Tuesday, November 1st, All Saints
7:00pm Holy Communion
Sunday, November 6th, Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity (in the Octave of All Saints)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Events:
Friday, November 11th, Remembrance Day
11:00am Windsor Cenotaph
12noon KES Cenotaph
Saturday, November 19th
4:30-6:00pm Parish Hall: Ham Supper
The collect for today, the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:1-14
Artwork: Pieter Brueghel the Younger (c. 1565-1636), The Wedding Feast. Oil on canvas, Private collection.
The collect for today, the commemoration of James Hannington (1847-85), first Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Missionary to Uganda, Martyr (source):
Precious in your sight, O Lord,
is the death of your martyrs
James Hannington and his companions,
who purchased with their blood a road into Uganda
for the proclamation of the gospel;
and we pray that with them
we also may obtain the crown of righteousness
which is laid up for all
who love the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:14-18,22
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:16-22
In the gentle softness of October and in the quiet stillness of the ending of nature’s year, we celebrate the completion of the Apostolic foundation of the City of God with the Feast of Saint Simon and Saint Jude. All that can be said has simply to do with their apostleship. They are of the company of “twelve poor men, by Christ anointed,”as a hymn puts it. And after all, what more needs to be said than that? Very little is known about either apart from their apostleship in Christ though they have come to be known traditionally as the patron saints of zealots and of lost causes, respectively. But that only highlights perhaps the essential doctrine of the saints. Another lives in them and so for us. It is all about the sanctifying power of the grace of Christ reflected in those whose lives are hid in Christ and who point us to the nature of our abiding in the grace of God.
That abiding is wonderfully signaled in the lesson from Revelation as belonging to the image of the heavenly city, the city of God. The Collect emphasizes that the Church is built upon nothing less than “the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the head corner-stone” and emphasizes the unity of doctrine as the binding principle that makes us “an holy temple acceptable unto thee.” We abide in the temple and are to be ourselves temples of the Holy Spirit.
What this means is shown in the powerful gospel for their feast which speaks about keeping the commandments of God in love and about the Holy Spirit as the Comforter or Strengthener of our faith who “shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” The Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude completes the festal round of the Apostles and prepares us for the harvest festival of All Saints. What is set before us is the wonder of our co-inherence with God and with one another. God in us and we in him.
Saints Simon and Jude usher us into the glorious celebration of that community of divine love in which we have our abiding, the Feast of All Saints; itself the celebration of “all that dedicated city, dearly loved of God on high.” All our agendas are, after all, but lost causes, all our zeal is but misplaced love apart from our abiding in the love of God which passes human knowing. And as the Gospel makes clear this abiding is our peace and our joy, come what may in the course of this troublous life.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Simon the Zealot and Saint Jude, Apostles, with Saint Jude the Brother of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The collect for the Brethren of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O HEAVENLY Father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: We bless thy holy Name for the witness of James and Jude, the kinsmen of the Lord, and pray that we may be made true members of thy heavenly family; through him who willed to be the firstborn among many brethren, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: St. Jude 1-4
The Gospel: St. John 14:21-27
In the various New Testament lists of the Twelve Apostles (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13), the tenth and eleventh places are occupied by Simon and Judas son of James, also called Thaddaeus.
To distinguish Simon from Simon Peter, Matthew and Mark refer to him as Simon the Cananaean, while Luke refers to him as Simon the Zealot. Both surnames have the same signification and are a translation of the Hebrew qana (the Zealous). The name does not signify that he belonged to the party of Zealots, but that he had zeal for the Jewish law, which he practised before his call. The translation of Matthew and Mark as Simon “the Canaanite” (as, e.g., KJV has it) is simply mistaken.
The New Testament contains a variety of names for the apostle Jude: Matthew and Mark refer to Thaddaeus (a variant reading of Matthew has “Lebbaeus called Thaddaeus”), while Luke calls him Judas son of James. Christian tradition regards Saint Jude and Saint Thaddaeus as different names for the same person. The various names are understood as efforts to avoid associating Saint Jude with the name of the traitor Judas Iscariot. The only time words of Jude are recorded, in St. John 14:22-23, the Evangelist is quick to add “(not Iscariot)” after his name.
Love and law go together, as strange as that may seem. The Summary of the Law captures the Jewish and Christian sensibility brought to a kind of completion in the figure of Jesus Christ. What is the Summary of the Law? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”, in short with the whole of our being, and “thou shalt love the neighbour as thyself” (Mk. 12. 29-31). Powerful words which bring out the spirituality of Jewish and Christian thought quite wonderfully. It concentrates for us the essential content and meaning of the Ten Commandments. Love of God and love of one another go together.
The Summary of the Law is taken from passages in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus: the one about the love of God, the other about the love of one another; in short, the other as neighbour – not as stranger, not as enemy. The Book of Leviticus is the most formidable and least read of the five Books of Moses which comprise the Torah in the Jewish understanding. I don’t think there has ever been a reading in Chapel from Leviticus.
It is a rather forbidding and challenging book seemingly dominated by a great collection of rules and regulations about human behaviour in relation to God and to one another that seem, at first glance, perplexing and strange. Yet it has been modern forms of study, such as sociology, along with the wisdom of the commentary traditions, that have helped to reclaim something of Leviticus’s radical teaching. It is in part a kind of extended commentary on the Genesis story of Creation. One thing is different from another but within an order of relation. Clarity rather than the confusion of boundaries between one thing and another is the paramount concern. The proscriptions and demands of The Book of Leviticus are really about that fundamental idea. Thus it is not a collection of arbitrary regulations but instead a profound reflection on Creation and on the Holiness of the Law. No book of the Hebrew Scriptures speaks more frequently of God as ‘I Am Who I Am’, for instance. Here in this remarkable work we have the further extension of the idea of our human vocation to the service of God in prayer and praise. “Be ye holy as the Lord your God as holy.”
But what does that mean? Simply put it is about our wholeness, about the integrity of our being and life as a gift of God and as the gift which defines our relationships with one another just as we have seen in the Ten Commandments.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Alfred the Great (849-899), King of the West Saxons, Scholar (source):
O God our maker and redeemer,
we beseech thee of thy great mercy
and by the power of thy holy cross
to guide us by thy will and to shield us from our foes,
that, following the example of thy servant Alfred,
we may inwardly love thee above all things;
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: Wisdom 6:1-3,9-12,24-25
The Gospel: St. Luke 6:43-49
Artwork: King Alfred at Prayer (detail from The Queen Victoria Window), made by the firm of C.E. Kempe of London and installed in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, St John’s, Newfoundland, in 1903. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.
The collect for a Bishop or Archbishop, on the Feast of St. Cedd (c. 620-664), Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of the East Saxons, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Cedd 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 Lesson: Acts 17:22-31
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-16
The collect for a Martyr, on the Feast of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian, Martyrs (d. c. 285), from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD, who didst bestow upon thy Saints such marvellous virtue, that they were able to stand fast, and have the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil: Grant that we, who now commemorate thy Martyrs Crispin and Crispinian, may ever rejoice in their fellowship, and also be enabled by thy grace to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27
Crispin and Crispinian are believed to have been brothers and Roman noblemen martyred for their faith during the persecution of Emperor Maximian.
Artwork: Pasquier Borman, Flagellation of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, early 16th century. Saint Waldtrudis Church, Herentals, Belgium.
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.
