The collect for today, the Sunday Next before Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Lesson: Jeremiah 23:5-8
The Gospel: St. John 1:35-45
Artwork: Spinello Aretino, Christ Blessing, c, 1384-85. Tempera on panel, Uffizi, Florence.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Cecilia (3rd century), Virgin, Martyr (source):
Most gracious God, whose blessed martyr Cecilia didst sing in her heart to strengthen her witness to thee: We thank thee for the makers of music whom thou hast gifted with Pentecostal fire; and we pray that we may join with them in creation’s song of praise until at the last, with Cecelia and all thy saints, we come to share in the song of those redeemed by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
The Lesson: Revelation 15:1-4
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:38-42
According to Cecilia’s late 5th-century Legend, she was a Roman martyr of the early 3rd century. However, she is not mentioned in any 3rd- or 4th-century Christian martyrologies or other writings, so almost nothing about her is known for certain.
Her Legend says that she was betrothed without her consent to a pagan nobleman, but refused to consummate the marriage because she had dedicated herself to God. Her husband and his brother both became Christians and were martyred. Cecilia was subsequently brought before the authorities and martyred for refusing to sacrifice to Roman gods.
A church built in the Trastavere district of Rome in the 5th century by a wealthy widow named Cecilia became associated with the saint. The church of Saint Cecilia-in-Trastavere, soon reputed to have been the site of Cecilia’s martyrdom, was rebuilt in the 9th century. Important artworks were added in medieval and modern times, including a fresco of The Last Judgment (1289-93) by Pietro Cavallini. A life-size marble statue of a girl lying on her side, as if asleep, entitled The Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, by Stefano Maderno, was completed in 1601 and placed in front of the high altar.
Cecilia has been patron saint of music and of musicians since at least the Middle Ages. This connection originated from the 5th-century account of her marriage, where, as the organs played, she is said to have silently sung, “O let my heart be unsullied, so that I be not confounded”.
She was chosen patron of the Academy of Music in Rome (founded 1584) and many other musical organisations. In artwork, she is often depicted with an organ or other musical instrument.
Artwork: Edward Burne-Jones, St. Cecilia, c. 1900. Stained and painted glass, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, N.J.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Edmund (841-869), King of the East Angles, Martyr (source):
O eternal God,
whose servant Edmund kept faith to the end,
both with thee and with his people,
and glorified thee by his death:
grant us the same steadfast faith,
that, together with the noble army of martyrs,
we may come to the perfect joy of the resurrection life;
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: 1 St. Peter 3:14-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:16-22
Edmund was raised a Christian and became king of the East Angles as a young boy, probably when 14 years old. In 869 the Danes invaded his territory and defeated his forces in battle.
According to Edmund’s first biographer, Abbo of Fleury, the Danes tortured the saint to death after he refused to renounce his faith and rule as a Danish vassal. He was beaten, tied to a tree and pierced with arrows, and then beheaded.
His body was originally buried near the place of his death and subsequently transferred to Baedericesworth, modern Bury St. Edmunds. His shrine became one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in England, but it was destroyed and his remains lost during the English Reformation.
The cult of St. Edmund became very popular among English nobility because he exemplified the ideals of heroism, political independence, and Christian holiness. The Benedictine Abbey founded at Bury St. Edmunds in 1020 became one of the greatest in England.
Click here to read Fr. David Curry’s sermon for the Feast of St. Edmund.
Artwork: Martyrdom of St. Edmund, Illustration from “The Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund” by John Lydgate, British Library, London.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Hilda (614-680), Abbess of Whitby (source):
O eternal God,
who madest the abbess Hilda to shine as a jewel in England
and through her holiness and leadership
didst bless thy Church with newness of life and unity:
so assist us by thy grace
that we, like her, may yearn for the gospel of Christ
and bring reconciliation to those who are divided;
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: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 19:27-29
Artwork: St. Hilda, stained glass, St. Hilda’s Church, Ashford, England.
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity.
