Christ Church

Sunday, June 25th, Third Sunday after Trinity (in the Octave of St. John the Baptist)
8:00am Holy Communion
9:00am Reunion Service at KES
10:30am Holy Communion

(Fr. Curry away at the Atlantic Theological Conference (Mon., June 26th – Wed., June 28th)

Sunday, July 2nd,, Fourth Sunday after Trinity (in the Octave of SS. Peter & Paul)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 9th, Fifth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 16th, Sixth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 23rd, Seventh Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 30th, Eighth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Fr. Curry is priest-in-charge for Avon Valley Parish and Hantsport during July; Fr. Tom Henderson will be priest-in-charge for Christ Church during August when I will be on vacation.

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

O LORD, who never failest to help and govern them whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love: Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 3:13-24
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:15-24

Artwork: Cornelis Droochsloot, The Halt and the Blind Being Summoned to the Great Supper, 1620-29. Oil on canvas, Wellcome Collection, London.

“Abide in my love.”

And so, at last it ends! And yet, begins. Today you are the pride and joy of the School, of your parents and grandparents, friends and peers. Today, at last, you step up and step out of the School. In a few hours you will have been transformed from being high school students to becoming alumni. There is, I am sure, a tremendous sense of accomplishment and, no doubt, some great sighs of relief. Yet parting is such sweet sorrow, too, for you, perhaps, and for all of us. We are at once both glad and sad to see you go. Why? Because of the intensity of our abiding together in the pursuits and challenges of education. That, I hope, is something that never ends.

This is the paradox of the Encaenia service: An ending that is a beginning. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds,” as Paul says. Encaenia is the renewing of our minds upon the principles that belong to our abiding and being together as a School. Such is the paradox of truth itself. The coming together of opposites, as the great 20th-century physicist Niels Bohr noted, signifies the approach to a deeper level of truth. We “give voice to our opinions,” Augustine remarked more than fifteen hundred years ago, “but they are only opinions, like so many puffs of wind that waft the soul hither and thither and make it veer and turn. The light is clouded over and the truth cannot be seen, although it is there before our eyes” (Conf. IV. 14). Yet the truth is there, “before our very eyes.” We are not simply left with the muddle of endlessly conflicting opinions. Perhaps there is a way to think through the divisions and conflicts of our divided world of partial truths and competing assertions.

Encaenia is a Greek word (εν καινος) that refers to renewal, the re-dedication to certain ideas and principles that define institutions. Originating in the dedication of holy places, such as ancient temples and churches, it became associated with “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University, held in June” (OED), and has extended to Schools and Universities which derive their origins from the medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge, such as King’s-Edgehill. It reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves and recalls us to the foundational principles, to the telos, the end or purpose, of the institutions which in some sense shape our thoughts and actions.

Encaenia in this sense complements what has been an abiding feature of Chapel, namely, a form of critical self-reflection about the ethical principles that belong to our thinking. It is about “interrogating the writings of the wise,” as the poet Horace puts it, by way of the intellectual and spiritual traditions of our humanity, what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, the path of ethical wisdom, conceived “in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike”. This was in a series of lectures delivered in Durham, England, in 1943; in other words, at a time of conflict and division, of great fear and uncertainty. How do we face the difficult things that belong to the divisions and conflicts of our divided world?

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Basil the Great (c. 330-79), Bishop of Caesarea, Cappadocian Father, Doctor of the Church (source):

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Basil of Caesarea, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 2:6-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:21-24

Artwork: Cesare Mariani, St. Basil the Great, 1866. Fresco, Chiesa di Santa Maria in Aquiro, Rome.

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Feast of St. Barnabas / First Sunday after Trinity.

I have called you friends

Elsewhere in Acts, St. Barnabas is called “the son of consolation” or encouragement; a lovely and suggestive image (Acts 4.36). Do we not sometimes find strength and comfort, in short, our consolation, from one another? To be sure. But what, really, is our consolation? The radical message of this Sunday is that it is found simply in our abiding in the dynamic love of God the Blessed Trinity, our abiding in the grace of God. “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain,” Jesus says. The Lesson from Acts locates Barnabas within that sense of ministry, “Who, when he came [to Antioch], and had seen the grace of God, was glad; and exhorted them all that, with purpose of heart, they would cleave unto the Lord” (Acts 11.23). The consolation of Barnabas lies in that exhortation to cleave unto the Lord. It was in Antioch, Luke tells us in his understated way, that “the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts. 11.26).

The Gospel for this feast complements the lessons from John’s first Epistle which belong to the first two Sundays in the early days of the Trinity season about the divine love which commands us to love. The Gospel for the Feast of St. Barnabas follows directly upon one of the greatest Scriptural images of our abiding in the love of God; namely, the idea of the vine and the branches. “I am the vine, ye are the branches,” Jesus says, “abide in me.” It is the last, and to my mind, one of the greatest of the “I am” sayings in John’s Gospel. They illuminate two things: first, Christ as God echoing Exodus, “I Am Who I Am,” and, secondly, the forms of our incorporation into his life by way of a series of intimate metaphors, “bread”, “light”, “door”, “shepherd”, “resurrection”, “way, truth and life”, “vine”.

Yet the most powerful statement about our abiding in the love of God appears in this astounding statement where Jesus says “ye are my friends.” Somehow in Christ we are made the friends of God and so, too, friends of one another.

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

Saturday, June 17th
9:00am Encaenia at KES

Sunday, June 18th, Second Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, June 25th, Third Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
9:00am Reunion Service at KES
10:30am Holy Communion

(Fr. Curry away at the Atlantic Theological Conference (Mon., June 26th – Wed., June 28th)

Fr. Curry is priest-in-charge for Avon Valley Parish and Hantsport during July; Fr. Tom Henderson will be priest-in-charge for Christ Church during August when I will be on vacation.

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

O LORD God Almighty, who didst endue thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Spirit: Leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 11:22-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:12-16

Artwork: Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Saints Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (Sacrifice at Lystra), 1637. Oil on panel, Princeton Art Museum, Princeton, N.J.

The collect for today, the Second Sunday after Pentecost, commonly called The First Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:7-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:19-31

Artwork: Marcantonio Bassetti, Dives and Lazarus, before 1630. Pen and bistre wash, grey and white oil paint on paper tinted brown, Royal Collection, Great Britain.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Columba (c. 521-597), Abbot of Iona, Missionary (source):

Almighty God,
who didst fill the heart of Columba
with the joy of the Holy Spirit,
and with deep love for those in his care:
grant to thy pilgrim people grace to follow him,
strong in faith, sustained by hope,
and made one in the love that binds us to thee;
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 Corinthians 3:11-23
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:17-20

Artwork: Harry Clarke, St. Columba, 1930-37. Stained glass, Catholic Church of St. Oswald and St. Edmund Arrowsmith, Ashton-in-Makerfield, England.