knowing and being participate to some degree or other in this intellectual structure of reality. Thus Plato argues that those who have made their way out of the Cave have to return to the Cave in order to teach and guide those who remain in the Cave. His famous image is that either kings become philosophers or philosophers become kings. Either way what is emphasized is the priority of knowing in relation to human life individually and collectively. But that turning back to the cave by the philosopher highlights the ethical concern for all.

Lent (and Ramadan, too) are not simply self-serving but belong to our lives together. They seek to strengthen the idea of individual responsibility and service which belongs to the good of all and not simply for the few. In a world where the pressures to out-source our thinking to machines is increasingly so great, Lent recalls us to ourselves as knowers and lovers of the Good, a Good which is all-inclusive. Thus the disciplines of Lent speak to our human freedom and dignity as responsible agents and not just things to be manipulated by defaulting to thinking like machines. Lent in this sense is about reclaiming what belongs to our humanity.

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

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Prayers and liturgy

Lindel Tsen and Paul Sasaki, Bishops

The collect for today, the commemoration of Lindel Tsen (1885-1946), Bishop in China, consecrated 1929, and Paul Sasaki (1885-1954), Bishop in Japan, consecrated 1935 (source):

Bishop Paul Shinji SasakiBishop Philip Lindel TsenAlmighty God, we offer thanks for the faith and witness of Paul Sasaki, bishop in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai [Anglican Church in Japan], tortured and imprisoned by his government, and Philip [Lindel] Tsen, leader of the Chinese Anglican Church, arrested for his faith. We pray that all Church leaders oppressed by hostile governments may be delivered by thy mercy, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may be faithful to the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-32

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Sermons

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

“Make me a clean heart, O God,/ and renew a right spirit within me.”

‘Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,’ as one version of a children’s rhyme puts it. Yes, but only so as to rise up. And no, it has nothing to do with the Great Plague or the Black Death. That is a meta folkloric myth or invention of the 19th century.

Dust and ashes are the symbols of the beginning of Lent. They recall us at once to creation and to repentance which has to do with our awareness of having turned away from God. As such dust and ashes belong to the idea of our turning back to God from whom in sin we have turned away. They belong symbolically and in a sacramental fashion to our seeking God’s will for our re-creation rather than remaining in separation. But it is about the seeking. That is why Lent is really the pilgrimage of love, our loves seeking the divine love which seeks our good. We seek the good which God seeks for us and which belongs to his essential nature as the All-Good, we might say. We can only seek the goodness of God for us through God’s love.

The exhortation in the Prayer Book Penitential Service is a masterpiece of doctrinal minimalism. It speaks about the custom “in the primitive Church” – a phrase which is intentionally unspecified but refers in general to the early Patristic period which witnesses to the emergence of three interrelated things: the Holy Scriptures; the Creeds, and the ascetic patterns of the Church’s life of devotion. One forgets that the books of what we mostly mean by the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, to use Christian language, were only explicitly named by St. Athanasius in a letter in the early 4th century but as bearing witness to what had been received and recognised much earlier. Thus the emergence of the Canon of Scripture parallels the establishment of what Irenaeus and others called the Rule of Faith, namely, the Apostles’ Creed, and, then the emergence of the Nicene Creed in the 4th century first at the Council of Nicaea and then at Constantinople, 325 and 387 AD respectively. What we call the Nicene Creed is properly speaking the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. Later there came into use the so-called Athanasian Creed. These are the three Creeds of the Church Universal.

All that the exhortation says in its modest way is that it was “the custom to observe with great devotion the days of our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection, and to prepare for the same by a season of penitence and fasting.” It is not only minimalist but highlights the essential features of the Gospel narratives. To put it somewhat cryptically: Just as there can be no Easter without Good Friday so too there can be no Good Friday without Easter. The accounts of the Passion which are set before us in Holy Week are only possible through the mystery of the Resurrection. And so, too, with Lent as a time of discipline. It is only possible through the radical meaning of Christ’s Resurrection which never hides or conceals the marks of the crucifixion. Indeed, as Lancelot Andrewes emphasizes rather beautifully, “Christ crucified is the book of love opened for us to read,” liber caritatis. Lent is really about our reading that book of love.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ash Wednesday

The collect for today, The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 4:6-11a
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21

Robert S. Duncanson, At the Foot of the CrossArtwork: Robert S. Duncanson, At the Foot of the Cross, 1846. Oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan.

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