The Church year runs out in the themes of judgment and mercy. Next Sunday is The Sunday Next Before Advent, signalling the end of the Trinity Season at the same time as catapulting us into the mystery of Advent, the beginning of a new Christian year. The Trinity and Epiphany Seasons vary in length according to the date of Easter but regardless there is a pattern and movement of thought in the latter Sundays of the Trinity Season whether shorter or longer, whether twenty-three or twenty-seven Sundays. There is a logic, a way of thinking theologically, centered in the eucharistic lectionary that remains in the classical Prayer Books of the Anglican tradition.
What is that pattern and movement of ideas? It is the interplay between judgement and mercy in a kind of dialectical relation: there is judgement in mercy and mercy in judgement. Both are concentrated for us in today’s lessons, especially in the Gospel. The year runs out, it is not too much to say, on a profoundly ethical note about good and evil, about right and wrong, in our hearts and our lives. Sanctification is the overarching theological theme of the Trinity Season – the pageant of Christ in us – but that presupposes and constantly returns us to the theological theme of Justification – the pageant of Christ for us in his redemptive acts. The two are intertwined and are further informed and amplified by the cycle of the Saints in glory; in short, Glorification. These themes reach a crescendo of expression in the parable of the unforgiving servant precisely in his not doing to another what had been done to him, namely showing mercy, the mercy in which we find our good and our blessedness. “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy,” the Beatitude which is at the centre of the Beatitudes.
But doesn’t all this confront us with our contemporary dilemma about the very idea of the ethical? In the culture of moral nihilism there is no ethical, no real meaning to good and evil, to right and wrong. There is only the empty relativism of ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’; in short, solipsism, a kind of gnosticism, where there is no truth that holds us accountable to one another as human persons; and not just bots in the machinery of technocratic culture. What is good for me may not be good at all, let alone good for you. But isn’t it only just what you can get away with? What’s missing? God? Well, yes, but other things too.
In the culture of moral nihilism, the ethical is simply negated: not just relativized, which leaves the door open, perhaps, to a conversation upon what relativism ultimately depends, but denied and quickly reduced to the pragmatism that whatever you can get away with is fine. – for you and who cares about anyone else? There is ‘no ought from an is,’ David Hume argued in the 18th century, the legacy of which, it seems, is that the ethical is seen as arbitrary and unintelligible, and the assumption, common in our age, that natural science, naturalism or scientism, explains everything; a kind of material determinism which negates human freedom and dignity.
Tuesday, November 18th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Saturday, November 22nd
9am-4pm November Quiet Day: Classical Anglican Sacramentalism
Sunday, November 23rd, Sunday Next Before Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, November 25th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Frank Tallis’s ‘Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna and the Discovery of the Modern Mind’ (2024)
Sunday, November 30th, Advent I
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The collect for today, the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
LORD, we beseech thee to keep thy house hold the Church in continual godliness; that through thy protection it may be free from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve thee in good works, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Philippians 1:3-11
The Gospel: St Matthew 18:21-35
Artwork: Jan Luyken (1649-1712), Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, engraving, Bowyer Bible.
The collect for today, the commemoration of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Priest, Evangelical Divine (source):
O eternal God,
who didst raise up Charles Simeon
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and inspire thy people in service and mission:
grant that we, with all thy Church, may worship the Saviour,
turn away in true repentance from our sins
and walk in the way of holiness;
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: Romans 10:8b-17
The Gospel: St. John 21:15-19
Charles Simeon served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1782 until his death. His zealous evangelical preaching was bitterly opposed by parish leaders, but proved immensely popular and influential among Cambridge undergraduates. He supported the British and Foreign Bible Society and helped to found the Church Missionary Society. His curate Henry Martyn became chaplain of the East India Company and one of India’s best-known missionaries.
Historian Lord Macaulay wrote of him, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”
A meditation on the life of Charles Simeon, by John Piper, is posted here.
A prayer of The Very Rev. Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), Dean of York:
O Lord our God, whose name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: We give thee high praise and hearty thanks for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; beseeching thee to give them a part and a lot in those good things which thou has prepared for all those whose names are written in the Book of Life; and grant to us, that having them always in remembrance, we may imitate their faithfulness and with them inherit the new name which thou has promised to them that overcome; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004.
Artwork: Giuseppe Cassioli, Deposition of the Fallen, 1926. Fresco, Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo, Italy.