by CCW | 14 June 2025 10:00
And so it ends and begins. Such is the paradox of encaenia. You have come to the end of your High School Career. Hooray! This is your last Chapel as students of King’s-Edgehill. Hooray! But it is also a poignant moment. In a matter of a few hours, you will have stepped up and out as graduates of the School. Whether you have been here six years or one, it is an ending and a beginning, and the beginning of an ending, too, at least for me. I get to go out with you, it seems! Hooray! But on this day you are the pride and joy of the School, of teachers and coaches, of headmaster and chaplain, and of your parents and grandparents, friends and relatives. We are at once glad and sad to see you go. You have all become quite dear to us. Yet there are always times of ending and times of beginning anew; in short, times of reflection and recollection.
T.S. Eliot’s poem “East Coker” in the Four Quartets begins with the phrase “in my beginning is my end” and ends with “in my end is my beginning.” This expresses the meaning of this service and this day. It is about what abides in you and continues to grow in you from your time here and into the years ahead. King’s-Edgehill has, in some sense or other, been your alma mater, your nursing mother, which has contributed to your growth and maturity spiritually and intellectually, and physically too! Some of you I can remember as smurfs, I mean littl’uns, and now you tower over me! But the idea of spiritual and intellectual growth signals the importance, even the necessity of encaenia.
Encaenia is a Greek word. It refers to a renewal of purpose and dedication, to end as purpose and meaning, the telos, we might say, of the whole intellectual and spiritual enterprise of which you have been a part. While anciently understood as an annual dedication of sacred shrines and holy places recalling us to the principles that inform what it means to be human in ancient Greek culture, it became associated with “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University in June” (O.E.D.). In other words, it comes out of the intellectual traditions of the medieval universities such as Oxford and Cambridge which were very much aware of the philosophical and ethical cultures and communities of thought that preceded them and contributed to their life.
It has extended to academic institutions in places far beyond the Euro-Mediterranean world, such as our school here in Windsor, Nova Scotia, that derive their history and self-understanding from those medieval institutions. The confederation poet, Charles G.D. Roberts, when he was a professor here from 1885-1895, referred to the School and College, perhaps with a wry bit of Maritime humour, as “the Athens of Nova Scotia.” At the very least, encaenia reminds us of the long-standing traditions of learning, and thus to the foundational principles of the School. It is, perhaps, a needful counter to the iconoclastic and anti-intellectual tendencies of our current confusions and uncertainties.
Encaenia recalls the principles that belong to the life-long pursuit of education. Today marks another gradus or step up for you on that journey of the understanding. That has been very much a theme in Chapel emphasized in the Scripture readings this morning from Job and Luke. They call attention to the ethical principles that belong to wisdom and understanding; in short, to our thinking and our doing. End here as purpose is not something instrumental, a mere means to some other immediate or utilitarian self-interest or personal self-expression but to the substance of our lives as ordered towards the Absolute Good; in short, to God as the principle of our being and knowing. The Good, as Plato suggests, is always epikeina, always beyond or transcendent yet as that in which we participate. It can never be what we possess for ourselves for then it would not be absolute. God is not a thing. We participate in what is prior and greater than ourselves.
‘What is it that is good to be?’ as the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor puts it, not just ‘what is it that is right to do?’ The first informs the second. Regardless of personal faith or non-faith, all of you and all who taught you have a faith, in some sense or another, whether implicit or explicit, that there are things to be known and passed on, things to be thought upon and acted upon in our lives.
The underlying assumption in our academic institutions, however distracted and confused, is that education actually matters. But what is the purpose of education? This is very much our contemporary question and dilemma. It is not found in skills and technique, valuable as those are as means, as tools or instruments, since that begs the question ‘to what end?’ Nor is it found in the marketing slogans of corporate and consumer society, as if education were a commodity, a thing or an object to be purchased and possessed. It can only be found in the ideals and principles that belong to human character. Such are the ideals and principles expressed in the School’s mottoes: Deo Legi Regi Gregi, For God, For the Law, For the King, and For the People, and Fideliter, faithfulness.
These are not just a list of words but a comprehensive way of thinking and acting purposefully and ethically; hence the force of the little word ‘for’. Our thinking and acting is for God, Deo, and for one another, Gregi, in and through the principles of justice or law, Legi, and the structures of power and due authority, Regi. They convey a sense of commitment and faithfulness, fideliter, to lives of service and sacrifice. It is about seeking the good of one another not out of self-interest or self-fulfillment but out of the idea of the Good itself. The French philosopher Michel Henry observes that our technocratic culture “puts out of play the transcendental life that constitutes the humanity of the human being.” The claims to truth are reduced “to their historical, political, and economic conditions and thus to expressions of ideology,” what he calls “sociologism” a form of pseudo-science which supplants philosophy and the pursuit of learning.
Guarda e ascolta. Look and listen, Matilda says to the pilgrim Dante in the earthly paradise of the Purgatorio. It could be the motto for Chapel and for education itself. What he beholds is something seen and heard, a pageant of Word and Sacrament that speaks to the ethical understanding. Along with references to Christ and the ways in which the books of the Scriptures are represented, there are images of the classical virtues and the theological virtues that belong to the qualities of character and thus to wisdom and understanding. But only if we look and listen. Dante also sees and hears another pageant about the Church as torn by persecution and heresy and the world as infected by sin and evil. Both pageants are necessary to learning. The ethical teaching provides a way to face the realities of sin and evil in ourselves and in our world.
