Author: CCW

Prayers and liturgy

The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

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

O GOD, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running the way of thy commandments, may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
The Gospel: St Luke 18:9-14

Circle of Bernaert van Orley, Parable of the Pharisee and the PublicanArtwork: Circle of Bernaert van Orley, Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, 1531. Oil on aluminum, Private collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The collect for today, the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD Most High, who didst endue with wonderful virtue and grace the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord: Grant that we, who now call her blessed, may be made very members of the heavenly family of him who was pleased to be called the first-born among many brethren; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:12-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:39-49

Giacinto Brandi, The Transit of the VirginArtwork: Giacinto Brandi, The Transit of the Virgin, 17th century. Oil on canvas, Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo, L’Aquila, Italy.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Tenth Sunday After Trinity

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

LET thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 19:41-47a

Boris Olshansky, Jesus and the Money ChangersArtwork: Boris Olshansky, Jesus and the Money Changers, 2006.

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Prayers and liturgy

Charles Inglis, Bishop

The collect for a Bishop or Archbishop, in commemoration of The Right Rev. Charles Inglis (1734-1816), first Church of England bishop of Nova Scotia, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Charles Inglis to be a Bishop in thy Church and to feed thy flock: We beseech thee to send down upon all thy Bishops, the Pastors of thy Church, the abundant gift of thy Holy Spirit, that they, being endued with power from on high, and ever walking in the footsteps of thy holy Apostles, may minister before thee in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-44

Born in Ireland, Charles Inglis became in 1787 the first Bishop of Nova Scotia—the first bishop consecrated for any English colony.

Inglis Window, Hensley Memorial ChapelCharles Inglis travelled to North America in 1759 as a Church of England missionary to Dover, Delaware. In 1765 he went to Trinity Church, New York, as assistant to the rector, and was chosen rector in 1777. His ministry proved extremely controversial when he emerged as an outspoken Loyalist during the American Revolution. His life was threatened because he refused to omit prayers for the King and the Royal Family from the liturgy.

In 1783, Rev. Inglis and his family left the newly independent nation and returned to England, where he was consecrated the first Bishop of the Diocese of Nova Scotia, which at that time included Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s Island, Newfoundland, and Bermuda. He immediately sailed to Halifax and began his work of furthering the progress and unity of the Church of England in Canada.

Bishop Inglis undertook an ambitious programme of church construction across Atlantic Canada; in 1789, he himself laid the cornerstone for the original Christ Church in Windsor. He also played a leading role in the establishment in Windsor of King’s Collegiate School (1788, now King’s-Edgehill School) and King’s College (1789, now University of King’s College, Halifax).

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Prayers and liturgy

Laurence, Archdeacon and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Laurence (d. 258), Archdeacon of Rome, Martyr (source):

Almighty God,
who didst make Laurence
a loving servant of thy people
and a wise steward of the treasures of thy Church:
inflame us, by his example, to love as he loved
and to walk in the way that leads to 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: 2 Corinthians 9:6-10
The Gospel: St. John 12:24-26

Giambettino Cignaroli, Martyrdom of St LawrenceArtwork: Giambettino Cignaroli, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 18th century. Oil on canvas, Main altar, San Lorenzo Church, Brescia, Italy.

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Sermons

Sermon for Society of the Holy Cross Quiet Day, 4 August 2023

“One thing is needful”

It is unum necessarium, the one thing necessary. One of the most remarkable figures of the disturbed and disturbing 20th century, the legacy of which is our own disordered world, is the philosopher and social activist, Simone Weil. Her essay, ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God’, begins with the astute observation that “prayer consists of attention,” and, indeed, attention of the highest order, namely, “the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God”. This complements Richard Hooker’s observation that prayer signifies “all the service that ever we do unto God”. For him, as for Simone Weil, the connection between learning and prayer was ever so obvious. They belong to our relation to God’s truth and goodness.

As teaching bringeth us to know that God is our supreme truth; so prayer testifieth that we acknowledge him our sovereign good.

We might add that God is for us ‘most beautiful’ and so completes the triad of Plato’s transcendentals, ‘the true, the beautiful, and the good’, which belong to the intellectual and ethical structure of reality and our lives. The good, αγαθος, and the beautiful, καλος, are virtually interchangeable in Greek. Beauty belongs to our seeking truth and the good. “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Ps. 96.9), as the Psalmist bids us.

