January 2024 - Page 3 of 4

14 January 202430 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After The Epiphany

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

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of thy people, and grant us thy peace all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:6-16
The Gospel: St. John 2:1-11

Artwork: Niels Larsen Stevns, The Wedding at Cana, 1915-17. Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen.

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13 January 202430 March 2026Anglican issues, Statements and other writings, Theology

Celebrating an Outstanding Scholar: Robert Darwin Crouse (1930-2011)

The sermons, lectures, and writings of Robert Darwin Crouse have influenced generations of students and clergy world wide. Clear and concise, scholarly yet pastoral, they address many of the current confusions of a post-secular and post-Christian world by way of connecting the contemporary world to its Christian origins and principles. A remarkable scholar with a poetic soul and gift of expression, his writings speak across the ages and generations with clarity and charity. His sermons are the pastoral distillation of decades of careful reading of ancient, biblical, patristic, medieval, and modern writings with a deep appreciation for the power of the arts to draw us into an engagement with Christian spirituality. They address the waste land of modernity without leaving us in the waste land and without defaulting to a romantic longing for some imagined golden age. Perhaps no collection of sermons captures better the character and concerns of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by bringing the perennial wisdom of Christ before the thoughtful reader. The sermons are a refreshment and a source of spiritual renewal for many a community of souls and for all times. For those of us who had the privilege of being his student and spending time at his place in Crousetown, these sermons are like being once again in his presence and hearing his voice, partaking of his hospitality and generosity of mind.

Dr. Crouse was the most outstanding scholar ever to come out of the School (1944-1947) and College. A theologian and Anglican priest, a musician, poet and preacher, he had a remarkable career as a scholar of Medieval Philosophy and as a beloved teacher at King’s College in the Foundation Year Programme and at the Dalhousie Classics Department in Halifax. He taught at Trinity College, Toronto, and at Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec (where Guy Payne first met him). He also taught at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome where he lectured for many years as a visiting Professor of Patristics. He was a graduate of King’s College and Dalhousie University, of Trinity College, and of Harvard.

A number of the faculty and the board of the School have also had the privilege of being taught by Fr. Crouse. He baptized, for instance, Christian and Zachary Lakes, the twins of Kevin and Penny Lakes, at the School Chapel. He was one of my mentors. As Trevor Hughes, former Chairman of the Board, remarked, Robert had the nicest way of telling you that you were wrong. I think this is captured in his response to students’ comments on whatever subjects were before us: “You might say that,” he would say, meaning “I wouldn’t,” which (by interpretation) suggested that it was foolish or at least mistaken.

Sunday, January 14th, and Monday, January 15th, mark the book launch in Halifax of two books by the Rev’d Dr. Robert D. Crouse, a book of sermons and a meditation on the theme of pilgrimage, the beginning of a publication project that we hope will include many of his scholarly writings. The first two volumes are available through Amazon: Images of Pilgrimage: Paradise and Wilderness in Christian Spirituality and The Soul’s Pilgrimage Volume 1: From Advent to Pentecost.

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13 January 202430 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

Hilary, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Hilary (c. 315-368), Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church (source):

Everlasting God,
whose servant Hilary
steadfastly confessed thy Son Jesus Christ
to be both human and divine:
grant us his gentle courtesy
to bring to all the message of redemption
in the incarnate Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 2:18-25
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:8-12

Hilary was born in Poitiers, Gaul, of wealthy pagan parents. After receiving a thorough education in Latin classics, he became an orator. He also married and had a daughter. At the age of about 35, he rejected his former paganism and became a Christian through a long process of study and thought. Robert Louis Wilken describes his path to conversion in The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (p. 86):

[Hilary] found himself turning to more spiritual pursuits. In his words he wished to pursue a life that was “worthy of the understanding that had been given us by God.” Like Justin [Martyr] he began to read the Bible, and one passage that touched his soul was Exodus 3:14, where God the creator, “testifying about himself,” said, “I am who I am.” For Hilary this brief utterance penetrated more deeply into the mystery of the divine nature than anything he had heard or read from the philosophers. Shortly thereafter he was baptized and received into the church.

