Year: 2023

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 20 – 26 February

Tuesday, February 21st
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals (2022) by David Hackett Fischer & Out of the Sun (2021) by Esi Edugyan

Wednesday, February 22nd, Ash Wednesday
12 noon Holy Communion & Imposition of Ashes
2:35-2:50 Imposition of Ashes at KES

Sunday, February 26th, First Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Looking ahead – March 2023:

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

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

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

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

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday Called Quinquagesima

The collect for today, the Sunday called Quinquagesima, being the Fiftieth Day before Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Spirit, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 18:31-43

El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, 1570 Artwork: El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind, 1570. Oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 16 February

Stories in Glass

The stained glass windows in the Chapel tell a story of history and education with respect to the School’s life and purpose. This week’s reading from Hosea, the great love-prophet of the Jewish scriptures, speaks about the divine love which leads us with “the cords of compassion and the bands of love” in spite of our frequent betrayals of love. But God is God and not man. Divine love seeks the perfection of our human loves, as we saw last week with Paul’s great hymn to love. Just so the windows open us out to the larger dimensions of an ethical, intellectual, and spiritual way of thinking and being.

The window in the choir, just behind the organ, depicts the founder of the School, Bishop Charles Inglis. It is based on an actual portrait of him by Robert Field (1810) which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The School was founded out of the turbulence of the American Revolution by those who were committed to the English monarchy, thus known as Loyalists. One of the first things Charles Inglis did as Bishop was to found the School and the College in 1788 and 1789 respectively, recognizing the importance of an education that would contribute to public life and service, hence the motto Deo Legi Regi Gregi, for God, for the Law, for the King, and for the People. Thus the window points us to the Buckle window in the nave about Christ as a child of twelve being found in the temple both as student and teacher but then going down to Nazareth and entering into public service.

That window in the nave is framed by the beginning of what I like to call the Canterbury Connection. Why Canterbury? Because the School comes out of a Christian and Anglican background; Canterbury is the seat of the religious head of the Anglican Churches. Bishop Inglis was consecrated and sent to Nova Scotia by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Moore, in 1787. Thus the first window on your right in the nave depicts Augustine of Canterbury, sent as a missionary to England by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century. He had seen in the Roman marketplace some slaves. He asked who they were and was told they were ‘Angles,’ a tribe in ancient Britain. He famously remarked, non Angles sed Angeli, “not Angles but Angels,” and thereupon sent Augustine as a missionary. He became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

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Prayers and liturgy

Valentine, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for a Martyr, on the Feast of Saint Valentine (d. c. 269), Bishop, Martyr at Rome, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Nicolaus Schit, Saint ValentineO GOD, who didst bestow upon thy Saints such marvellous virtue, that they were able to stand fast, and have the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil: Grant that we, who now commemorate thy Martyr Valentine, may ever rejoice in their fellowship, and also be enabled by thy grace to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27

Artwork: Nicolaus Schit, Saint Valentine, c. 1500. Tempera on oak, Marienkirche, Geinhausen, Germany.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Sexagesima Sunday

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Sunday called Sexagesima.

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Sermons

Sermon for Sexagesima Sunday

“Now the parable is this”

Not just a parable but the explanation of the parable! We are often as not, at least if we are honest about ourselves, much like the disciples, asking in our hearts, “what might this parable be?” Yet here on this Sexagesima Sunday we are given a parable and its meaning. Jesus is didaskalos, the teacher and the substance of the teaching. “The seed is the word of God”, and he is the logos, the Word and Son of the Father opening out to us a way of thinking about our lives in pilgrimage.

The imagery is down to earth; it is agricultural. It has very much to do with the idea of cultivation in terms of the question ‘what kind of ground are we?’ That is the challenge for us. It demands a kind of self-examination, a metanoia, which means at once repentance and a thinking upon what has been revealed, literally, ‘a thinking after’. Constantly we are being challenged to call to mind, to think after or upon the things of God. What this parable and its interpretation provides belongs to the radical nature of our lives as spiritual and intellectual beings who are embodied and embedded in the particularities of cultures and places. It is a strong message to us about who we are and how we act in the cultures and places of our lives. It is an illusion to think that we are utterly independent and free from the restraints and features of our world and age; but nor are we simply determined or condemned to a social, economic, political and ideologically driven world. Unless we ourselves choose to be. So here is a parable and its interpretation which perhaps can help us to better understand ourselves as the children of God and to our growing up in the truth of God’s Word.

