Author: CCW

Prayers and liturgy

Monday in Holy Week

The collect for today, Monday in Holy Week, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Fra Angelico, Christ Crowned with ThornsALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 63:7-9
The Beginning of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark
The Gospel: St. Mark 14:1-72

Artwork: Fra Angelico, Christ Crowned with Thorns, c. 1438. Tempera on panel, Duomo di Livorno, Livorno, Italy.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Palm Sunday

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

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Sermons

Sermon for Palm Sunday

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week. It is the beginning of one long liturgy which ends with Easter. In one sense we begin with joy and end in joy, yet there is a great difference. For between that beginning and ending is the spectacle of all our betrayals concentrated for us in the Passion of Christ in all of its intensity and fullness as proclaimed in the reading of all four of the Gospel accounts of the Passion. “We have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men”, Paul tells us (1 Cor. 4.9). But what kind of spectacle? One in which we are both actors and those who acted upon but in both senses through all of our disarray and disorder and in all of our folly and sin.

We cannot come to the greater joy of Easter without beholding ourselves as participants in the Passion of Christ, at once as those who cry “Hosanna” and those who then cry “Crucify”. And yet we are also those who going through the rigour of Holy Week may learn what the Centurion learned in contemplating the full meaning of sin and evil; as the end of the Passion According to St. Matthew puts it: “Truly this was the Son of God.” The point of Holy Week is that we are more than spectators, more than those who merely look on and then pass by, indifferent to what we behold and indifferent to everything else. We are the spectacle, meaning that we are what we behold. And only so can we be in Christ. It means beholding all that belongs to the contradictions in all our souls . We are in this story and in every way.

We go from joy and gladness to sadness and sorrow and then from sadness and sorrow to joy and gladness but with a greater intensity of both. While the beginning and ending of Holy Week seem to be the same they are not. There is a profound difference from the Hosannas with which we greet Jesus coming as King to Jerusalem and the cries of Alleluia at Easter. The difference lies in the spectacle of human sin and wickedness which this week unfolds in all of its dramatic intensity. “Your sorrow shall be turned to joy,” Jesus says. Only through the spectacle of sin and sorrow can we come to the joy and gladness of Easter.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Month at a Glance, April 2025

Sunday, April 13th, Palm Sunday
8:00am Palms & Holy Communion
10:30am Palms & Holy Communion

Monday, April 14th, Monday in Holy Week
7:00pm Vespers & Passion

Tuesday, April 15th, Tuesday in Holy Week
7:00pm Vespers & Passion

Wednesday April 16th, Tenebrae
3:30pm Church Parade with KES

Thursday, April 17th, Maundy Thursday
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy

Friday, April 18th, Good Friday
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday

Saturday, April 19th, Holy Saturday / Easter Eve
10:00am Matins & Ante-Communion
7:00pm Easter Vigil

Sunday, April 20th, Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Baptism & Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

Palm Sunday

The collect for today, the Sunday Next before Easter, commonly called Palm Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 2:5-11
The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Matthew
The Gospel: St. Matthew 27:1-54

Igor Sushenok, Entry of Christ into JerusalemArtwork: Igor Sushenok, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, 2014, Oil on canvas (source).

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Prayers and liturgy

Leo the Great, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Leo the Great (c. 400-461), Bishop of Rome, Teacher of the Faith (source):

O God our Father,
who madest thy servant Leo strong in the defence of the faith:
we humbly beseech thee
so to fill thy Church with the spirit of truth
that, being guided by humility and governed by love,
she may prevail against the powers of evil;
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: 2 Timothy 1:6-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:13-19

Francisco Herrera the Younger, St. Leo MagnusLeo is believed to have been born in Tuscany and served as a deacon and papal advisor before being chosen pope in 440. He is one of the most important popes of the early church because of his achievements in theology, canon law, and church administration.

Leo defended uniformity in church government and doctrine and bolstered the primacy of the Roman see in the church structure. In his letters and sermons, he argued that, as heir to St. Peter, the bishop of Rome holds a supreme authority over the church and all other bishops. This was not universally accepted during Leo’s papacy, but it strongly influenced the future course of the church.

His greatest accomplishment was as a theologian. When the Council of Chalcedon was convened in 451, Leo wrote a Tome to Bishop Flavian of Constantinople that contained a clear and cogent statement of the dual nature of Jesus Christ. He described Christ’s two natures, divine and human, as permanently united “unconfusedly, unchangeably, undivisibly, and inseparably”. When Leo’s letter was read aloud at the Council, the delegates cried, “Peter has spoken through Leo”, and his teaching was accepted as defining the doctrine of the Person of Christ.

Twice during Leo’s pontificate, Rome came under threat from barbarian invaders. In 452, Attila and his Huns advanced on Rome after sacking Milan, but Leo saved the city by persuading Attila to accept tribute and withdraw. In 455, however, he was not as successful dealing with Genseric, leader of the Vandals. Leo did persuade the Vandals not to destroy Rome and murder the populace, but they plundered the city for a fortnight and took prisoners to Africa. Leo sent priests and alms to the captives.

Leo was the first pope to be buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Artwork: Francisco Herrera the Younger, Saint Leo Magnus, 17th century. Oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.

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Sermons

Lenten Programme IV: Anger

The Deadly Three: Lenten Meditations on Pride, Envy & Anger
Lenten Programme IV: Anger

Christ Church, Windsor, NS
Fr. David Curry 2025

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God”

Anger is the third of the Deadly Three and follows upon envy. The Gospel for Passion Sunday highlights the sin of anger. “And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren.” Indignation here is anger.