Around 353 he was chosen bishop of Poitiers and became an outspoken champion of orthodoxy against the Arians. St. Augustine praised him as “the illustrious teacher of the churches”. St. Jerome wrote that Hilary was “a most eloquent man, and the trumpet of the Latins against the Arians”. Hilary became known as “Athanasius of the West”.

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12 January 202430 March 2026KES 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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12 January 202430 March 2026Prayers 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:

O 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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12 January 202430 March 2026Prayers 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

Saint 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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10 January 202430 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

William Laud, Archbishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):

Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servant William Laud, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: Hebrews 12:5-7,11-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:32-39

A Prayer for the Church by William Laud:

Gracious Father, I humbly beseech thee for Thy holy Catholic Church, fill it with all truth; in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in error, direct it; where it is superstitious, rectify it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it; where it is right strengthen and confirm it, where it is in want, furnish it; where it is divided and rent asunder, make up the breaches of it; O Thou Holy One of Israel. Amen.

Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. (Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004), p. 55.

Artwork: William Laud, stained glass, Southwark Cathedral, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 October 2014.

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7 January 202430 March 2026Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, First Sunday after the Epiphany

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

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7 January 202430 March 2026Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany

“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”

Epiphany concentrates our minds upon the themes of divinity. Its primary focus is the essential divinity of Jesus Christ and as such it argues for the essential attributes of God. We “turn ourselves” as John Cosin, the 17th century Bishop of Durham in northern England puts it, “from his humanity below to his divinity above,” a turn from our contemplation of “His coming in the flesh that was God to His being God that was come in the flesh.” Epiphany is full of divinity. The word means manifestation; it is the idea of things that are made known to us. God makes himself known to us through the Word and Son of the Father.

This is why this story, read on The First Sunday after Epiphany and often within the Octave of the Epiphany, is so important. It reminds us that the Epiphany story of the coming of the Magi-Kings to Bethlehem, is at once the completion of Christmas and the beginning of a new journey, a new orientation. The Magi-Kings, to be sure, came to Bethlehem by way of Jerusalem but “they departed to their own country another way,” being warned in a dream not to return to Herod. In a deeper and more spiritual sense, they are changed by what they have seen. There is a transformation of intellect and heart. T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, The Journey of the Magi, intuits that deeper transformation. “We returned to our places,” he has them say, “but no longer at ease.” The phrase becomes the title of Chinua Achebe’s celebrated novel, No Longer at Ease, which treats the collision of cultures between Europeans and the tribal world of the Igbo peoples of Nigeria. Something changes irrevocably. There is no going back.

With Epiphany there is a double journey: a journey from Anatolia to Bethlehem and a journey from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. They are the two centers of Christian contemplation, the two centers of an ellipse around which the Christian understanding moves. It is, above all else, a journey of the understanding. It is all about teaching. What is the teaching? It is altogether about the essential divinity of Jesus Christ. What does that have to do with us, we might ask? The essential divinity of Christ has everything to do with us because the truth and dignity of our humanity is found not in ourselves but in our life with Christ. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds,” St. Paul powerfully reminds us. “Be not conformed to this world,” for that is atheism in its many and varied forms, from the aggressive and antagonistic to the melancholic and wistful, from the dogmatic to the confused.

Sunday, January 14th, and Monday, January 15th will be marked in Halifax by the book launch of the two books by Fr. Robert Crouse, the outstanding teacher and scholar who was the inspiration and mentor of so many priests and people across the world. St. Paul’s words in today’s Epistle were among his most favourite and most frequently quoted passages. For him they captured so much of what belongs to the pilgrimage of the soul to God, the pilgrimage of the redemption of human desire, and especially with respect to the confusions, conflicts and concerns of contemporary culture. The transformation of our minds upon the things of God made known to us contrasts with our being conformed to the bad infinity of the endless and competing claims of the world.

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