Monday, June 8th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall
Tuesday, June 9th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
Thursday, June 11th, St. Barnabas
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion
Saturday, June 13th
9:00am Encaenia Service – KES Chapel
10:15am Graduation & Prize Day Ceremonies – KES
Sunday, June 14th, The Second Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer
The collect for today, the Second Sunday after Pentecost, commonly called The First Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:7-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:19-31
Artwork: Frans Francken the Younger, The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, early 17th century. Oil on canvas, Musée de Cambrai, France.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton (c. 675 – 754), Bishop, Apostle to the Germans, Patron Saint of Germany, Martyr (source):
O God our redeemer,
who didst call thy servant Boniface
to preach the gospel among the German people
and to build up thy Church in holiness:
grant that we may hold fast in our hearts
that faith which he taught with his words
and sealed with his blood,
and profess it in lives dedicated to 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: Acts 20:17-28
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-53
Artwork: Johann Michael Wittmer, Saint Boniface Felling Donar’s Oak, 1861. Oil on canvas, Private collection.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Justin (c. 100 – 165), Philosopher, Apologist, Martyr at Rome (source):
O God our redeemer,
who through the folly of the cross
didst teach thy martyr Justin
the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ:
free us, we beseech thee, from every kind of error,
that we, like him, may be firmly grounded in the faith,
and make thy name known to all peoples;
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 1:18-30
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:1-8
My text comes not directly from the Scriptures but from the Scriptures credally understood, from the Athanasian Creed, to be more precise, itself one of the three catholic creeds of the universal Church. It is rarely used and yet it speaks most wonderfully and profoundly to the central and essential mystery of the Christian Faith as well as to the spiritual nature of the great religions of the world. It is all about the Trinity, about God revealed in the witness of the Scriptures as Trinity, the three-in-one and the one-in-three, God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The important point is that the Creeds come out of the Scriptures and return us to the Scriptures within a pattern of understanding – an understanding above all else about God. We cannot not think God. In the Christian understanding thinking God means thinking the Trinity.
This is the essential insight of the Christian Faith but it belongs as well to the deeper meaning of all of the great religions of the world. As the great nineteenth century German philosopher, Hegel, observes, the Trinity is adumbrated – shadowed forth – in some way or another in all of the great religions of the world. At issue is how do we think the Trinity?
The Trinity is the fullest possible statement about the spiritual reality of God: God in his self-sufficient majesty and truth. This is a day where we stand on our heads, as it were. We are enveloped in mysteries which we strive to think knowing that we are struggling with what is inescapably beyond our grasp and yet cannot not be thought. Such is worship which is why the lesson on this day is from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. It presents us with a vision of heaven but even more with a vision of worship, the worship of the whole of creation. It is in worship that our humanity achieves its greatest dignity and highest honour. Our souls are made apt for worship. We are made for worship and for worship, in the language of Isaiah which John deliberately recalls here, of the thrice-holy God, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Worship is about thinking God.
Think about that for a moment and realize how much that runs counter to our culture and church. It is not simply about us and about what pleases us as if entertaining ourselves and making us feel good about ourselves was the aim and purpose of the Church. No. It is first and foremost about God and only then the discovery of things about the truth of ourselves in God. Such is the true meaning of worship: God and us in God.
Monday, June 1st
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall
Tuesday, June 2nd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
Thursday, June 4th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
Saturday, June 6th
2:00pm Committal of Gilmore Huntley
Sunday, June 6th, The First Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Breakfast for the Ladies)
10:30am Holy Communion
The collect for today, the Octave Day of Pentecost, commonly called Trinity Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: We beseech thee, that this holy faith may evermore be our defence against all adversities; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Lesson: Revelation 4:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 3:1-15
Artwork: Peter Hemmel von Andlau (attrib.), The Trinity with the Virgin, Saints John the Evangelist, Stephen and Lawrence, and a Donor, 1479. Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
The Monday and Tuesday after Pentecost elaborate upon the Pentecostal theme of our new life in the Spirit. It is about life and light, the life and the light of God which redeems and sanctifies our lives. The days of Pentecost remind us of what belongs to our lives in faith: we participate in the life of God opened out to us by the Word and the Spirit of God. We are gathered into the mystery of the Trinity, the communion of the Divine Life.