I want to reflect on our commemoration of St. John Vianney, the Curé d’Ars, and on the readings from Ezekiel and Matthew, about our priestly vocation as “watchmen unto the house of Israel,” sent by Jesus “to teach, to preach, and to heal,” by way of the story of Martha and Mary, read in the daily office this week. Martha and Mary represent action and contemplation respectively in what is a long and rich tradition about the forms of spiritual life which are, I think, crucial for the life and fellowship of the Society of the Holy Cross. It is implicit in the Society Prayer about the saving power of the Cross “impressed inwardly” and “expressed outwardly.”

Following Plato and Aristotle, contemplation is the highest form of human activity, an inner activity of spiritual and intellectual reflection, but not at the expense of outward activity which belongs to our lives physically and socially with one another. There is, after all, something spiritual, intellectual, and ethical about our interactions with one another, even necessary. At issue is the interplay between action and contemplation; in short, between Martha and Mary.

Augustine encapsulates the idea nicely in a phrase in ‘The City of God’. Otium sanctum quaerit charitas veritatis, negotium iustum suscipit necessitas charitatis. “The love of truth seeks a holy quiet; [yet] the necessity of love accepts a righteous busyness”. I have carved these words on panels of wood which hang in my house. They are a reminder to us about our priestly life of prayer in relation to the true, the beautiful, and the good; a reminder of what Augustine calls the vita mixta, a mixed life, which belongs to our journey, via ad patriam.

The story of Martha and Mary turns on the question of attention. Martha, you will recall, “was distracted with much serving” and complained to Jesus about Mary “sitting at his feet, listening to his word.”

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Prayers and liturgy

The Name of Jesus

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

Simon Bening, Manuscript Leaf with Adoration of the Holy Name, from a Book of HoursALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Apostle hast taught us that there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved, but only the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Grant, we beseech thee, that we may ever glory in this Name, and strive to make thy salvation known unto all mankind; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For The Epistle: Acts 4:8-12
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:20-23

Artwork: Simon Bening, Manuscript Leaf with Adoration of the Holy Name, from a Book of Hours, c. 1530. Tempera, ink and shell gold on parchment, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Transfiguration / Ninth Sunday after Trinity

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of the Transfiguration / Ninth Sunday after Trinity

“Behold a voice out of the cloud”

“The glory of God is man alive [a living human being] and the life of man is the vision of God,” as the 2nd century theologian Irenaeus said. Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. It sets before us the vision of Christ transfigured, the vision of his divine majesty, and what that means for us, namely, the idea of our transformation. “That we, being purified and strengthened by thy grace, may be transformed into his likeness from glory to glory,” as the Collect puts it. What does that mean and how, we might ask? Well, it has to do with what we see and hear, in short, what we are learning through what is being taught.

On the Mount of Transfiguration we are told, “Behold a voice,” a voice that comes “out of the cloud”, the bright overshadowing cloud of God’s glory, the shekhinah of the Hebrew Scriptures that signifies God’s presence. What does it mean to see what is heard? It means an understanding – a divine understanding articulated through our human understanding. Hearing and seeing are the biblical senses of understanding, and they are, if I may put it this way, the most intellectual of the senses, meaning that they point us beyond a literal sense to something intellectual, to something understood. To behold a voice is the language of Revelation.

The Transfiguration is the summertime epiphany of the Trinity. It complements the wintertime epiphany in the Baptism of Christ. For both there is a beholding of what is heard. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt.3.17) and again, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; Hear ye him” (Matt.17.5). The Baptism inaugurates the way of the obedience of Christ for us, our justification. The Transfiguration commands the way of the obedience of Christ in us, our sanctification; hence the added charge, “Hear ye him.”

The voice is the Father’s voice. To hear that voice in the biblical sense of acting faithfully upon what we hear is to enter into the way of understanding through the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The sequence of teaching which brings us to the Transfiguration (Matt.16.13-17.1) illustrates just how hard and yet how necessary that way is. “Who do men say that the Son of man is? Who do you say that I am?”, Jesus asks his disciples. Peter answers: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”.

Jesus’ response shows that what Peter understands, he understands from God. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matt.16.7). It is not simply a finite human understanding, a human opinion or construct by us. It shares in something more. It is divinely human. Through this understanding Simon becomes Peter, πετρος, which means ‘rock’ And upon this understanding (and no other), Jesus says, “Upon this rock, I will build my church” against which nothing will prevail (Matt.16.18). But how well do we stand upon this rock of understanding? Again, Peter provides the paradigm.

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Events, Month at a Glance

August at a Glance

Sunday, August 13th, Tenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, August 20th, Eleventh Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, August 27th, Twelfth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Fr. Curry is priest-in-charge for Avon Valley Parish and Hantsport during July through the first week of August; Fr. Tom Henderson will be priest-in-charge for Christ Church from 7 August through 3 September when I will be on vacation.

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