The new list of discussion books for Christ Church Book Club is now available.. The next series will kick off on Tuesday, 22 October, at 7:00pm, when the featured books will be At The End of An Age, John Lukacs (2002), and The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences, Jason A. Josephson-Storm, 2017.
Click here for the full schedule of books and other information.
At the first Chapel services each year the Head Girl and Head Boy read passages from Genesis 1.1-5 and John 1.1-5. “In the beginning God”, as Genesis says, and “In the beginning was the Word”, as John says. In both readings there are the powerful and suggestive ideas of ‘word’, ‘light’, and ‘life’. God speaks creation into being and God is Word or logos. It highlights from the outset the idea of a Creator who is the author of creation, a theme which Jews and Christians and Muslims and others hold in common. As the Qur’an puts it, The “Originator (Badi) of heaven and earth. When He decrees a thing, He says only ‘Be!’ And it is”.
These readings are among the most powerful and the most commented upon theologically as belonging to the intersection of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic culture as shaped by Greek thought. They complement one another and belong to an intellectual and spiritual way of thinking about ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves. They contribute to a long tradition of philosophical reflection about reality. One cannot read the passage from John, for example, without being aware of how it is commenting on Genesis.
The beauty and wonder of the order of creation reflects the everlasting beauty and wonder of God. The Creator/creation distinction is paramount. It marks the idea of distinction within unity. The idea of creation, not as chaos but as an orderly affair in which one thing is distinct from another while yet connected to everything else in creation, is essential to intellectual inquiry. It emphasizes that the world as intelligible is also ethical. It is not evil. It is good. But it is not divine. It is the product of the goodness and love of God. Think of how radical that idea is in our disordered and confusing world of conflict and violence, a world of profound disconnect and unease.
Thomas Aquinas wonderfully observes that God is “the beginning and ending of all things, especially rational creatures”. In the Qur’an, eight of the ninety-nine names of God, of Allah, refer to Allah as the source of all that is. God is none of the things which God makes. In short, ‘there is no God but God’ understood as the principle of the being and the intelligibility of things and of human consciousness, too. Hans Georg Gadamer, commenting on Hegel by way of Aristotle, notes that “the highest degree of self-consciousness must be ascribed to the highest divine being”, the God who thinks himself thinks all things. Our own limited thinking participates at best in that divine self-knowing through the intelligible and ethical order of creation. Think of how this contributes to the biblical insight of our humanity as made in the image of God.
The collect for bishops and other pastors, in commemoration of Robert Wolfall, Priest (source):
Almighty and everlasting God,
who didst call thy servant Robert Wolfall to proclaim thy glory
by a life of prayer and the zeal of a true pastor:
keep constant in faith the leaders of thy Church
and so bless thy people through their ministry
that the Church may grow into the full stature
of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Rev. Robert Wolfall was vicar of the Parish of West Harptree, Somerset, when he became chaplain to Martin Frobisher’s third Arctic expedition to Canada. On 3 September 1578, Rev’d Wolfall presided at the first recorded Holy Eucharist in what is now Canadian territory: Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island.
The service was held on the ship Anne Francis, whose captain later wrote:
Master Wolfall …. preached a godly sermon, which being ended he celebrated also a Communion upon the land …. The celebration of the divine mystery was the first sign, seal and confirmation of Christ’s name, death and passion ever known in these quarters. Master Wolfall made sermons and celebrated the Communion at sundry other times in several and sundry ships, because the whole company could never meet together at anyone place.
A few weeks later, Frobisher abandoned the hope of establishing a permanent settlement on Baffin Island and the expeditionary fleet returned home to England. Anglicans would not celebrate Holy Communion in Canada again for almost a century.
A commemoration of Robert Wolfall, written by Dr. William Cooke, Vice-President of the Toronto branch of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, is posted here. (See page 5 of pdf document.)
The Canadian Encyclopedia entry on “The First Thanksgiving in North America” is posted here.
A plaque commemorating Rev. Wolfall was recently placed on the inside wall of his parish church. The photograph was kindly sent to us by former Royal Navy Chaplain The Rev. Anthony Marks.
The collect for today, the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 5:25-6:5
The Gospel: St. Luke 17:11-19
Artwork: James Tissot, Healing of the Lepers at Capernaum, 1886-94. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, Brooklyn Museum, New York.