Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Fourth Sunday after Easter
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fourth Sunday after Easter.
Day: May 3, 2026
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter
“The Spirit of truth … will guide you into all truth”
The paradox of the last three Sundays of Easter is captured in the recurring refrain, “because I go to my Father.” Jesus prepares the disciples for his going away which is the condition of his being with us in his body, the Church. It is all part of the “farewell discourse” of Jesus in John’s Gospel.
The Gospel engages the world. That is not the same thing as being collapsed into the world or being conformed to the world. Nor is it about making accommodations to the world with respect to the agendas and issues of our day. There have always been such tendencies and temptations. They can be, perhaps, the occasion for the discovery or recovery of the deeper truths of the Gospel. “The Spirit of truth,” it is said in today’s gospel, “will guide you into all truth.”
But what is that truth? Is it simply something which we happen to agree upon today only to change our minds tomorrow? Is the truth simply our acquiescence to the loudest voices drumming their mantras of social and political correctness into our heads? Is truth simply the will of those in power? Is it simply our feelings and opinions? “The Spirit of truth,” as we shall hear at Pentecost, “shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you.” Somehow truth is found in the divine relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; in short, in the divine life opened to view through the Resurrection and Passion of Jesus Christ and which has its culmination in the Ascension. All truth and wisdom belong to God.
Month at a Glance, May 2026
Sunday, May 3rd, Fourth Sunday after Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, May 10th, Fifth Sunday after Easter (Rogation Sunday)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Monday, May 11th, Rogation Monday
10:00am Holy Communion
Tuesday May 12th, Rogation Tuesday
10:00am Holy Communion
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Thursday, May 14th, Ascension Day
7:00pm Holy Communion (foll. by seminar on Consensus Fidelium)
Sunday, May 17th, Sunday after Ascension
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, May 19th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Wild Thought (1962), trans. by Jeffrey Mehlman and John Leavin (2021) & Adam Shoalts’s The Whisper on the Night Wind: The True History of a Wilderness Legend (2021).
Sunday, May 24th, Pentecost (Whitsunday)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Baptism & Holy Communion
Monday, May 25th, Monday after Pentecost
10:00am Holy Communion
Tuesday, May 26th, Tuesday after Pentecost / Eve of Ember Wednesday
7:00pm Holy Communion
Sunday, May 31st, Trinity Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The Fourth Sunday After Easter
The collect for today, The Fourth Sunday After Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: St. James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St. John 16:5-15
Artwork: William Kurelek, When Evening Came (from The Passion of Christ series), 1960-63. Gouache on paper, Niagara Falls Art Gallery, Niagara Falls, Ontario.