Month: December 2025

Prayers and liturgy

John West, Missionary

The collect for a missionary, in commemoration of The Rev’d John West (1778-1845), Priest, first Protestant missionary to the Red River Valley, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

John WestO GOD, our heavenly Father, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thy blessed Apostles and send them forth to preach thy Gospel of salvation unto all the nations: We bless thy holy Name for thy servant John West, whose labours we commemorate this day, and we pray thee, according to thy holy Word, to send forth many labourers into thy harvest; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 12:24-13:5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:13-24a

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Prayers and liturgy

John Wycliffe, Scholar and Translator

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wycliffe, (c 1320-84), Scholar, Translator of the Scriptures into English (source):

Thomas Kirkby, John WycliffeO Lord, thou God of truth, whose Word is a lantern to our feet and a light upon our path: We give thee thanks for thy servant John Wyclif, and those who, following in his steps, have labored to render the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people; and we beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may overshadow us as we read the written Word, and that Christ, the living Word, may transform us according to thy righteous will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:9-16

Artwork: Thomas Kirkby, John Wycliffe, c. 1828. Oil on canvas, Balliol College, University of Oxford.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Becket (1117-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):

O Lord God,
who gavest to thy servant Thomas Becket
grace to put aside all earthly fear and be faithful even unto death:
grant that we, caring not for worldly esteem,
may fight against evil,
uphold thy rule,
and serve thee to our life’s end;
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 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

Thomas Becket was a close personal friend of King Henry II of England and served as his chancellor from 1155. When the Archbishop of Canterbury died in 1162, Henry, seeing an opportunity to exercise control over the church, decided to have his chancellor elected to the post. Thomas saw the dangers of the king’s plan and warned Henry that, if he became archbishop, his first loyalty would be to God and not the king. He told Henry, “Several things you do in prejudice of the rights of the church make me fear that you would require of me what I could not agree to.” What Thomas feared soon came to pass.

After becoming archbishop, Thomas changed radically from defender of the king’s privileges and policies into an ardent champion of the church. Unexpectedly adopting an austere way of life in near-monastic simplicity, he celebrated or attended Mass daily, studied Scripture, distributed alms to the needy, and visited the sick. He became just as obstinate in asserting the church’s interests as he had formerly been in asserting the king’s.

Thomas rejected Henry’s claim to authority over the English Church. Relations with the king deteriorated so seriously that Thomas left England and spent six years in exile in France. He realised that he had to return when the Archbishop of York and six other bishops crowned the heir to the throne, Prince Henry, in contravention of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rights and authority.

He returned to England with letters of papal support and immediately excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the six other bishops. On Christmas Day 1170 he publicly denounced them from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral. It was these actions that prompted Henry’s infamous angry words, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Samuel Seeberger, The Penance of King Henry II at the Tomb of Thomas Becket (more…)

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Feast of Holy Innocents / Sunday after Christmas

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Innocents

“Take the young child, and his mother, and flee into Egypt”

Fuga in Egyptu, the flight into Egypt, is one of the more intriguing stories of the Christmas mystery and yet belongs to its most disturbing moment, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Nothing more apocalyptical, it seems, and certainly no story speaks so hauntingly to the hideous spectacles of destruction and violence which belong to the horrors of the 20th and 21st centuries. It brings out something of the deeper meaning of the Incarnation as providing the only real counter to human evil and wickedness.

The fuga in Egyptu is a salvation story within the salvation story of human redemption. It looks back to Exodus and to Pharoah’s attempt to control the population of the Hebrews through a policy of infanticide. Out of that story comes the birth of Moses, God’s instrument for the exodus, the intellectual and spiritual journey of Israel which culminates in the giving of the Law. The flight into Egypt portrays Joseph as the instrument of the deliverance of the Holy Family from Herod’s wrath, envy, and fear about a potential rival to his power through a similar policy of infanticide.

This story is captured rather movingly and paradoxically in one of the loveliest of the carols of the season. It reminds us of how substantial and serious the Christmas story is and not just sentimental. Puer Nobis Nascitur is a 15th century carol, though probably of much earlier origins, which highlights the sense of Christ’s birth as deliverance from evil in the form of the political. “Came he to a world forlorn, the Lord of every nation… “Cradled in a stall was he with sleepy cows and asses”, suggesting that the beasts “could see” what the evil of man sees but rejects, namely “that he of all men surpasses”.

