Author: CCW

Prayers and liturgy

Richard Hooker

The collect for today, the commemoration of Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher of the Faith (source):

O God of peace, the bond of all love,
who in thy Son Jesus Christ hast made for all people thine inseparable dwelling place:
give us grace that,
Richard Hookerafter the example of thy servant Richard Hooker,
we thy servants may ever rejoice
in the true inheritance of thine adopted children
and show forth thy praises now and for ever;
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 Corinthians 2:6-10, 13-16
The Gospel: St. John 17:18-23

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Prayer Book Society, Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints, Choral Evensong

“And he opened his mouth and taught them”

It is, to be sure, “that time of year… when yellow leaves or none or few/ do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold/ bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,” as Shakespeare puts it. And yet in the season of scattered leaves and in the culture of scattered souls, there is a gathering, a great and profound gathering. Christ the King strides across the barren fields of our humanity to gather us into glory. It is the glory of the Communion of Saints. It is his gathering, a kind of collecting together of all that is scattered and lost.

The image of human lives as scattered leaves goes back to the Sibylline Oracles of Roman Antiquity conveyed most wonderfully by Vergil and then used by Dante even more wondrously to capture our being gathered together into the Communion of Saints. The whole human story belongs to one book, divinely written, to be sure, but scattered about on the wind; the leaves of the pages, like the leaves of the trees, are scattered and blown about. But by God’s grace the scattered leaves are gathered together into one volume; the leaves of the autumn likened to the pages – the leaves – of a book.

It is a powerful image and one where the ancient culture speaks profoundly to our contemporary world. We are the culture of the scattered, the disconnected and the distracted. Nothing speaks more profoundly to the loneliness and the despair, the desperation and fears of our contemporary world than the idea of the Communion of Saints. We are reminded in the strongest way possible that we are part of something larger than ourselves, that we are not alone but belong to a company beyond number, a spiritual company.

All Saints’ Day recalls us to the vocation of our humanity. We are not called to heroic pretension and presumption but to holiness. We are called to the Communion of Saints. An article of Faith, the lovely vision of the City of God imaged in the Book of Revelation is nothing less than a vision of our redeemed humanity. It signals what God seeks and wills for us and reminds us that our life in Faith always places us in a community. But what kind of community?

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints

“And he opened his mouth and taught them”

It is, to be sure, “that time of year… when yellow leaves or none or few/ do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold/ bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” And yet in the season of scattered leaves and in the culture of scattered souls, there is a gathering, a great and profound gathering. Christ the King strides across the barren fields of our humanity to gather us into glory. It is the glory of the Communion of Saints. It is his gathering, a kind of collecting together of all that is scattered and lost.

The image of human lives as scattered leaves goes back to the Sibylline Oracles of Roman Antiquity conveyed most wonderfully by Vergil and then used by Dante even more wondrously to capture our being gathered together into the Communion of Saints. The whole human story belongs to one book, divinely written, to be sure, but scattered about on the wind; the leaves of the pages, like the leaves of the trees, are scattered and blown about. But by God’s grace the scattered leaves are gathered together into one volume; the leaves of the autumn likened to the pages – the leaves – of a book.

(more…)

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 2 – 8 November

Monday, November 2nd, All Souls’ Day
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, November 3rd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, November 5th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 8th, Octave of All Saints’ / Trinity XXIII
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 21st
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 6th
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols with KES

Sunday, December 20th
7:00pm Capella Regalis presents “To Bethlehem with Kings”.

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Prayers and liturgy

All Saints’ Day

The collect for today, All Saints’ Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 7:9-17
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-12

Signorelli, Madonna and Child with SaintsArtwork: Luca Signorelli, Madonna and Child with Saints, 1519-23. Tempera on panel, Museo d’arte medievale e moderna, Arezzo, Italy. (This is the last known work of Luca Signorelli.)

