Author: CCW

Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Advent

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

O LORD Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:2-10

Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Preaching of John the BaptistArtwork: Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Preaching of John the Baptist, 1486-90. Fresco, Turnabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The collect for today, the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (source):

Almighty and everlasting God,
who stooped to raise fallen humanity
through the child-bearing of blessed Mary:
grant that we, who have seen thy glory
revealed in our human nature
and thy love made perfect in our weakness,
may daily be renewed in thine image
and conformed to the pattern of thy Son
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Proverbs 8:22-35
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:26-28

Francesco Gessi, Madonna and ChildArtwork: Francesco Gessi, Madonna and Child, c. 1624. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.

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Prayers and liturgy

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

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

“Remember then what you received and heard; keep that and repent”

I am tempted to call this sermon, ‘Why we need hell’. The answer is not to have a place to put our enemies and those who trouble us, nor is it meant to scare us into heaven, as it were, in contrast to the usual and depressing parade of human miseries. The reason, paradoxically, has more to do with the reality of hope itself and the redemption of the truth of our desires. As the poet/theologian Dante so clearly teaches, hell is about getting exactly what you want which is not the same thing as what you think it is. Hell is for those who have lost, as he puts it, “the good of intellect”, for those who have not remembered or better yet, have not wanted to remember what we have “received and heard” and so have not “kept the word” and thus, have not repented, as the letter to the Church in Sardis in Revelation puts it. They have, Dante suggests, “abandoned all hope.” The key word is abandoned; it is a matter of our will and our reason.

Our text from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, which we read in the Evening Offices from the week of the Sunday Next Before Advent through the following three weeks of Advent, and which is from this morning’s second lesson at Matins, complements the eucharistic readings and echoes Matthew’s Apocalypse, his wake-call to what abides and ever is. “Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.” We find our hope and joy in that ever-abiding and eternal word of God paradoxically in the experience of the passing away of all things finite considered in themselves. Such finite realities are not nothing: they have their truth and meaning in the abiding and eternal word of God whose “words shall not pass away.”

It is not just about the catastrophes and impending senses of endism whether in the various forms of eco-apocalyptism or global social, economic, political, and psychological distresses – all wonderfully contracted in Matthew’s “distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear.” This is an aspect of our world, a world of fears, of troubles and tribulations rather fully comprehended and catalogued in the Litany. But whether in good times or bad, we are bidden to “look up and lift up our heads for our redemption draweth nigh”. That is of a different nature and order than our immediate and worldly idolatries of the practical and the technological, ourselves in our presumptions and now in our fears. Rather it is about looking to God in the motions of his Word towards us.

That Word is, inescapably, a word of judgment, a word calling us to account, a word that convinces our hearts of the reality of God and his kingdom by which our lives are measured and, inescapably, found wanting. Hope comes into play precisely at this point. In the awareness of an objective measure and standard to which we are accountable, we are brought before the absolute goodness of God. At the point where human desires discover their limitations, something more is opened out to us that is beyond ourselves and our doings.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Month at a Glance, December 2025

Tuesday, December 9th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, December 14th, Advent III
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Evensong, St. George’s, Halifax: Fr. Curry preaching on ‘Hell’

Tuesday, December 16th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme II on Wisdom (Sapienta)

Sunday, December 21st, Advent IV
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, December 23rd, St. Thomas (transf.)
7:00pm Holy Communion

Christmas at Christ Church 2025

Wednesday, Dec. 24th, Christmas Eve
7:00pm Children’s Crèche Service
9:30pm Christmas Eve Communion Service

Thursday, December 25th, Christmas Day
10:00am Christmas Morn

Friday, December 26th, St. Stephen
10:00am Holy Communion

Saturday, December 27th, St. John the Evangelist
10:00am Holy Communion

Sunday, December 28th, Holy Innocents
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Christmas Lessons & Carols

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday in Advent

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

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 21:25-33

Peter Paul Rubens, The Great Last Judgment, 1617Artwork: Peter Paul Rubens, The Great Last Judgment, 1617. Oil on canvas, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Nicholas, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Nicholas (d. c. 326), Bishop of Myra (source):

Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who didst choose thy servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of thy grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
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 St. John 4:7-14
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:13-16

Leonardo Corona, St. Nicholas Having a Tree Worshiped by Pagans Cut DownArtwork: Leonardo Corona, St. Nicholas Having a Tree Worshiped by Pagans Cut Down, c. 1595. Oil on canvas, San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, Venice.