Herod then with fear was filled:
‘A prince’, he said, ‘in Jewry!’
All the little boys he killed
At Bethlem in his fury.

The story accentuates the theological idea of the Word made flesh coming to a world which “knew him not” and “unto his own who received him not”. It is the attempt to annihilate and destroy the one whose very coming and being as truth and goodness challenges all the pretensions of worldly power. It is an old story and one which sadly recurs over and over again in our world. The Holy Innocents are the nameless victims of the power games of the mindless Herods of our times. Their innocence lies simply in their powerlessness, in their inability to harm, the true meaning of innocence. The Feast of Holy Innocents highlights a sad feature of ‘the city of man’ historically and in the global present; a world of many, many victims who are caught up in the machinations of political and economic power and are destroyed. Most of them are unnamed and unknown by us, yet known to God.

The point is that the unnamed victims are known and named in God. The whole theological thrust of the Feast within the Festival of Christmas is to gather us into the embrace of Christ’s grace. The lesson from Revelation places all such holy innocents in the vision of the redeemed, the proverbial “one hundred and forty-four thousand” who have “his Name, and the Name of the Father written on their forehead”. In other words the Holy Innocents participate in the world’s redemption accomplished in Christ. In that sense the Collect suggests, albeit disturbingly, to be sure, that God “madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths”. Yet this is the idea of redemptive suffering from the perspective of those who are the innocent victims of the machinations of worldly powers.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Innocents’ Day

The collect for today, The Feast of the Holy Innocents, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths: Mortify and kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith, even unto death, we may glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 14:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 2:13-18

When wise men from the East visited King Herod in Jerusalem to ask where the king of the Jews had been born, Herod felt his throne was in jeopardy. So, he ordered all the boys of Bethlehem aged two and under to be killed. On this day, the church remembers those children.

The Massacre of the Innocents is recorded only in St. Matthew’s Gospel, where it is said to be fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah.

The church has kept this feast day since the fifth century. The Western churches commemorate the innocents on 28 December; the Eastern Orthodox Church on 29 December. Medieval authors spoke of up to 144,000 murdered boys, in accordance with Revelation 14:3. More recent estimates, however, recognising that Bethlehem was a very small town, place the number between ten and thirty.

This episode has been challenged as a fabrication with no basis in actual historical events. James Kiefer has a point-by-point presentation of the objections with replies in defence of biblical historicity.

This is an appropriate day to remember the victims of abortion.

Pietro Testa, The Massacre of the InnocentsArtwork: Pietro Testa, The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1640. Oil on canvas, Galleria Spada, Rome.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday After Christmas Day

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

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 Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:18-25

Corrado Giaquinto, Saint Joseph’s DreamArtwork: Corrado Giaquinto, Saint Joseph’s Dream, c. 1755-60. Oil on canvas, Museo Camón Aznar, Zaragoza, Spain.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. John the Evangelist

“The world itself could not contain the books that should be written”

Between the martyrdom of Stephen and the slaughter of the Holy Innocents there is The Feast of St. John the Evangelist. All three feasts comprise the three great Holy Days of Christmas and enlighten our understanding of the mystery of Christmas. With today’s feast we have the divine ground of human lives in all of their complexity illuminated for us. We are returned, as it were, to the wonder of Christmas Eve in the pageant of God’s Word and Son in The Letter to the Hebrews and in the Prologue of John’s Gospel. We contemplate this morning the radical mystery of the Incarnation by way of John’s first letter and the ending of the very last chapter of his Gospel. These endings and beginnings are nothing more than the ways in which we are enfolded in eternity, enfolded and embraced in the love of God toward us.

The life of the Church and the doctrine of the Christian Faith is greatly influenced and shaped by “the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John,” as the collect puts it. The Divine Word signals life and light communicated to us through “that which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled”; in short, the Word of life, as John’s 1st Epistle says. For in this, “the life was manifested”, the life that is “eternal life, which was with the Father … [which] and was manifested unto us”. To what end? Our fellowship with God and the joy of that heavenly fellowship. For “these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.”

