Friday, January 1st 2016, Octave Day of Christmas/Circumcision of Christ/New Year’s Day
10:00am Holy Communion
Sunday, January 3rd, Second Sunday after Christmas
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The collect for today, the Sunday after Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:18-25
Artwork: Pierre Parrocel, The Dream of Saint Joseph, early 18th century. Oil on canvas, Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor de Nîmes.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
MERCIFUL Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 1:1-5
The Gospel: St. John 21:19-25
John and his brother James (St. James the Greater) were Galilean fishermen and sons of Zebedee. Jesus called the two brothers Boanerges (“sons of thunder”), apparently because of their zealous character; for example, they wanted to call down fire from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritans. John and James, together with Peter, belonged to the inner group of the apostles who witnessed the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. It was John and Peter whom Jesus sent to prepare the final Passover meal.
In the lists of disciples, John always appears among the first four, but usually after his brother, which may indicate that John was the younger of the two.
According to ancient church tradition, St. John the Evangelist was the author of the New Testament documents that bear his name: the fourth gospel, the three epistles of John, and Revelation. John’s name is not mentioned in the fourth gospel (but 21:2 refers to “the sons of Zebedee”), but he is usually if not always identified as the beloved disciple. It is also generally believed that John was the “other disciple” who, with Peter, followed Jesus after his arrest. John was the only disciple at the foot of the cross and was entrusted by Christ with the care of his mother Mary.
After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, John, together with Peter, took a leading role in the formation and guidance of the early church. John was present when Peter healed the lame beggar, following which both apostles were arrested. After reports reached Jerusalem that Samaria was receiving the word of God, the apostles sent Peter and John to visit the new Samaritan converts. Presumably, John was at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). He is not mentioned later in the Acts of the Apostles, so he appears to have left Palestine.
Christian writers of the second and third centuries say that St. John lived in Asia Minor in the last decades of the first century, acting as a kind of patriarch to the churches there. Both Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) and Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130-200) say that John lived in Ephesus and wrote his gospel there. It is believed that he died a natural death at a very old age around the end of the first century. That would make St. John the only apostle who did not die a martyr.
The Feast of Stephen comes right after the great festival of Christ’s holy birth. It illustrates something of the deeper meaning of the mystery of Christmas.
St. Stephen is the proto-martyr, the first Christian martyr, to be sure, but the word ‘proto’ here signifies something more. He is not only the first but also the prototype of all martyrdom. Martyrdom is about witness. Stephen shows us what Christian witness really means. And I don’t simply mean by being stoned to death, either literally or metaphorically! What, then, is the witness of St. Stephen which serves as the prototype of all Christian witness? Simply what is captured in the medieval carol of this season and, more specifically, of this day, “Good King Wenceslas look’d out/ On the Feast of Stephen”.
And what did he see? “A poor man…gath’ring winter fuel”. And what did the king do but set out with his page, his servant, with food and wine to attend to the poor man? The story of the carol tells us of the fears and uncertainty of the page-boy about the journey and of the answer of the kingly saint to “mark my footsteps, my good page, / Tread thou in them boldly” and so “in his master’s steps he trod”. The carol concludes by pointing out the moral that “Ye who now will bless the poor, / Shall yourselves find blessing”. True but only if we follow in the master’s steps. In a way, the carol is a parable of Christmas itself. Christ has come to our poor and impoverished humanity in the early winter of our discontent. He has come with food and wine and those who would be his followers must mark his footsteps and follow in them bearing the gifts of Christ to others as well.
Something of what that means is signaled in the Feast of St. Stephen as a parable of the Christmas message. “Christ”, as another carol, puts it, “was born for this”, meaning death and rejection, sacrifice and crucifixion. And by extension, it means that Christ’s holy birth embraces all the miseries and sorrows of our lives as well as the forms of persecution and evil that are either visited upon ourselves by others or that we visit upon ourselves and others in our rejection of God.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
GRANT, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth, for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, may learn to love and bless our persecutors, by the example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
The Lesson: Acts 7:55-60
The Gospel: St. Matthew 23:34-39
All that is known of St. Stephen’s life is found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6 and 7. He is reckoned as the first Christian martyr–the proto-martyr. Although his name is Greek for “crown”, he was a Jew by birth; he would have been born outside Palestine and raised as a Greek-speaking Jew. The New Testament does not record the circumstances of his conversion to Christianity.
Stephen first appears as one of the seven deacons chosen in response to protests by Hellenist (Greek-speaking) Christians that their widows were being neglected in the distribution of alms. The apostles were too busy preaching the word of God to deal with this problem, so they commissioned seven men from among the Hellenists “of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”, then prayed and laid hands on them. Stephen, the first among the seven, is described as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”. A few verses later, Stephen is said to be “full of grace and power [and] doing great wonders and signs among the people”.