Pride is certainly the deadliest of the seven deadly sins and is what is deadly in them. Envy is certainly the ugliest of the seven deadly sins and is ugly and unattractive to all. But anger? Well, anger is certainly the most common of all the seven deadly sins.

Like all the seven deadly sins, anger, too, has its complement of related terms: wrath, ire, rage, resentment, vengeance, and indignation. The Latin term is ira, the shortest and smallest of all the terms used to capture this commonplace sin, the deadly sin of anger.

So common is anger that in the culture of the self-obsessed, the neurotic culture, as it were, anger is the most frequent problem that psycho-therapists deal with in their counseling practices. We live in an angry world full of angry people; we are the angry people. “I am as mad as Hell and I won’t take it any longer” is a slogan for our age. And perhaps, more than any other sin, we try to justify it, to redeem it, as it were, under the rubric of righteous anger. It is not too much to say that our culture is the culture of anger as much as anything else.

But Scripture advises us differently and quite insightfully. “Let not the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4.26), Don’t always be angry and don’t hold onto your anger. Notwithstanding there is a deadly danger in all our anger. It too is a powerful force. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay” as Hebrews puts it (Hebrews 10.30), recalling a host of Old Testament passages about divine justice and divine wrath.

The paradox is that the vengeance, anger or wrath of God is very different from our anger. To speak of divine wrath is itself a form of human speech applied to God which is really about what in us is opposed to God’s goodness and mercy. It is a kind of antidote to our anger because it leaves judgement with God, first and foremost. But this is something which we often forget and in so doing fall prey to the very thing that lurks in all our anger. Ultimately, all our anger at the world, at one another, even perhaps at ourselves, is really our anger at God. We are angry because things are not the way we think they should be. We lash out against God in all our anger, essentially blaming him for the way things are. Damn you God! This is what we mean in our anger.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 10 April

Not knowing what we want or do?

Passiontide is the term for the last two weeks of Lent in the western Christian traditions. Quite often the cross is veiled, at once present and known yet obscured and not fully known. It symbolizes an important principle that belongs to the educational project. Knowing that we do not know impells the quest to know. Our knowing is at best partial and at worst misguided and erroneous.

In a remarkable scene in Matthew’s Gospel read this week in Chapel, the mother of Zebedee’s children comes to Jesus “desiring a certain thing of him.” He asks her “What do you want?” She says, “Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.” She seeks what she thinks is best for her children. No doubt all parents do and, no doubt, all of us seek what we think is best for ourselves. But do we always know what that is? What does her request mean? It means positions of privilege and power, of status and prestige for her sons. But that can only mean something for them at the expense of others. It is simply a desire for power for some over others.

There is a truth in her request but only insofar as it recognizes the power and truth of God in Jesus. But it is incomplete and misguided. How does Jesus respond? With the simple words, “ye know not what you ask.” It is at once gentle and devastating and a direct and clear statement about an important aspect of our humanity.

“There are known knowns,” Donald Rumsfeld famously observed in 2003 as the US Secretary of Defence. “These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know that we don’t know.” This was, as the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek pointed out, a piece of amateur philosophizing which leaves out what is most significant. What is that? The “unknown knowns,” the things that you know but don’t know that you know.

Socrates’ great insight was that “I know that I do not know.” This is the beginning of wisdom; the complement to the biblical idea that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Our not knowing belongs to our desire to know but in the recognition that there is always more to know and that the more we learn the more we realize how much more there is to know. This is not to suggest that knowledge is simply quantitative, a mere adding up of bits and bytes of data or information. There are also ethical implications.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Passion Sunday

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

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Sermons

Sermon for Passion Sunday

“By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place”

Passion is an ambiguous word, richly suggestive and evocative. We often think of ‘Passion’ in terms of our appetites or desires, our feelings and emotions, sexual and physical. We associate Passion with a deep and emotional attachment to some object of our longing. Yet the word seems inescapably bound up with the things of the body. How can this have anything to do with the things of the spirit? Because in the Christian understanding, the things of the spirit are altogether bound up with the things of the body. Christian spirituality is not a flight from the body or from the world. It is altogether about the redemption of the whole of our humanity and of the entire order of creation. Anything less than that sense of the whole is spurious and false, an incomplete kind of spirituality; in short, pseudo-religion, and as such, de-humanizing.

Passion Sunday marks the beginning of deep Lent, a two-week period of intense concentration upon the Passion of Christ. The whole of the Christian religion is concentrated into the scope of these two weeks and, within these two weeks, into Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday and ending with Easter, and, within Holy Week, into the Triduum Sacrum, the three great Holy Days of Maundy Thursday through to Easter Eve, and, within the Triduum Sacrum, concentrated upon the Passion of Christ which we call Good Friday, without which we can make no sense of Easter and the joy of the Resurrection. There is a remarkable intensity to Passiontide. It concerns our participation in the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What do we mean by the Passion of Christ? We mean his willingness to suffer for us. Passion signifies “being acted upon”; hence, suffering. It is inescapably part and parcel of the human condition, part and parcel of the finite reality of our lives. It requires a body, though suffering is by no means restricted to the body. There is an intense interplay between body and soul in human experience; sufferings that are at once physical and mental; anguish of the soul and body. The interplay between them belongs to the understanding of what it means to be human and it is no less so with regards to the reality of suffering which seems so destructive of human personality, of the human community, and of human life.

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