Month: March 2026

Events, Month at a Glance

Month at a Glance, March 2026

Sunday, March 8th, Lent III
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, March 10th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

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

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 Third Sunday in Lent

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

Hans Schäufelein, Christ Healing the PossessedWE beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:1-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 11:14-26

Artwork: Hans Schäufelein, Christ Healing the Possessed, from Das Plenarium, 1517. Woodcut, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Aquinas, Doctor and Poet

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Priest, Friar, Poet, Doctor of the Church (source):

Everlasting God,
who didst enrich thy Church with the learning and holiness
of thy servant Thomas Aquinas:
grant to all who seek thee
a humble mind and a pure heart
that they may know thy Son Jesus Christ
to be the way, the truth and the life;
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:47-52

Antoine Nicolas, Saint Thomas, Fountain of WisdomBorn into a noble family near Aquino, between Rome and Naples, St. Thomas was educated at the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino until age thirteen, and then at the University of Naples. When he decided to join the Dominican Order, his family were dismayed because the Dominicans were mendicants and regarded as socially inferior to the Benedictines. Thomas’s brothers kidnapped and imprisoned him for a year in the family’s castle, but he finally escaped and became a Dominican friar in 1244.

The rest of Thomas’s life was spent studying, teaching, preaching, and writing. Initially, he studied philosophy and theology with Albert the Great at Paris and Cologne. Albert was said to prophesy that, although Thomas was called the dumb ox (probably referring to his physical size), “his lowing would soon be heard all over the world”.

His two greatest works are Summa Contra Gentiles, begun c. 1259 and completed in 1264, and Summa Theologica, begun c. 1266 but uncompleted at his death.

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Prayers and liturgy

Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Perpetua, St. Felicitas, and their companions (d. 203), Martyrs at Carthage (source):

Antonio Ridolfi, St. Perpetua Comforting her Father Before Her MartyrdomO holy God,
who gavest great courage to Perpetua,
Felicity and their companions:
grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice
and be received into the garden of peace;
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: Hebrews 10:32-39
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:9-14

Perpetua, Felicitas, and five other catechumens were arrested in North Africa after emperor Septimus Severus forbade new conversions to Christianity. They were thrown to wild animals in the circus of Carthage.

The early church writer Tertullian records, in what appears to be Perpetua’s own words, a vision in which she saw a ladder to heaven and heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Perpetua, I am waiting for you”. She climbed the ladder and reached a large garden where sheep were grazing. From this, she understood that she and her companions would be martyred.

Tertullian’s The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas is posted here.

Artwork: Antonio Ridolfi, St. Perpetua Comforting her Father Before Her Martyrdom, 1857. Oil on canvas, Museo Cassioli, Asciano, Italy.

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Sermons

Lenten Programme I: Reading Augustine

“All men are seeking for thee”: A brief digest of Augustine’s de doctrina Christiana
Lenten Programme 2026: Christ Church, Windsor, NS
Fr. David Curry

Augustine’s de doctrina Christiana, On Christian Doctrine, is fundamentally a treatise on teaching the Christian Faith as revealed in the Scriptures. Doctrine is teaching and that presupposes two things right from the outset: first, a kind of faith that there are things to be known, and, second, a capacity, willingness or desire, to learn. Thus the preface touches on the problem of the unteachable for various reasons: 1) those who just don’t get or understand the teaching, it seems, 2) those who are unable to apply the teaching to obtain the meaning of obscure parts of Scripture, and 3) those who think they know and understand the Scriptures without any need of instruction or rules about learning.

He employs the language of signs and things. Those who don’t get it fail to see the finger which is pointing to what is to be known while those who can’t apply the instruction fail to see that to which the finger is pointing; in short, one can’t see the signpost, the other to what it is pointing. Those who think they know without the need for any aid or instruction forget that they know only because others have taught them at least how to read or they have remembered what has been spoken and heard, an important point about the oral traditions which historically precede writing. Augustine commends, for instance, Anthony the Great of Egypt, the illiterate desert father who “committed the Scriptures to memory through hearing them read by others” and by “wise meditation arrived at a thorough understanding of them.” That is testament to the strong desire to know and to love the truth.

From the outset Augustine highlights the primacy of Scripture in terms of what it teaches and in what ways but without negating or denying other disciplines of knowing and learning that belong to human experience. They too have their use and, to be sure, their abuse. “All men are seeking for thee,” the disciples say to Jesus who in turn says “I preach … for therefore came I forth.” As Austin Farrer notes, preaching and teaching are necessarily rhetorical; they have to do with making ideas, concepts, and things known, a sharing of things learned.

