Month: January 2025

Events, Month at a Glance

January – February 2025

(Services in the Hall until Palm Sunday, April 13th, 2025)

Tuesday, January 14th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, January 19th, Second Sunday after Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, January 26th, Third Sunday after Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, January 28th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club

Sunday, February 2nd, Candlemas/ Epiphany 4
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, February 9th, Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, February 16th, Septuagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Followed by Pot-luck Luncheon and Annual Parish Meeting

Sunday, February 23rd, Sexagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday After The Epiphany

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

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:1-5
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:41-52

Claude Vignon, Christ Among the DoctorsArtwork: Claude Vignon, Christ Among the Doctors, 1623. Oil on canvas, Musée de Grenoble.

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Prayers and liturgy

William Laud, Archbishop and Martyr

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

St. Botolph's, William LaudKeep 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, St. Botolph’s Church, Boston, England. Photograph taken by admin, 3 October 2014.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 9 January

Epiphany – The Gift of the Magi

Epiphany means manifestation, the idea of making things known. Such a concept speaks directly to the meaning of schools as places of learning because of what is made manifest, what is made known to students and teachers alike. Epiphany speaks to an essential feature of our humanity as intellectual and spiritual beings who, in some sense or another “by nature desire to know,” as Aristotle put it. No doubt that is true though only to one degree or another in terms of how much one desires to know.

Epiphany is also the term used for one of the more familiar features of the Christmas story. It is the term used for the coming of the Magi-Kings to Bethlehem, the proverbial ‘wise-men.’ The story has caught the imagination of artists and thinkers down throughout the ages. Yet the story, like so much of the Christmas story, is rather sparse on details. It is, however, rich in symbol and significance which is very much a feature of learning through what is made manifest and taught. A star, it seems, led the Magi-Kings, though we easily forget that Matthew, who alone gives us this story, tells us that it is Herod who actually sends them to Bethlehem. He is hardly in favour of the idea of a King arising in his territory. His fear will lead to one of the most disturbing and yet most significant stories in the Christmas mystery, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents.

Who are the Magi-Kings? How many come? We know very little about them, neither their names nor their number. Holy Imagination will go to work to fill in the gaps and give them names and cultural identities. We assume there were three simply on the basis of the three gifts which they bring to the child Christ. The most we can say is that they ‘came from away’ – the proverbial ‘come-from-aways’ – and the proverbial ‘Johnny-come-latelies,’ too. They are not from Israel but from Anatolia, whether what we call Turkey in Asia Minor or perhaps even Persia. The point is that they are Gentiles – a term that simply refers to those from outside of Israel. Their coming means symbolically that Christmas is omni populo, for all people. This speaks to the universality of the Christian story.

Other religions and philosophies also convey a sense of things universal, things which are for all and not just for some. There is, it seems to me, a wonderful creative tension between the universal and the particular as well as the idea that we come to the former through the latter. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddah, for instance, comes to learn about the universality of human suffering, dukkah, out of which develops the various forms of Buddhism and the idea that suffering arises from our desires. This leads to the idea of the non-self; no self, no desires, no suffering. There is no you, in this view. That is very different from the assumptions about the self in western cultures.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Baptism of Our Lord

The collect for today, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O HEAVENLY Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ did take our nature upon him, and was baptized for our sakes in the river Jordan: Mercifully grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may also be partakers of thy Holy Spirit; through him whom thou didst send to be our Saviour and Redeemer, even the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 42:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 1:1-11

Piero della Francesca, Baptism of ChristArtwork: Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ, c. 1450. Tempera on panel, National Gallery, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Epiphany of Our Lord

The collect for today, The Epiphany of Our Lord, or The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Julio Borrell i Pla, EpiphanyO GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, who know thee now by faith, may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:1-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 2:1-12

Artwork: Julio Borrell i Pla, Epiphany, 1896. Oil on canvas, Museu Nacional D’art de Catalunya, Barcelona.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Second Sunday after Christmas

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem”

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass,” the Shepherds say, “which the Lord hath made known unto us,” albeit by way of an Angel. It is the Shepherd’s Christmas, their going to Bethlehem. Presumably they took the sheep with them. Tomorrow the Magi-Kings from Anatolia will make their way to Bethlehem via Jerusalem “hav[ing] seen his star in the East.” We easily forget what Matthew tells us. The Magi only learn about Bethlehem from Herod in his consultation with “all the chief priests and the scribes of the people together” in Jerusalem who say that Bethlehem is “where the Christ was to be born.” All come to Bethlehem and so must we. And why? That we, like Mary, might “keep all these things” “which were told by the shepherds,” “concerning this child,” and ponder them, like Mary, in our hearts.

All come to Bethlehem so that Bethlehem may abide in us. With the Magi-Kings coming at Epiphany tomorrow there will be, we might say, the break-out from Bethlehem. After presenting their gifts to the child who is God, and King, and Sacrifice, “they departed into their own country another way;” yet, as T.S. Eliot wonderfully puts it, “no longer at ease” in their former ways. Something has changed in them. It is what abides in them from the mystery of Bethlehem. Bethlehem abides in them and weighs in upon their minds. So too, I hope, for us.

The abiding presence of Bethlehem informs the Christian imaginary about the mystery of Christmas and of the Christian Faith itself. In carol and story, in art and in the great variety of crèches, the symbolic significance of Christ’s humble birth in Bethlehem, at once “the least of the cities of Judah” in Micah and yet “not the least” in Matthew’s account, an apparent contradiction that Richard Hooker explains and resolves, is signalled to us. The 15th century Florentine tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Fra Lippi captures something of the transformative fullness of the Christmas mystery. It is a crowded scene. Not easy to find any shepherds and their sheep there among the exotica of peacock and pheasant; an ox and ass are prominent in the stall, a greyhound lies in the foreground. There are horses and a great parade of people. The focus is on the Magi adoring the Child Christ seated on the lap of Mary. All come to Bethlehem.

It is a kind of reprise of Paradise, an image of the harmony and unity of God and the whole of his creation. The artistic images symbolise the meaning of Bethlehem for us as something that abides in us even in the break-out from Bethlehem. Epiphany in a way is about nothing more than Christmas for all people, omni populo, as John Cosin so clearly states. Epiphany season will be about attending to the mystery of the God who became flesh. It will undertake to teach us about God in his divine attributes and character and what that means for us. It will, in other words, carry the meaning of Bethlehem with us into the meaning of Jerusalem. They are the twin poles, already circling around us, of the Christian understanding of God’s deep and intimate engagement with our humanity without which we are less than ourselves. What is revealed and made known in the mystery of Christmas and Epiphany belongs to the fullness of understanding about our humanity in its truth. They signal the profound idea that we are capax dei, capable of God but only through the mercy of God and our thinking upon that mystery.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After Christmas

The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962) does not provide a collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas, but specifies that the service for the Octave Day of Christmas “shall be used until the Epiphany.”

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:15-21

Jusepe de Ribera, Adoration of the ShepherdsArtwork: Jusepe de Ribera, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1650. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ

The collects for today, The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ, being New Year’s Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Parmigianino, Circumcision of ChristALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Of the Circumcision:

ALMIGHTY God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man: Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that, our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the New Year:

O IMMORTAL Lord God, who inhabitest eternity, and hast brought thy servants to the beginning of another year: Pardon, we humbly beseech thee, our transgressions in the past, bless to us this New Year, and graciously abide with us all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:15-21

Artwork: Parmigianino, Circumcision of Christ, c. 1523. Oil on panel, Detroit Institute of Arts.

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