Month: March 2026

Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Patrick

“The people which sat in darkness have seen a great light”

A figure of the late 4th and mid 5th centuries, Patrick belongs to the story of Celtic Christianity. He is the bearer of the great light of Christ to the Irish, the Apostle and Patron Saint of Ireland, having lit the paschal fire on Tara’s hill to drive away the pagan darkness of the Druids, perhaps just a few years after the death of Augustine (430AD). That light of faith has a powerful and transforming power, then and always, beyond the tales, myths, and legends of shamrocks, shillelaghs and snakes.

Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilisation, juxtaposes the image of a silver cauldron and a silver chalice to capture the transformation of Ireland’s conversion to Christianity; the one, beautifully carved and deliberately broken, symbolic of the culture of pagan human sacrifice; the other beautifully engraved and whole, inscribed with the names of the Apostolic Fellowship. The one, dated a century or two before Christ, is known as the Gundestrop Cauldron and depicts animal and human sacrifice; the other, late seventh or early eighth century is known as the Ardagh Chalice and is symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice and our participation in his sacrifice sacramentally. The juxtaposition of cauldron and chalice captures the transformation of a culture.

No celebration of The Feast of St. Patrick can overlook the wonderful hymn attributed to him, the poem known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”(Hymn # 812). The hymn offers a wonderful collection of images dealing with the power and grace of God in relation to us through nature and scripture, through spirituality and theology, and even psychologically, we might say. Yet all these images are contained within the Trinitarian understanding that embraces and frames the entire hymn. It begins and ends with the invocation of the doctrine, the teaching about God as Trinity. The doctrine is at the heart of our devotion and worship of God.

I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Patrick, Missionary and Bishop

St. Augustine Kilburn, St. PatrickThe collect for today, the Feast of Saint Patrick (c. 390-c. 461), Bishop, Missionary, Patron of Ireland (source):

Almighty God,
who in thy providence chose thy servant Patrick
to be the apostle of the people of Ireland:
keep alive in us the fire of faith which he kindled,
and in this our earthly pilgrimage
strengthen us to gain the light of everlasting 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 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
The Gospel: St Matthew 28:16-20

Click here to read the prayer known as St Patrick’s Breastplate.

Artwork: St. Patrick, stained glass, St. Augustine Kilburn, London. Photograph taken by admin, 26 September 2015.

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Statements and other writings

Covenant in Ministry renewed

At its most recent meeting on 10 March 2026, the Parish Council of Christ Church approved a revised Covenant in Ministry between the Rector and the Parish. This document, which articulates the understanding of the parochial ministry, can be downloaded here (in pdf format).

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Fourth Sunday in Lent

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fourth Sunday in Lent.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

“What are they among so many?”

Five barley-loaves and two small fishes. Not much to feed a crowd and hardly much in the way of festive delights. No mention of any simnel cake! Andrew’s question is very much to the point, yet, in what follows, so much more is made out of so little. But is that the point simply? What are we to make of this story?

The Fourth Sunday in Lent seems to mark a reprieve or at least a bit of a respite, a break, as it were, from the rigours of the Lenten discipline, especially after the challenging readings from last Sunday. Its various names highlight this apparent shift: Laetare Sunday meaning rejoice from the traditional Introit from Isaiah, Refreshment Sunday alluding to the Gospel story, Mothering Sunday in reference to the Epistle about Jerusalem as “the mother of us all,” giving rise, as some say, to the custom of visiting one’s mother or their mother church. All these terms belong to a kind of ‘folk wisdom’ that arises entirely from the readings.

Yet they belong very much to the journey and logic of Lent, to its deeper meaning and purpose. As we saw last Sunday, we are not to be left desolate and empty through the shattering of our illusions, so here we are reminded about what going up to Jerusalem really means: namely, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus in whom and with whom is the joy of human redemption, regardless of vagaries of human experience.

