Month: March 2024

Prayers and liturgy

Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs

The collect for today, the commemoration of St Perpetua, St Felicitas, and their companions (d. 203), Martyrs at Carthage (source):

O holy God,
who gavest great courage to Perpetua,
Felicity and their companions:
grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice
and be received into the garden of peace;
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: Hebrews 10:32-39
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:9-14

Perpetua, Felicitas, and five other catechumens were arrested in North Africa after emperor Septimus Severus forbade new conversions to Christianity. They were thrown to wild animals in the circus of Carthage.

The early church writer Tertullian records, in what appear to be Perpetua’s own words, a vision in which she saw a ladder to heaven and heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Perpetua, I am waiting for you”. She climbed the ladder and reached a large garden where sheep were grazing. From this, she understood that she and her companions would be martyred.

Tertullian’s The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas is posted here.

Perpetua and Felicity gored by a bull in the arenaArtwork: Perpetua and Felicity gored by a bull in the arena, Illustration from Foxe’s Christian Martyrs of the World, Charles Foster Publishing Co., Philadelphia, 1907, p. 69.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Third Sunday in Lent

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

“Christ shall give thee light”

Quite the readings, it may seem. They are rather challenging and not a little disconcerting, and yet most appropriate to the pilgrimage of our souls to God. Why? Because we have to confront the darkness of our souls and know the potentiality and reality of evil. Only the light of Christ can help us to “walk in love,” “to be giving of thanks,” to “walk as the children of light,” “proving what is acceptable unto the Lord,” and thus “reprov[ing] the unfruitful works of darkness,” learning in our journey that “all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light,” to gather Paul’s remarkable words into a kind of summary. But meaning what exactly? That Christ makes known to us the nature of evil in making known and accomplishing the things that belong to the absolute goodness of God.

And what is the evil? The tempter, Satan, the deceiver, is at once the principle of what opposes God and is us in our betrayals of Christ. In this story, it is us in calling Christ’s good, his act of healing, evil, on the one hand, and demanding further signs, on the other hand. Christ’s response highlights these contradictions. Lent, especially in Holy Week, is the pageant of our betrayals of the love of God, but God, and God alone, makes light out of darkness, good out of our evil. Today’s readings are a sober and honest assessment of the human condition in self-presumption and pretension. It is a powerful indictment of human pride, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins and one which arises from the illusions of the self.

The Gospel speaks profoundly to our current dilemmas of a polarized and divided world which witnesses to a deep loss of self and the crisis of meaning. It may be as the neuroscientist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist along with John Vervaeke suggest, the problem of the dominance of left brain thinking which results in the loss of any sense of wholeness. We are as T.S. Eliot says, “the walking dead.” There lies in this the false assumption of our own abilities to solve all our problems through technique and praxis forgetting that such things cannot create heaven on earth but more often than not, hell.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Month at a Glance, March

(Services in the Hall until Palm Sunday, March 24th)

Sunday, March 10th, Fourth Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
1030am Holy Communion

Tuesday, March 12th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, March 14th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme: Reading with the Fathers III

Sunday, March 17th, Fifth Sunday in Lent / Passion Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Thursday, March 21st
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme: Reading with the Fathers IV

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Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Lent

The collect for today, the Third Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

WE beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:1-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 11:14-26

Gustave Doré, Jesus Healing the Man Possessed with a DevilArtwork: Gustave Doré, Jesus Healing the Man Possessed with a Devil, c. 1866, Engraving, The Holy Bible with Illustrations by Gustave Doré.

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Prayers and liturgy

John and Charles Wesley

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wesley (1703-91) and Charles Wesley (1708-88), Evangelists, Hymn Writers, Leaders of the Methodist Revival (source):

Merciful God,
who didst inspire John and Charles Wesley with zeal for thy gospel:
grant to all people boldness to proclaim thy word
and a heart ever to rejoice in singing thy praises;
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 Lesson: Isaiah 49:5-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 9:2-6

Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old ManThomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley

Artwork:
(left) Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old Man, 1932. Oil on canvas, John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism, London.
(right) Thomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley, 1749. Oil on canvas, Epworth Old Rectory, Epworth, Lincolnshire.

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Prayers and liturgy

Chad, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Chad (d. 672), Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary (source):

Christopher Whall, Victoria and Albert Museum, St. ChadAlmighty God,
who, from the first fruits of the English nation
that turned to Christ,
didst call thy servant Chad
to be an evangelist and bishop of his own people:
grant us grace so to follow his peaceable nature,
humble spirit and prayerful life,
that we may truly commend to others
the faith which we ourselves profess;
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: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1,7-14

Artwork: Christopher Whall, St. Chad, c. 1905-10. Clear and coloured glass with paint and silver stain, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (Reduced replica of panel in Lady Chapel, Gloucester Cathedral.) Photograph taken by admin, 27 September 2015.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 1 March

O woman, great is your faith

The encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is at once powerful and instructive. It belongs to the spiritual pilgrimage of Lent and to the journey of education. Three words illuminate its power and meaning: faith, humility, and perseverance. At first glance it is a disturbing story but one which ultimately turns on the idea of self-criticism; a criticism of the assumption that we can constrain or limit God to our little groups and identities. Self-criticism is a feature of the religions and philosophies of the world.

This is highlighted here by the setting. Jesus departs “into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon” even as she comes out of that land of the Gentiles. She is a Canaanite, meaning that she is a non-Israelite. She sees something universal in Jesus that transcends the limitations of any one culture. It is an insight into the infinite mercies of God that arises out of the context of her finite situation and concerns. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David,” she says. But her concern is not simply for herself. “My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil,” deeply troubled in mind and soul. The troubles of the daughter are the worries of the mother; they always are.

I cannot think of this story without being reminded of “the Sorrow Songs” in W.E.B. Dubois’ great classic, “The Souls of Black Folks,”written in 1903. Dubois was a seminal figure in the Afro-American world and notes that these folk songs are “the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas” … “the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro spirit.” The Sorrow Songs are an important feature of his work for they give expression to the experiences of the Afro-Americans under slavery and yet reveals that “through the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes hope – a faith in the ultimate justice of things.” This is exactly what we see in this remarkable woman. She has faith in what she sees in Christ that enables her to face all that is thrown at her: silence, rebuke, and rejection. She has a faith in the ultimate justice of Jesus which is the infinite mercy of God.

Like the Sorrow Songs, we see in her a kind of “soul-hunger,” “an infinite longing for peace,” a yearning for “some unseen power and sign for rest in the End.”

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint David of Wales

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint David (c. 520-589), Bishop of Menevia, Patron Saint of Wales (source):

St. David, Jesus College ChapelAlmighty God,
who didst call thy servant David
to be a faithful and wise steward of thy mysteries
for the people of Wales:
in thy mercy, grant that,
following his purity of life and zeal
for the gospel of Christ,
we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom with thee and the Holy Spirit
be all honour and glory,
world without end.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-29

Artwork: Saint David, stained glass, late 19th century, Jesus College Chapel, Oxford.

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