Is the Word of God only or simply what is written? No. Neither the Christmas Gospel from John’s Prologue nor the last words of the last chapter of his Gospel allow us to draw that conclusion. God’s Word and Son is more than words written, though not less. The greater mystery is how the words written lift us to the wonder of the eternal word with us whose thoughts, words, and deeds, we might say, far exceed all that could be written. “The world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” This is not about more information or facts or data that belong to finite reason and experience; it is about the eternal Word itself as exceeding by definition human comprehension. It is not something to which we can add or from which we can subtract. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55. 8). And so too, we might say, ‘My words are not your words’.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint John the Evangelist

The collect for today, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

MERCIFUL Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 1:1-5
The Gospel: St. John 21:19-25

Diego Velázquez, Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of PatmosJohn and his brother James (St. James the Greater) were Galilean fishermen and sons of Zebedee. Jesus called the two brothers Boanerges (“sons of thunder”), apparently because of their zealous character; for example, they wanted to call down fire from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritans. John and James, together with Peter, belonged to the inner group of the apostles who witnessed the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. It was John and Peter whom Jesus sent to prepare the final Passover meal.

In the lists of disciples, John always appears among the first four, but usually after his brother, which may indicate that John was the younger of the two.

According to ancient church tradition, St. John the Evangelist was the author of the New Testament documents that bear his name: the fourth gospel, the three epistles of John, and Revelation. John’s name is not mentioned in the fourth gospel (but 21:2 refers to “the sons of Zebedee”), but he is usually if not always identified as the beloved disciple. It is also generally believed that John was the “other disciple” who, with Peter, followed Jesus after his arrest. John was the only disciple at the foot of the cross and was entrusted by Christ with the care of his mother Mary.

After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, John, together with Peter, took a leading role in the formation and guidance of the early church. John was present when Peter healed the lame beggar, following which both apostles were arrested. After reports reached Jerusalem that Samaria was receiving the word of God, the apostles sent Peter and John to visit the new Samaritan converts. Presumably, John was at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). He is not mentioned later in the Acts of the Apostles, so he appears to have left Judea.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen

“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”

What most know about St. Stephen, if anything, is probably from the carol, “Good King Wencelaus”, a 19th century English Christmas carol by John Mason Neale set to a 13th century medieval tune collected in a 16th century Finnish collection of carols, Piae Cantiones. Neale’s carol is based upon a 10th century duke in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, about whom not much is known, other than is being favorably inclined towards Christians. The carol makes no mention whatsoever of the Christmas story and yet, paradoxically, it is one of the most popular Christmas carols! Nonetheless, the carol touches in at least two ways upon some of the most significant features of the Christmas Mystery and the Christian Faith.

The Feast of Stephen, explicitly mentioned in the carol, is one of the three great Holy Days of Christmas. Stephen is the proto-martyr of the Christian Church. Along with The Feast of St. John the Evangelist and The Feast of the Holy Innocents, St. Stephen’s Day contributes to our understanding of Christ’s Incarnation. Lancelot Andrewes notes that Christ’s Good Friday and his Christmas Day are “but the evening and the morning of one and the same day”; a point which John Donne twenty years later also echoed; both of them highlighting the necessary connection between the Nativity and the Passion. They are inseparable. “His whole life was a continual passion”.

T.S. Eliot notes in his play Murder in the Cathedral the central paradox which goes to the heart of the Christian Faith. We celebrate Christ’s Nativity with the Eucharist which recalls and re-presents to us his Passion. As the carol In Dulci Jubilo puts it “Christ was born for this”. Perhaps, it is not really all that strange that on the very day after Christmas we celebrate the first martyr of the Christian Church, St. Stephen, whose story in some sense or other has become associated with the carol and with Christmas.

The two ways in which Stephen is significant in terms of the mystery of Christmas is that he was, first, one of the early deacons of the emerging Christian church, known then simply as ‘The Way’ – the Christian Tao, as it were, and secondly, his sacrifice is explicitly modelled on Christ’s crucifixion and echoes Christ’s first and last words from the Cross. “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do” is Jesus’s first word on the Cross to the Father. Stephen’s last word is “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”, Stephen prays, an echo of Christ’s last word, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”.

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