Author: CCW

Prayers and liturgy

William Tyndale, Translator and Martyr

Embankment Statue, William TyndaleThe collect for today, the commemoration of William Tyndale (c. 1495-1536), Priest, Translator of the Scriptures, Reformation Martyr (source):

O Lord, grant to thy people
grace to hear and keep thy word
that, after the example of thy servant William Tyndale,
we may both profess thy gospel
and also be ready to suffer and die for it,
to the honour of thy name;
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: St. James 1:21-25
The Gospel: St. John 12:44-50

Artwork: Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, William Tyndale statue, 1884, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London. Photograph taken by admin, 30 September 2015.

Inscription on bronze plaque:
William Tyndale
First translator of the New Testament into English from the Greek.
Born A.D. 1484, died a martyr at Vilvorde in Belgium, A.D. 1536.
“Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” – “the entrance of thy words giveth light.” Psalm CXIX. 105.130.
“And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his son.” I. John V.II.
The last words of William Tyndale were “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes”. Within a year afterwards, a bible was placed in every parish church by the King’s command.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Francis of Assisi

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Friar, Deacon, Founder of the Friars Minor (source):

O God,
who ever delightest to reveal thyself
to the childlike and lowly of heart,
grant that, following the example of the blessed Francis,
we may count the wisdom of this world as foolishness
and know only Jesus Christ and him crucified,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Galatians 6:14-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:25-30

Berlinghieri, St. Francis altarpieceArtwork: Bonaventura Berlinghieri, St. Francis altarpiece, 1235. Tempera on wood, Church of San Francesco, Pescia, Italy.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 1 October

And one turned back … giving thanks

Thanksgiving is more than mere courtesy, important as courtesy and consideration are. An integral feature of all of the world’s religions, the concept and act(s) of thanksgiving are altogether essential and central to the Christian understanding of things and in ways that carry over into certain aspects of the contemporary secular world.

Religion, like education in general, cannot be forced; it has very much to do with our engagement with ideas and concepts which are life-changing and transformative. There are, of course, a host of confusions and uncertainties as well as hostility and animus against ‘religion’, whatever one might mean by the term. But is ‘religion’ simply meant to be a reflection of ourselves and our assumptions and experiences? Or are there ways in which religion, like education, is often as not counter-cultural? Think for a moment about what we ‘do’ in Chapel. ‘Don’t just do something, sit there and think’, and pray. That is profoundly counter-culture in the face of a culture and age hell-bent – I use the term advisedly – on practical and measurable outcomes.

In a way, too, the concept of thanksgiving is profoundly counter-culture and in very important and corrective ways. It counters the assumptions of “the entitlement culture”, the idea that you – we – deserve all and everything that you – we – want. And far more than simple courtesy, thanksgiving is altogether about grace. It is there in the word eucharist – charis is grace. The word as whole has a specific meaning for Christians – ‘the great thanksgiving’ – referring to the central act of Christian worship, the Holy Eucharist.

And it is about an activity in us that belongs to the truth worth and dignity of our humanity and to our essential spiritual freedom. To put in terms of the IB learner profile, thanksgiving is about being reflective. It is about an attitude of mind and soul with respect to the natural world around us as well as to one another and our engagements with that world and with one another. It is profoundly spiritual and intellectual precisely because it does not take anything for granted but recognises everything and everyone as a gift. That changes our outlook and, I think, our behaviour.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her”

Dante describes Luke as the scriba mansuetudinis Christi, “the scribe of the gentleness of Christ”. It is not by accident that St. Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called the Gospel of Compassion and rightly so. The phrase “he saw… and he had compassion…” appears in several places in the Gospels and particularly in Luke’s Gospel. Somehow how we see leads to how we act.

This is almost the reverse of our age which tends to think of thinking as what follows action rather than what precedes or is implicit in each and every thing that we do. Thinking is more than reaction to actions; it is more than afterthought which doesn’t mean that it is simply predictive – a feature of the scientific world or at least one of its desiderata.

We meet in the angelic air of the early Fall and just after Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. The Angels are very much part of the liturgical and spiritual landscape of our thinking and praying. We are very much a part of a spiritual community – the host of heaven comprising saints and angels. Redeemed humanity finds itself in the company of angels – such is our liturgy. Unseen and yet known, the Angels belong to our thinking the good and refusing the evil; they are the ideas of God in creation. Perhaps it is with angels’ sight that we can best think about the seeing that is compassion, even the compassion of Christ.