We are the ground upon which God’s Word, like a seed is sown, and sown for a purpose and one which requires something from us; the cultivation of that word within us and in our lives with one another.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 13 – 19 February

Sunday, February 19th, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Followed by Potluck Luncheon & Annual Meeting of the Parish of Christ Church

Looking ahead – February/March 2023:

Tuesday, February 21st
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals (2022) by David Hackett Fischer & Out of the Sun (2021) by Esi Edugyan

Wednesday, February 22nd, Ash Wednesday
12 noon Holy Communion & Imposition of Ashes
2:35-2:50 Imposition of Ashes at KES

Sunday, February 26th, First Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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

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

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

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

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday Called Sexagesima

The collect for today, Sexagesima (or the Second Sunday Before Lent) from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Sir Hamo Thornycroft, A SowerO LORD God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11:21b-31
The Gospel: St Luke 8:4-15

Artwork: Sir Hamo Thornycroft, A Sower, 1889. Bronze, Kew Gardens, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

Caedmon, Poet

The collect for a Doctor of the Church, Poet, or Scholar, in commemoration of Saint Caedmon (d. 680), Monk of Whitby, first English poet, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Caedmon, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St Matthew 13:9-17

geograph-263793-by-RichTeaSaint Caedmon is the first English poet whose name is known. Saint Bede the Venerable tells Caedmon’s story in Book IV, Chapter 24, of The Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Bede records that Caedmon was a herdsman who at an advanced age suddenly received the gift of poetry and song. Someone appeared to Caedmon in a dream one night and asked him to sing. In response, he spontaneously sang verses in praise of the God the Creator. When he awoke, he remembered the words of his song and added more lines.

He went to speak with Hilda, Abbess of Whitby. She and several learned men examined Caedmon and affirmed that his gift was from God.

Caedmon became a monk at Whitby and composed a large body of poetry and song on many Christian subjects, including the Creation story, the Exodus, the birth, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the teaching of the apostles.

Unfortunately, almost none of Caedmon’s work survives. Only his Hymn, written down by Bede in Latin and Old English, is known to us. Here is a modern English translation:

Praise we the Fashioner now of Heaven’s fabric,
The majesty of his might and his mind’s wisdom,
Work of the world-warden, worker of all wonders,
How he the Lord of Glory everlasting,
Wrought first for the race of men Heaven as a rooftree,
Then made he Middle Earth to be their mansion.

Source: Bede, A History of the English Church and People, translated by Leo Sherley-Price, rev. ed. 1968, Penguin, p. 251.

A humble and holy monk, Caedmon died in perfect charity with his fellow servants of God.

Photograph: Memorial to Caedmon, St Mary’s Churchyard, Whitby, North Yorkshire, Great Britain. The inscription reads, “To the glory of God and in memory of Caedmon the father of English Sacred Song. Fell asleep hard by, 680”. © Copyright RichTea and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 9 February

Charity never faileth

“Never that which is shall die,” is a fragment from a lost play by Euripides. It serves as an epigram for Timothy Findley’s classic anti-war novel, The Wars. It complements Paul’s wonderful hymn of love in 1 Corinthians 13 which was read in Chapel this week which happens to be Spirit Week at the School and includes the Valentine’s Dinner and Dance. Love is in the air, we might say, but what do we mean by love? “Never that which is shall die” highlights the idea that love conquers all, that love is forever, that love is stronger than death; in short, that love never faileth. Charity means love.

Paul is talking about the divine love which is transcendent and transformative. It seeks the perfection of our human loves which are invariably limited and incomplete, partial like our knowing. We know in part. Here is love as wisdom which is about our being open to what is greater than ourselves and which seeks to better us not destroy us. Here is the idea of a love which does not make us other than ourselves but seeks the perfection of our humanity individually and collectively. Paul uses the metaphor of the body to talk about the human community where each part of the body plays its role for the good of the whole body. No one part is to be despised but each is to be respected. He recognizes that we all have different gifts, different talents, that are to be used for the good of all. But he ends the previous chapter with the phrase that introduces his famous hymn to love. “I will show you a still more excellent way.” That still more excellent way is charity, an Englishing of one of the Latin words for love, caritas, itself a translation of one of the Greek words for love, agape.

That still more excellent way does not negate our humanity by making us other than human which is one of the struggles of our times in relation to technology and AI which sometimes risks turning us into bots or machines, training us to think like machines. There is the danger of outsourcing our own thinking which negates the idea that we are fundamentally knowers. This is the reverse of the Turing Test. Instead of making computers that can be mistaken for being humans, we turn ourselves into machines, into thinking like machines. This is the point made in “Re-engineering Humanity,” the 2018 book by Brett Frischman and Evan Selinger. But Paul was already countering the things that dehumanize us in a tradition that looks back to Plato and which belongs to a whole way of ethical thinking. It speaks to the truth of our humanity in terms of our being open to wonder, to wisdom.

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