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Prayers and liturgy

Clement of Alexandria, Doctor

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Clement of Alexandria (c. 155-c. 215), Priest, Apologist, Doctor (source):

St. Clement of AlexandriaO Lord, who didst call thy servant Clement of Alexandria from the errors of ancient philosophy that he might learn and teach the saving Gospel of Christ: Turn thy Church from the conceits of worldly wisdom and, by the Spirit of truth, guide it into all truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: Colossians 1:11-20
The Gospel: St. John 6:57-63

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Theology

Advent Programme I: Ethics & Ecclesiastes

Advent Programme at Christ Church 2025
Ethics & Ecclesiastes (Dec 2nd) and Wisdom (O Sapientia – Dec. 16th)
Fr. David Curry

Why Ecclesiastes and why The Book of Wisdom, you may ask? And why Ethics? Let me attempt an explanation. In the Providence of God this Fall, the weekly readings for the Week of the 22nd Sunday after Trinity brought us to the Sunday Next Before Advent. In the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer we read through the whole of Ecclesiastes and at Mattins on the Sunday Next Before Advent, we read the last two chapters of Ecclesiastes, which are always read at Mattins on that Sunday regardless of the length of the Trinity Season and whatever office readings followed from the last Sunday after Trinity in any given year. Yet this year we had the whole of Ecclesiastes to read and to lead us into the end and beginning of the Church Year. And why Ethics? Because The Book of Ecclesiastes raises the important question about Ethics, namely, about the highest or greatest good for our humanity and thus belongs to the purpose of Revelation. I am drawing upon lectures on Ethics which I have delivered over many years in The Theory of Knowledge course in the IB programme, though minus the wonderful cartoons of Calvin and Hobbes on matters of ethical thinking.

The American philosopher, Peter Kreeft, in his book Three Philosophies of Life: Ecclesiastes, Life as Vanity, Job, Life as Suffering, and the Song of Songs, Life as Love makes a nice analogy to Dante’s threefold division of his spiritual classic, the Divine Comedy – Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso by suggesting that Ecclesiastes in its remarkable treatment of boredom and vanity relates to the Inferno, the Book of Job to the Purgatorio in the positive and redemptive forms of suffering, and the Song of Songs to the Paradiso in the movement of love that perfects and restores all things to their unity in God. Dante himself suggests that the purpose of the Commedia is to lead us “from misery to felicity” or blessedness. All three biblical books belong to Wisdom literature and, especially, it seems to me, to the examination of the ethical.

And Wisdom? You may have noticed that the week following the Sunday Next Before Advent the Office readings at Morning and Evening Prayer are entirely from the Book of Wisdom as if leading us into the radical and deeper meaning of Advent. In the Calendar you will note that the 16th of December commemorates one of the ‘O’ Antiphons, specifically, ‘O Sapientia’, O Wisdom, deliberately recalling the Book of Wisdom and the image of Wisdom that it presents to us. It seemed appropriate to connect these two works for our Advent Programme at Christ Church this year.

Advent Reflections on Ethics & Ecclesiastes (2025)

Austin Farrer in his classic ‘The Glass of Vision’, the Bampton Lectures of 1948, recalls an intriguing observation that in Scripture “there is not a line of theology, and of philosophy not so much as an echo” (Lecture III). Peter Kreeft, on the other hand, states that Ecclesiastes is the only book of philosophy, pure philosophy, mere philosophy, in the Bible” and indeed is “the greatest of all books of philosophy” (‘Three Philosophies of Life’, 1989). I think both are right.

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Events

Tonight’s Advent Programme cancelled

Due to stormy conditions, the Holy Communion service and Advent Programme scheduled for this evening have been cancelled. The text of the programme will be posted here on the church website shortly.

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