Fr. Crouse observed that this Sunday allows us “to catch our breath” from the Collect, ut respiramus, “that we may be relieved.” Such is “the comfort of thy grace.” In other words, this Sunday strengthens us for the journey – the true meaning of comfort – reminding us of the blessings that belong to those “whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the pilgrim ways;/ Who going through the Vale of Misery use it for a well, “ as the Psalmist puts it. “They go from strength to strength,/ and unto the God of gods appeareth every one of them in Sion”(Ps. 84. 5,6). That conjunction of the “Vale of Misery” and “Sion” or Jerusalem is very striking in terms of the Epistle and the Gospel which concentrate for us the dynamic interplay between Paradise and Wilderness.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Month at a Glance, March 2026

Sunday, March 15th, Lent IV (Refreshment Sunday)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Followed by a time of fellowship and refreshment

Tuesday, March 17th, St. Patrick
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme III: ‘Reading Augustine’ – “Enchiridion”

Sunday, March 22nd, Lent V (Passion Sunday)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
(after the Service, looking for help to move things from the Hall to the Church)

Tuesday, March 24th, Eve of the Annunciation
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme IV: ‘Reading Augustine’ – “Enchiridion”

(Return to ‘Big Church!’)

Sunday, March 29th, Palm Sunday
8:00am Palms & Holy Communion
10:30am Palms & Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:26-5:1
The Gospel: St. John 6:5-14

Master of the Antwerp Adoration, Multiplication of the Loaves and FishesArtwork: Master of the Antwerp Adoration, Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, c. 1505-30. Oil on panel, Private collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

Gregory the Great, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Gregory the Great (540-604), Bishop of Rome, Doctor of the Church (source):

Titian, St. Gregory the GreatO merciful Father,
who didst choose thy bishop Gregory
to be a servant of the servants of God:
grant that, like him, we may ever desire to serve thee
by proclaiming thy gospel to the nations,
and may ever rejoice to sing thy praises;
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 Lesson: 1 Chronicles 25: 1a, 6-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:42-45

Artwork: Titian, St. Gregory the Great, first half of 16th century, Oil on panel, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Third Sunday in Lent

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Third Sunday in Lent.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

“If I cast out devils by the finger of God, no doubt, the kingdom of God hath come upon you”

It is not enough, as this Sunday shows us, simply to be “delivered from evil,” as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. The purpose of Lent as the Penitential Service says is “To decline from sin and incline to virtue; that we may walk with a perfect heart before thee, now and evermore.” “Walk in love,” as Paul puts it, means to act in ways that “becometh saints,” in the pursuit of holiness. That is the love of Christ for us in his sacrifice and his love active in us. But that requires the overcoming of all sin and evil.

But what is it that overcomes sin and evil? What are we to make of the language of devils and Beelzebul, the prince of the devils, of Satan and his kingdom in the Gospel and the language of darkness and light, of all uncleanness and covetousness in the Epistle? Such language may seem strange and foreign to us but speaks profoundly, I think, to the experience of devils in our times and, perhaps, nowhere more clearly than in these readings that confront us with the reality of sin and evil.

They bring to a certain clarity what we have already seen in the story of The Temptations of Christ by the devil, the tempter, Satan, on the 1st Sunday in Lent and to the story of the woman of Canaan whose daughter is “grievously vexed with a devil” last Sunday. “Ye were sometimes darkness,” Paul rather gently but firmly reminds us this morning about our thoughts and actions that are contrary to “all goodness, and righteousness and truth,” all the things that run counter to the love of Christ and his sacrifice for us.

We know only too well in our own world the problem and power of obsessions and addictions, of the disorders of hearts and minds, that can sadly lead to extreme pathological states of dysfunction, and of being imprisoned in ourselves. What are such things except tendencies, in varying degrees, of the fixations of the will upon some finite thing or person, whether ourselves or some agenda, as if it were absolute? Treating finite things as if they were God is why Paul can speak of idolatry as the underlying principle of all the forms of attachment to the lesser things of the world. False absolutes, as it were, treated as if they were divine.

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