The Gospel for the Monday after Pentecost reminds us that “God so loved the world” even in the face of the darkness of sin and evil. It reminds us of the triumph, always, of good over evil, of light over darkness. The Gospel for the Tuesday after Pentecost speaks to our entering into that divine life through Jesus. He is, as he says, “the door” through which we enter into this new and abundant life, the life of God. The readings from The Book of The Acts of The Apostles on both days reveal the stages through which we enter into an understanding of the spiritual reality of God, showing us that is about Word and Spirit, both together and in a kind of harmony.
“I am the door,” Jesus says, “the door of the sheep” who hear and know his voice. In the power of the Spirit, Jesus is calling us to himself in his love for the Father. He is come, he says, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” the super-abundant life of God poured out upon us through the power of the Spirit. “Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire and enlighten with celestial fire.”
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday after Pentecost
May 26th, 2015
Sometimes the things that come upon us suddenly are the things that unsettle us most. Such is the Descent of the Holy Ghost. He came down “suddenly” upon the disciples, but was his coming suddenly a coming unexpectedly? That he came suddenly we read; his coming unexpectedly, we do not read. In fact, Jesus tells us to expect the coming of the Holy Ghost, “commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father,” even the descent of the Holy Ghost.
Yet we may wait expectantly and still be caught unawares, for the realization of what we await may far exceed our expectations and so catch us by surprise. We await for what we do not fully understand. The grace of God is always something more; the mystery of God something more yet again. The promise of the Ascension was the coming down of the Holy Ghost for which Jesus prepares us and bids us wait, yet “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.”
Certainly, the effects of this coming down would appear to be most unsettling, the manner of their appearing no less so – “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire” lighting upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, filling them with the Holy Spirit and moving them “to speak with other tongues.” To all appearances, an event most unsettling and more than a little disconcerting.
We all know about the winds that unsettle us – the rushing, mighty winds of rumour and slander, of whisperings and murmurings, of allegations and accusations which seek to belittle and destroy. The winds of hatred and revenge are the winds of death. These are the winds that unsettle us. But our Lord would not have us unsettled and troubled. In the midst of the sea-storms of our hearts and our world, even in the midst of the sea-storms of our churches and our communities, he bids the seas be calm and our hearts be still; “it is I,” he says, “have no fear.”
Pentecost counters and redeems our empirical obsessions, it seems to me, the deeply entrenched idea – and it is actually important to remember that it, too, is an idea – that reality is essentially and only what can be sensed and experienced materially. To the contrary, some of the most important things in life are precisely what cannot be seen and known empirically, that is to say, through sense experience, nor can they be measured in the way one thinks to measure the world of our senses. Marina Warner’s observation about education relates to the natural, “The things that matter most cannot be measured.” The marvel of Pentecost is that it opens us out to an important intellectual and spiritual idea that belongs to religion, particularly the Christian religion, namely, that the things which cannot be seen and experienced are made known through the sensible.
Pentecost marks the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the disciples gathered once again “with one accord in one place,” this time after Christ’s Ascension. Such things as the Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Spirit are empirically meaningless – we can make no sense of such dislocations of time and space; they are simply beyond the empirical. And yet the way in which the Ascension and Pentecost are made known to us is through the sensible and empirical. And perhaps, nowhere more profoundly than in the story of Pentecost as Acts presents it.
“Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind … and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire.” Sounds and sights through which something is communicated but only through similies, through metaphor. “As of a rushing mighty wind” which is to say that it is not a rushing mighty wind; “like as of fire” which is a far different than saying that it is fire. And what is the ‘it’, here? The spiritual reality of God the Holy Ghost, the invisible yet effective presence of God with us.
As Jesus makes clear, the Holy Ghost is the Comforter, the strengthener. He who dwells in us is the one whom the Father sends in Jesus’ name. We are dealing with the spiritual mystery of God as Trinity, something which can only be taught to us through revelation. Revelation is simply what God makes known to us about himself and about ourselves, too. Pentecost uses the images of wind and fire to signal the spiritual power and truth of God and our lives with God through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It can’t be quantified; it has to be experienced not sensibly but intellectually and to be sure emotionally, too; it is about hearts and minds. It, too, is ultimately about teaching.