“Where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?” Job asks in the lesson which Dami read. He is not speaking from a place of privilege and power. Quite the opposite. Wisdom is not found in the things of the world; at best they point us to the source of their own being. “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding,” he says. But only if we look and listen, and pray as in the School Prayer: “Almighty God, of whose only gift cometh wisdom and understanding.”
The second lesson from Luke that Gabby read is the story of Martha and Mary, symbolic of the active and the contemplative life. Yet the story follows upon the parable of the Good Samaritan which illustrates the ethic of compassion as grounded in the love of God and the love of neighbour. The parable ends with Jesus saying to the Lawyer who had challenged him about eternal life and then about who is my neighbour, “Go and do thou likewise.“ He bids him to act as the certain Samaritan acted in showing compassion and care for the stranger; the stranger who is neighbour. Does this imply the priority of action over contemplation? Or does the story of Martha and Mary complement and complete the very setting and meaning of the parable?
The parable begins with the question of “a certain Lawyer,” who seeks to put Jesus to the test, to tempt him. “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” A question about what to do. Jesus responds, in Socratic fashion, with two questions: “What is written in the Law? How readest thou?” Questions about what and how to read and think. The two questions have their meaning and answer in the parable of the Good Samaritan and in the story of Martha and Mary. What is drawn out of the lawyer is “the summary of the law;” the love of God and the love of neighbour. They are inseparable. This is the great ethical insight.
Looking and listening inform our actions; they go together. Simone Weil shows us that education, like prayer, is really all about attention. “Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance,” she writes, “the love of neighbour, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance.” In a way, it is all about what comes forth from God and returns to God, the gathering of all things to God as beginning and end.
The story of Martha and Mary turns on the question of attention. Martha “was distracted with much serving” and complained to Jesus about Mary “sitting at his feet, listening to his word.” There is no greater contrast than between ‘being distracted’ and ‘being collected,’ attentive. Distraction means going from one thing to another in a kind of frenzy and with a loss of focus. It is the inability to attend to anything. Our culture is the culture of distraction on steroids. Yet in contrast to Martha’s distractedness there is Mary’s collectedness, her attentiveness. To be collected rather than distracted is good in itself and, paradoxically, in relation to all our other activities.
The one informs the other because it is about paying attention to the primacy of an ethical and spiritual principle alive in us, like what Miranda says in Shakespeare’s Tempest. “I have suffered with those that I saw suffer.” It is not that Martha “was playing a bad part,” as Augustine puts it, “but that there was ‘the best part’ which shall not be taken away.”
The idea of the primacy of contemplation is not at the expense of action; rather the distracted busyness of Martha is brought into the collected restfulness of Mary. It is given a direction and purpose. There is a necessary interplay between activity and contemplation, wonderfully captured by Aelred of Rievaulx (12th cent.): “You should in no wise neglect Mary for Martha; or again, Martha for Mary. For, if you neglect Martha, who will feed Jesus? If you neglect Mary, what use is it for Jesus to come to your house, when you taste nothing of his sweetness.”
Chapel has been about the challenge to look and listen to what is written on the walls and in the windows, and to what is read and spoken, sung and heard. Words and ideas, things seen and heard, speak to the dignity of our humanity, to the qualities of gentleness and learning, to being collected and quiet within yourself, attentive to the questions that never go away that belong to wisdom and understanding and contribute to the ethical understanding of responsible and compassionate lives of service for others. I am greatly humbled by your attentiveness and respect for learning. I too have learned a lot and can only say, thank you. We have been through a lot together in the busy and at times distracted and distracting life of the School. Yet you have persevered in the one thing needful that redeems us from ourselves and keeps us ever mindful of one another. May that continue with you and grow within you.
My thanks to the Chapel Prefects under Sadie O’Callaghan’s direction who have helped to make the morning miracle happen, to so many of you who have served over the years, to those who have read the Scriptures, especially to Vinnie who has practically owned the lectern, to others who have led the prayers, to our student Heads, Dami and Gabby, and to our student organist, Sofia, and to Michael Gnemmi, who have contributed so greatly to the quality of singing and to an aesthetic ambience of prayer and reflection. For me, as ‘the Rev,’ it has been a great blessing and a privilege. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours. Keep dancing in the understanding.
Allow me to conclude with an Ode to Hensley Memorial Chapel a sonnet written by one of the most wise and gentle scholars ever to have come out of the School and the College, the Rev’d Dr. Robert Darwin Crouse. He was one of my mentors and teachers. It was written when he was fifteen years old as a student and organist here at King’s in 1945.
A beauteous little Gothic Chapel stands
On the crest of a gently sloping hill
Within its walls all is peaceful and still
As shadows softly fall o’er all the lands
And light seems lifted by some mystic hands,
The twilight dwells inside these walls until
The darkness shrouds the earth by some strange will.
It is then the human soul understands
The labour of both architect who worked
To plan this very wond’rous work of art,
And those who make his plans reality.
‘Twas not the work of one who duty shirked
So craftsman take this lesson to thy heart
And plan thine art for immortality.
Guarda e ascolta, Look and listen. It is the “one thing needful.”
Rev’d David Curry
Encaenia 2025
June 14th, 2025
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