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Prayers and liturgy

James Hannington, Bishop, Missionary and Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of James Hannington (1847-85), first Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Missionary to Uganda, Martyr (source):

James HanningtonPrecious 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

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Events

Concert: For All the Saints 2015

Saturday, November 7th at 7:30 p.m. at the Cathedral Church of All Saints, Halifax:

The University of King’s College Chapel Choir and director Paul Halley present FOR ALL THE SAINTS, their seventh annual concert celebrating All Saints and All Souls. The featured piece this year is the Mass for Double Choir by 20th-century Swiss composer Frank Martin. Widely considered one of the finest pieces of modern times, this is a work of true beauty and impeccable craft, and a deeply moving expression of faith in a secularized age. The concert will also include works by Byrd, Harris, Schütz, and Howells, and glorious hymns accompanied by the Cathedral’s great pipe organ and the Maritime Brass Quintet. Tickets and information: www.ukings.ca/concerts; 902-422-1270 ext. 261. Tickets also available at the door.

TICKETS & INFO: www.ukings.ca/concerts

For All the Saints 2015 concertwww.ukings.ca/the-chapel-choir
www.youtube.com/kingschapelchoir
www.facebook.com/kingschapelchoir

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Simon and St. Jude the Apostles

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

Faid'Herbe, St. SimonIn 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 Thaddeus.

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 Thaddeus (a variant reading of Matthew has “Lebbaeus called Thaddaeus”), while Luke calls him Judas son of James. Christian tradition regards Saint Jude and Saint Thaddeus 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.

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Sermons

Meditation for the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude

“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will,
but the will of him who sent me”

The feast of St. Simon and St. Jude completes the parade of Apostolic Saints. With this feast, the holy band of twelve is gathered together in the unity of Jerusalem and in that gathering we glimpse something of the meaning of our eternal home. St. Simon and St. Jude complete the festal round of the Apostles and prepare us for the harvest festival of All Saints.

St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles of Christ. Very little can be said about them. What 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. What more needs to be said than that? And how appropriate, too, on the eve of Nick Hatt’s deaconing in our diocese tomorrow night and whom we keep in our prayers this evening. Simon and Jude speak directly to the nature of the ministry.

They have, to be sure, lent their names to certain features of human life as patron saints, symbols, we might say, of some aspect or other of the virtues of Christ individually considered. St. Simon is the patron saint of zealots; St. Jude, more curiously, is the patron saint of lost causes, something with which I have more than a passing acquaintance! The zealous passion for a perfect political and social and spiritual righteousness readily complements the despair at lost causes that often accompanies such worthy and necessary aspirations. Ultimately, such zeal brings us to the true righteousness of Christ, realized in the city of heavenly Jerusalem. For what we have here is really “the unreal city” (T.S. Eliot), a lost cause.

“Zeal for thine house hath even consumed me,” the psalmist says, in a passage recalled by the disciples in John’s Gospel in relation to the cleansing of the temple. Through the myriad of lost causes, the deeper yearning for peace and righteousness is glimpsed, the deeper yearning which belongs to a peace, “not as the world giveth,” but as Christ gives.

The readings for this feast concentrate our attention on the Apostolic Foundation of the Church and the end of our humanity. Apostolic Foundation and Apostolic Fellowship; these are two things which we are badly in need of recovering and reclaiming. They belong to the truth of the ordained ministry. Without them, our parishes become little more than a club for seniors and a playground for children – we wish!. The church becomes a sect, championing one spiritual idea or quasi spiritual idea at the expense of all the rest, or trumpeting one of a myriad of the social and political agendas of the day while ignoring the larger vision of the whole of redeemed humanity that is hers to proclaim. We are too much with ourselves because we are not with God.

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Prayers and liturgy

Alfred, King

Holy Trinity Sloane Square, King St. AlfredThe 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: Alfred King of England, stained glass, Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London. Photograph taken by admin 20 October 2014.

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