Day: January 12, 2024

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 12 January

They presented unto him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh

It is a lovely story and one which has shaped the Christian imaginary about Christmas. There is something exotic and strange about the Magi-kings from Anatolia, the wise men from the east, who come first to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem. They come on a journey seeking the one that is “born King of the Jews.” They come to worship him.

Only Matthew tells us this story and yet we know very little about the Magi, who they were, how many exactly there were, or even exactly where they came from. Anatolia is a pretty broad term for Asia Minor or modern Turkey, a land from which different civilisations and cultures have emerged, from Assyrians to Persians and many others. Tradition speaks of three wise men but only on the basis of the three gifts. Later legends provide them with names and cultural identities that embrace the peoples of the world. We would probably provide them with email addresses and tik-tok or instagram accounts, for how else would they be real for us in our digitally obsessed age?

The story is known as the Epiphany which marks not just the event but a concept or doctrine. Epiphany means manifestation, the idea of something being made known to us, like a light that enlightens and embraces us in its meaning and truth. As such it connects very much to the life of intellectual communities, to schools and colleges where things are made manifest to us as students and teachers. Thus this story relates to the proper business of education, to the making known of the things that are to be known; in short, to the pursuit of learning. In a way there could be no schools without the idea of the epiphany, the idea of that there are things to be known. In this sense, the magoi represent Plato’s eros, the passionate desire to know, and Aristotle’s idea that all people “desire by nature to know.” The story belongs to the truth of our humanity in seeking to know, no doubt in one way or another and in varying degrees of intensity.

The Epiphany story marks the end of Christmas and the beginning of a new focus, a focus on the things of God made known to us through the witness of the Scriptures and our reasoning upon them. There is a journey to Bethlehem but equally a journey away from Bethlehem. They return to “their own country another way,” as Matthew puts it. Yet with the magoi-kings, the Christmas mystery goes global and extends to omni populo, all people. It is not just a cultural festivity for one culture and people; it speaks to a universal desire.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Horden, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the commemoration of The Right Rev. John Horden (1828-1893), first Bishop of Moosonee, Missionary to the First Nations of Canada:

The Right Rev. John HordenO God,
the Desire of all the nations,
you chose your servant John Horden
to open the treasury of your Word
among the native peoples of Canada.
Grant us, after his example,
to be constant in our purpose and care
for the enlargement of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Source of collect: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004, p. 456.

Born in Exeter, England, to humble Christian parents, John Horden resolved to be a missionary while a young boy at school and, when he was 23, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) offered him a post as a teacher and missionary at Moose Factory on James Bay. He and his young wife set sail on 8 June 1851, arriving at Moose Factory on 26 July.

Horden gave himself whole-heartedly to his task. Within eight months he was able to teach and preach to the indigenous people in the Cree language. In the summer of 1852, Bishop David Anderson of Rupert’s Land travelled 1500 miles to visit his new minister, initially planning to bring him to Red River for theological training. The young man’s conscientiousness and maturity were so impressive, however, that Bishop Anderson changed his plans, ordaining John Horden priest on 24 August.

Rev. Horden ministered to the James Bay Cree and Hudson Bay Company employees for many years, visiting indigenous peoples all around the James Bay region. He translated the Gospels, a hymnal, and a prayer book into Cree, and sent them to England for printing. Because no one was competent to proof-read the master copies, the CMS sent him a printing press and told him to print the books himself. Horden needed many long, frustrating days to teach himself how to assemble and operate the press. His printing press was soon producing other Christian literature in Cree. He also wrote a grammar of the Cree language.

In 1872, Bishop Robert Machray of Rupert’s Land decided that his diocese had grown too large and should be sub-divided. Thus, at Westminster Abbey on 15 December 1872, the Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated John Horden the first Bishop of the Diocese of Moosonee.

Bishop Horden continued to travel across his vast diocese. By the end of his life, most of the Cree of James Bay had been converted, as well as many Ojibwa, Chipewyan, and Inuit. Also, he laboured on translating the Bible into Cree until he died unexpectedly on 12 January 1893. He is buried at Moose Factory.

Biographies of John Horden are posted here and here.

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Prayers and liturgy

Benedict Biscop, Abbot and Scholar

The collect for a Doctor of the Church, Poet, or Scholar, on the Feast of Saint Benedict Biscop (c. 628-89), Founder of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Scholar, Patron of the Arts, 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 Benedict Biscop, 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

Norwich Cathedral, St. Benedict BiscopSaint Benedict Biscop is remembered as a church leader instrumental in preserving and disseminating Western civilisation during the so-called “Dark Ages”.

Born into a noble Northumbrian family, Benedict spent many years in Frankish monasteries, becoming a monk at the Abbey of Lérins, off the southern coast of France. He also travelled to Rome six times. At the conclusion of his third visit in 668, he accompanied St. Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek monk newly commissioned as Archbishop of Canterbury, to England. For two years, Benedict served as abbot of the monastery of St. Peter & St. Paul (later St. Augustine’s), Canterbury, but soon wanted to establish his own foundation.

Receiving papal approval to establish monasteries in Northumbria, Benedict founded the twin monasteries of St. Peter’s at Wearmouth in 674 and St. Paul’s at Jarrow in 681. He travelled to Rome and returned with an “innumerable collection of books of all kinds”. He also brought with him John the Chanter, Archcantor of St. Peter’s, Rome, who taught the monks the Roman liturgy and Gregorian chant.

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