Luke consistently links seeing with compassion but with the awareness that our seeing others in need does not always result in acts of compassion. “A certain priest” and “Levite” “see” but “pass by,” after all. Ten men were cleansed but only one “when he saw that he was healed” turned back “giving thanks” to the one whose compassion upon our humanity results in healing. In the parable of the prodigal son, the Father “saw” his wayward son returning to him and “had compassion on him”. Just so, too, “a certain Samaritan” who “when he saw him” – meaning the man who is in need – “he had compassion on him.” There is something important about the seeing that results in compassion and restoration; in short, salvation. And just perhaps it has something to do with angels’ vision.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 2 – 8 October

Monday, October 2nd
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, October 3rd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Wednesday, October 4th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, October 5th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms

Friday, October 6th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Saturday, October 7th
9:00-11:00am Men’s Club Decorating Church

Sunday, October 8th Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity/Harvest Thanksgiving
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity

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

O LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:13-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17

Kotarbinski, Resurrection of the Son of the Widow of NainArtwork: Wilhelm Kotarbinski, Resurrection of the Son of the Widow of Nain, 1879. Oil on canvas, National Museum, Warsaw.

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Prayers and liturgy

Jerome, Doctor and Priest

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Jerome (c. 342-420), Priest, Monk, Translator of the Scriptures, Doctor of the Church (source):

O Lord, thou God of truth, whose Word is a lantern to our feet and a light upon our path: We give thee thanks for thy servant Jerome, and those who, following in his steps, have labored to render the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people; and we beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may overshadow us as we read the written Word, and that Christ, the living Word, may transform us according to thy righteous will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 3:14-17
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-48

Tintoretto, Saint JeromeOne of the most scholarly and learned early church fathers, St. Jerome devoted much of his life to accurately translating the Holy Bible from the original languages of Hebrew and Greek into Latin.

Born near Aquileia, northeast Italy, of Christian parents, Jerome travelled widely. He received a classical education at Rome and travelled to Gaul where he became a monk. He later moved to Palestine, spending five years as an ascetic in the Syrian desert. In 374, he was ordained a priest in Antioch. He then pursued biblical studies at Constantinople under Gregory Nazianzus and translated works by Eusebius, Origen, and others.

Travelling to Rome in 382, Jerome became secretary to the aged Pope Damasus. By the time the pope died three years later, Jerome had become involved in theological controversies in which he antagonised many church leaders and theologians. He left Rome under a cloud, returning to Palestine where he lived as a monk in Bethlehem for the rest of his life.

Over several decades, Jerome wrote biblical commentaries and works promoting monasticism and asceticism. Most importantly, he produced fresh Latin translations of most of the Old and New Testaments, based on the original biblical languages. This work formed the basis of the Vulgate, which remained the standard Scriptural text of the western church for over a millennium.

Artwork: Tintoretto, Saint Jerome, c. 1550. Oil on canvas, National Gallery, Prague.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Michael and All Angels

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O EVERLASTING God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant, that as thy holy Angels alway do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 12:7-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 18:1-10

Heindl, Saint Michael the Archangel Vanquishing the DevilThe name Michael is a variation of Micah, and means in Hebrew “Who is like God?”

The archangel Michael first appears in the Book of Daniel, where he is described as “one of the chief princes” and as the special protector of Israel. In the New Testament epistle of Jude (v. 9), Michael, in a dispute with the devil over the body of Moses, says, “The Lord rebuke you“. Michael appears also in Revelation (12:7-9) as the leader of the angels in the great battle in Heaven that ended with Satan and the hosts of evil being thrown down to earth. There are many other references to the archangel Michael in Jewish and Christian traditions.

Following these scriptural passages, Christian tradition has given St. Michael four duties: (1) To continue to wage battle against Satan and the other fallen angels; (2) to save the souls of the faithful from the power of Satan especially at the hour of death; (3) to protect the People of God, both the Jews of the Old Covenant and the Christians of the New Covenant; and (4) finally to lead the souls of the departed from this life and present them to our Lord for judgment. For these reasons, Christian iconography depicts St. Michael as a knight-warrior, wearing battle armor, and wielding a sword or spear, while standing triumphantly on a serpent or other representation of Satan. Sometimes he is depicted holding the scales of justice or the Book of Life, both symbols of the last judgment.