In the quiet calm of Christmas morning we celebrate Christ’s holy birth. There is a certain meditative quality to our gathering, it seems to me, after all the fuss and bother, the excitement and the expectancy of Christmas Eve. There is a certain uncertainty to our world and day, a world of fears and anxieties, to which the quietness of Christmas morning wonderfully counters. We are called to the truth of ourselves individually and collectively by our gathering at Bethlehem. The real and deep truth of our humanity notwithstanding the parade of atrocities globally is found in our communion with God in Jesus Christ. It is found in the humble yet awesome scene in Bethlehem.
We are no longer “assured of certain certainties” nor quite so “impatient to assume the world,” as T.S. Eliot puts it. Our world is a dark and disturbing place where we confront the disorder and the disarray of human hearts in acts of terrorism and destruction. Suddenly our cultural certainties seem far less certain; our cultural arrogance much more dangerous. How do we face such things? Do we simply retreat into the ghettoes of our churches, huddled behind closed doors of “certain certainties”, clinging to what we call our personal faith having despaired of the Faith itself? Or do we take a hold of this story contemplatively and enter more fully into its mystery and truth, the mystery and truth of the universal and catholic Faith?
“This shall be a sign unto you,” Luke tells us the angels say to the shepherds and so to us. We are one with the shepherds as the receivers of angels’ words. They are together the messengers of “good tidings of great joy”. “For unto you,” to you and me, “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” A saviour – Jesus, Yeshua, means saviour. Christ means the anointed one of God. Words which we take for granted through their familiarity take on a special significance. What it all means is startling. It contrasts with all of the expected signs of salvation and exaltation. What does salvation mean? What does Christ the Lord mean? Salvation speaks to the wholeness and the completeness of our humanity, to our re-creation and redemption from sin. Christ the Lord speaks to the deep mystery of Christ as God, as “I am who I am” via the biblical circumlocution of Lord for the holy name of God revealed to Moses in the burning bush, the revelation of the principle upon which the being and the knowing of all things depend.
The collect for today, the Nativity of our Lord, or the Birth-day of Christ, commonly called Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: Hebrews 1:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 1:1-14
Artwork: Caravaggio, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1609. Oil on canvas, Museo Regionale, Messina, Sicily.
What does Christmas mean in a post-Christian and post-secular culture? Perhaps a time to reclaim something of its essential meaning. There are, to be sure, all of the many and varied traditions of family and community, of secular and social customs and practices that surround and often overwhelm us. What does Christmas really mean?
This is not the same question as what does Christmas mean to you and me individually and subjectively. What Christmas means to you and your family and circle of friends is important but results only in a kind of relativism which is unable to explain what anything means in itself. How do we think about Christmas and about its essential meaning?
“I am tired of hearing jingle bells,” someone said at the Capella Regalis concert here last Sunday night. That wasn’t on the programme. And yet that is one of the songs of the season, I suppose, just like Santa Claus is invariably and unavoidably part of the season, if not for many the heart of Christmas. We confront an almost overwhelming array of images that bombard our ears and eyes, not to mention their effect on our pocket books. It increasingly appears that Christmas is an economic event. Do your duty to the economy and spend, spend, spend. That is surely one of the reasons for the season! And yet, however much such things as giving and getting, buying and spending, consuming and consuming and consuming are a feature of the Christmas season now extending in the commercial world from at least Halloween to sometime late this afternoon, they don’t really explain anything. Why Christmas? Why a word that has inescapably a Christian religious reference in a post-Christian world?
The collect for today, Christmas Eve (source):
Almighty God,
who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance
of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer,
so we may with sure confidence behold him
when he shall come to be our judge;
who liveth and reigneth with thee
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Epistle: Titus 2:11-15
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:1-14
Christmas Eve
(a poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti)
Christmas hath darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
Artwork: The Word Was Made Flesh, St. Paul’s Knightsbridge, London. Photograph taken by admin, 28 September 2015.
Words of faith arise from doubt and uncertainty. The Feast of St. Thomas occurs on the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the week of the winter solstice that brings us to the Christmas festival of light and love. Somehow his feast helps us to think more deeply about the advent of Christ and its meaning, even to “melt the clouds of sin and sadness” and to “drive the dark of doubt away.”
“’What is Truth’, said jesting Pilate; and wouldn’t stay for an answer,” Sir Francis Bacon famously begins his celebrated essay On Truth. Like Pilate, Thomas asked a question of Jesus earlier in John’s Gospel just after Jesus spoke of “go[ing] to prepar[ing] a place for you … that where I am there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going” to which Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus responds famously “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” Unlike Pilate, Thomas, it seems, stayed for an answer and then again returned for an answer to his doubts and questions about Christ’s resurrection. “My Lord, and my God” are his profound words of faith that arise from the face-to-face encounter with the Risen Christ whose body bears the marks of his crucifixion.
It is that question and answer about the bodily reality of Christ that makes The Feast of St. Thomas an advent feast and catapults us into the mystery of the Incarnation. It serves as well to connect Christmas and Easter; the nativity and the resurrection are like two complementary mysteries, each illumining something of the deeper meaning of the other. The Gospel for his Feast day is the resurrection story of Jesus teaching the disciples behind closed doors and finally Thomas, too, about the resurrection, itself a testament to the Incarnation.