The structure of the argument is clearly stated and reiterated throughout the treatise. It is divided into two parts: first, “the mode of ascertaining (or discovering) the proper meaning of Scripture,” secondly, “the mode of making known the meaning when it is ascertained” (modus inveniendi quae intelligenda sunt, et modus proferendi quae intellecta sunt). Composed of four books, the first three written in 327 AD deal with what the Scriptures teach, and the fourth, written in 426 AD (four years before his death in 430), treats the mode of making the meaning known. He says that the second is the more difficult part but it is really about the necessity of sharing with others what has been learned. Such is teaching really.

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Prayers and liturgy

Chad, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Chad (d. 672), Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary (source):

Cartmel Priory, Saint ChadAlmighty God,
who, from the first fruits of the English nation
that turned to Christ,
didst call thy servant Chad
to be an evangelist and bishop of his own people:
grant us grace so to follow his peaceable nature,
humble spirit and prayerful life,
that we may truly commend to others
the faith which we ourselves profess;
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: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St Luke 14:1,7-14

Artwork: St Chad of Lichfield, 19th-century stained glass, from the East window, North transept, Cartmel Priory, England. Photograph taken by admin, 9 August 2004.

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Prayers and liturgy

John and Charles Wesley

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wesley (1703-91) and Charles Wesley (1708-88), Evangelists, Hymn Writers, Leaders of the Methodist Revival (source):

Merciful God,
who didst inspire John and Charles Wesley with zeal for thy gospel:
grant to all people boldness to proclaim thy word
and a heart ever to rejoice in singing 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: Isaiah 49:5-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 9:2-6

Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old ManThomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley

Artwork:
(left) Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old Man, 1932. Oil on canvas, John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism, London.
(right) Thomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley, 1749. Oil on canvas, Epworth Old Rectory, Epworth, Lincolnshire.

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Prayers and liturgy

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

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

“Truth, Lord; yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”

“Little dogs,” an intriguing term. Dogs are rarely mentioned in the Scriptures and rarely in a positive light. Sinners are said to be like dogs returning to their vomit, an image of our besetting sins; dogs lick the blood of Jezebel, another unattractive yet compelling image. To call someone a dog in the Old Testament was to suggest that they were worthless; in short, an insult. In Revelation or as in Philippians we are told: “Look out for the dogs … for the evil-workers.” Dogs, it seems, are evil. Don’t ask about cats. None here!

Isaiah speaks of “dumb dogs [that] cannot bark” (Is. 56.10), criticizing the watchmen, the leaders of Israel. More than a thousand years later that phrase was turned on its head to become an image for dogs as preachers, meaning dogs that do bark and, indeed, bark incessantly against “foxes and wolves,” the heretics that threaten “the sheep,” the faithful, as Gregory the Great imagines. Preaching as barking?! Just saying.

Several centuries later after him, it became an image for the Ordo Praedicatorum, St. Dominic’s Order of Preachers, later known as Dominicans, sometimes wrongly punned as the Domini Canes, the dogs of the Lord. But that is just bad Latin, a mistaken translation, and not historical except as an insult; in short, another myth. There is, however, nothing mythical about the dog with the flaming torch as the symbol of the Dominican order. And scripturally, at least in terms of the Old Testament Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical Book of Tobias or Tobit, Tobias’ dog is mentioned twice as accompanying him.

It is the sole biblical instance of dogs viewed as faithful and loyal companions much like Odysseus’s dog, Argos, in the Odyssey. He alone recognises his master, though disguised as a beggar in his return to reclaim Ithaca, and then dies but without betraying him. Seeing Argos brings tears to Odysseus’ eyes. It is a touching scene. As Homer beautifully puts it, “Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years”.

In the New Testament, there are the dogs that are the companions of Lazarus who lies at the gate of Dives, the rich man, “full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table”. The dogs “came and licked his sores”. A moving image of compassion and care. No doubt, they, too, desired to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table which is the insight of this most powerful and yet disturbing story. Silence and rebuke and finally insult give way to mercy and grace. But how hard, how disturbing this must seem! The breakthrough moment is this remarkable woman’s last statement to Jesus: “Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”. Little dogs.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Month at a Glance, March 2026

Sunday, March 1st, Lent II
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, March 3rd, Lenten Feria
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme II: ‘Reading Augustine’ – “On Christian Doctrine”

Sunday, March 8th, Lent III
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, March 10th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

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

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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