Very early in church history, St. Michael became associated with the care of the sick. The cult of Michael developed first in Eastern Christendom, where healing waters and hot springs at many locations in Greece and Asia Minor were dedicated to him. Michael is supposed to have appeared three times on Monte Gargano, southern Italy, in the 5th century. The local townspeople believed that Michael’s intercession gave them victory in battle over their enemies. These apparitions restored his biblical role as a strong protector of God’s people, and were also the basis for spreading his cult in the West.

The Feast of St. Michael & All Angels is also known as Michaelmas. The Roman Catholic Church celebrates today as the Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels.

Artwork: Wolfgang Andreas Heindl, Saint Michael the Archangel Vanquishing the Devil, c. 1730s. Oil on canvas, Private collection.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Eve of Michaelmas

“There was war in heaven”

Dancing with angels is a way of speaking about what we do every day in our spiritual and intellectual lives; it is particularly a feature of our life as students and teachers and as priest and people. Angels are very much about the principles of the understanding, the intellectual and spiritual principles that belong to our understanding of the human and the natural world. They remind us that there is more to reality than what meets the eye. They speak as well, to that common feature of our humanity, our loneliness, what Alistair MacLeod calls our “inarticulate loneliness” out of which comes the struggle to articulate and communicate. The Angels remind us that we have dance partners in the pursuit of understanding and in the struggle to act rightly and to be good. We are part of a larger spiritual community, the community of Angels and humans. “The services of Angels and men”, the Collect notes, are “ordained and constituted” by God “in a wonderful order.” We pray to God that “they may succor and defend us on earth”.

Angels? But you can’t see them! True. You can only think them. That, of course, is exactly the point. We can only think them and we can only think with them. We can even learn from them. The outstanding theologian, Thomas Aquinas, known as Doctor Angelicus, the angelic doctor, asked the question, “Can a man be taught by an Angel?” (Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, Q.11, art. Iii). The Angels can teach us, he shows, not by supplanting what is given by the light of nature or the light of grace, the human and the divine respectively, but by “moving the imagination and strengthening the light of understanding.”

Angels help us to understand the terrible, hard and harsh events of our own world and day. After all, will we really even begin to comprehend the forms of violence and abuse, for example, merely through the lenses of social and economic determinism? Perhaps we need the spiritual wisdom which talks about the struggles between the good and evil which we are afraid to name, the spiritual struggles which the religions of the world in their truth and integrity contemplate and know.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 24 September

Did God say?

The amazing and world-transforming story of The Fall from Genesis 3 was read in Chapel this week along with the equally amazing and apocalyptic story from Revelation about St. Michael and All Angels. “There was war in heaven.”

The connections to the life of the School and to any educational programme worthy of the name are inescapable. We are being challenged through these Scriptural readings about the moral and ethical principles which inform our lives. In other words, these Scriptures speak directly and profoundly to our humanity regardless of our faith or non-faith commitments. They are in some sense the story of our world.

Genesis 3 is the biblical version of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex in the sense of providing a powerful critique of reason itself. Looked at in conjunction with the late September Feast of St. Michael and All Angels in the Christian tradition, we have a powerful commentary on the nature of our beginnings intellectually and ethically.

This is Michaelmas Term following the traditions of both Oxford and Cambridge. I think it is marvellous that our school term should begin with Angels. For it is altogether about the primacy of the intellectual which alone can redeem and perfect the physical and the material. The Angels are the pure thoughts of God in creation. To think is to think with the Angels.

But Genesis 3 reminds us of the cunning of our reason, something of which we must also be aware. Genesis 3 provides a profound and necessary critique of human reason. We are being challenged in two ways: first, not to think of reason as merely being about problem-solving and, secondly, to recognize the cunning and deceit of reason.

We need Oedipus Rex as commentary on Genesis 3 and vice-versa. Oedipus not only thought that he knew who he was but thought that his problem-solving kind of reason was the highest, the truest, if not the only form of reason. In that assumption he anticipates so much of our current world and its discontents. To reduce reason to problem-solving is to reduce reason to a tool and an instrument and to deny to its operations anything intellectual, ethical, and spiritual. Oedipus Rex and Genesis 3 counter that assumption brilliantly and effectively, if only we have ears to hear and eyes to see.

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