Sunday, August 17th, Trinity 9
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, August 24th, St. Bartholomew/Trinity 10
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, August 31st, Trinity 11
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Fr. Curry is priest-in-charge for Avon Valley Parish and Hantsport from August 4th until September 8th 2025 while Fr. Tom Henderson is on vacation.
The collect for today, the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
GRANT to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful; that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:1-9
Artwork: Andrey Mironov, Parable of the Unjust Steward, 2012. Oil on canvas. © Copyright Andrey Mirinov and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
The collect for today, the Feast of the Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD Most High, who didst endue with wonderful virtue and grace the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord: Grant that we, who now call her blessed, may be made very members of the heavenly family of him who was pleased to be called the first-born among many brethren; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Lesson: Acts 1:12-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:39-49
Artwork: Ludovico Carracci, The Funeral of the Virgin, 1606-09. Oil on canvas, Galleria Nazionale (Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta), Parma, Italy.
The collect for today, the commemoration of Jeremy Taylor (1613-67), Bishop of Down and Connor, Teacher of the Faith (source):
O holy and loving God,
who dwellest in the human heart
and makest us partakers of the divine nature
in Christ our great high priest:
grant that we,
having in remembrance thy servant Jeremy Taylor,
may put our trust in thy heavenly promises,
and follow a holy life in virtue and true godliness;
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: Romans 14:7-9,10b-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47
Born and educated at Cambridge, Jeremy Taylor was ordained to the Anglican priesthood at the age of 20. His eloquent preaching brought him to the attention of Archbishop William Laud, who enabled him to be elected fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford. Taylor also became chaplain to the archbishop and to King Charles I.
A chaplain to royalist troops during the Civil War, Taylor was captured and imprisoned three times by Cromwell’s men. After the Restoration in 1660, Charles II appointed him Bishop of Down and Connor, Northern Ireland.
Taylor was a prolific writer of theological and devotional works. Among his many books are The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) and The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651), generally known as Holy Living and Holy Dying.
A prayer of Jeremy Taylor:
O almighty and eternal God, there is no number of thy days or of thy mercies: thou hast sent us into this world to serve thee, and to live according to thy laws; but we by our sins have provoked thee to wrath, and we have planted thorns and sorrows round about our dwellings: and our life is but a span long, and yet very tedious, because of the calamities that enclose us on every side; the days of our pilgrimage are few and evil; we have frail and sickly bodies, violent and distempered passions, long designs and but a short stay, weak understandings and strong enemies, abused fancies, perverse wills, O dear God, look upon us in mercy and pity: let not our weaknesses make us to sin against thee, nor our fear cause us to betray our duty, nor our former follies provoke thy eternal anger, nor the calamities of this world vex us into tediousness of spirit and impatience: but let thy Holy Spirit lead us through this valley of misery with safety and peace, with holiness and religion, with spiritual comforts and joy in the Holy Ghost; that when we have served thee in our generations, we may be gathered unto our fathers, having the testimony of a holy conscience; in the communion of the catholic church; in the confidence of a certain faith; and the comforts of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope; and perfect charity with thee our God, and all the world; that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, may be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Source: “Prayers at the Visitation of the Sick”, Holy Dying, cited in Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayer, compiled by Christopher L. Webber (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2004), p. 83.
Artwork: Frontispiece to Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, 1651, British Museum.
The collect for today, the commemoration of Hippolytus (d. c. 235), Doctor, Bishop in Rome, Martyr (source):
O God, who hast enlightened thy Church by the teaching of thy servant Hippolytus: Enrich us evermore, we beseech thee, with thy heavenly grace, and raise up faithful witnesses who by their life and doctrine will set forth the truth of thy salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
With the Epistle and Gospel for a Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27
Artwork: Cristóvão de Figueiredo, Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus, c. 1520-30. Oil on panel, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.
The collect for a Bishop or Archbishop, in commemoration of The Right Rev. Charles Inglis (1734-1816), first Church of England bishop of Nova Scotia, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Charles Inglis to be a Bishop in thy Church and to feed thy flock: We beseech thee to send down upon all thy Bishops, the Pastors of thy Church, the abundant gift of thy Holy Spirit, that they, being endued with power from on high, and ever walking in the footsteps of thy holy Apostles, may minister before thee in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-44
Born in Ireland, Charles Inglis became in 1787 the first Bishop of Nova Scotia—the first bishop consecrated for any English colony.
Charles Inglis travelled to North America in 1759 as a Church of England missionary to Dover, Delaware. In 1765 he went to Trinity Church, New York, as assistant to the rector, and was chosen rector in 1777. His ministry proved extremely controversial when he emerged as an outspoken Loyalist during the American Revolution. His life was threatened because he refused to omit prayers for the King and the Royal Family from the liturgy.
In 1783, Rev. Inglis and his family left the newly independent nation and returned to England, where he was consecrated the first Bishop of the Diocese of Nova Scotia, which at that time included Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s Island, Newfoundland, and Bermuda. He immediately sailed to Halifax and began his work of furthering the progress and unity of the Church of England in Canada.
Bishop Inglis undertook an ambitious programme of church construction across Atlantic Canada; in 1789, he himself laid the cornerstone for the original Christ Church in Windsor. He also played a leading role in the establishment in Windsor of King’s Collegiate School (1788, now King’s-Edgehill School) and King’s College (1789, now University of King’s College, Halifax).
We are by grace to be what Christ is by nature – sons or children of God. That alone guides and directs our lives with God in Christ. Who and what we are inwardly is to be expressed outwardly in bringing forth good fruit not evil fruit, to use the imagery of the Gospel. What is that good fruit? Doing what belongs to who and what we are as the “children of God” who “have received a spirit of sonship, in which we cry aloud, Abba, Father.” Our life in Christ is very much about our being imago Trinitatis as well as imago Christi, our life as ordered like his to the Father in the eternal bond of the Spirit. We have received a spirit of sonship.
Providence, “who from end to end/ strongly and sweetly movest,” as the poet George Herbert remarks, is the overarching idea. It “never-failingly ordereth all things both in heaven and earth.” God’s “never-failing” providence is the charity [that] “never faileth.” Our vocation is to write out the providence of God in our lives. For “only to Man thou hast made known thy wayes./ And put the penne alone into his hand,/And made him [us] Secretaries of thy praise.” Who we are as knowing and loving beings, and especially through what we know and learn through revelation, is to be lived out in our lives in and through all of the ups and downs of human experience.
But alas, we are often mistaken about providence. It is not just how “everything’s going my way,” as the old song puts it, nor is it our endless illusions with progress, as if things are always and endlessly getting better in our techno-utopian exuberance. Neither fits with human experience. Our identity as “children and heirs of God, and fellow-heirs of Christ,” is predicated on the reality of suffering; we are “heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” Our sanctification in seeking to bring forth the fruit of holy lives is always grounded in our justification through Christ’s saving work on the Cross. His suffering for us gives meaning to our suffering with and for him.
The word ‘providence’ perhaps misleads us. It seems to imply the idea of foreseeing, or foreknowledge but that imparts a temporal dimension when in truth God doesn’t foresee or foreknow, he simply and eternally knows all things, as C.S. Lewis observed in his commentary on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. “What is, what has been, and what is to come,/In one swift mental stab he sees,” Lady Philosophy sings.
This past week marked the great summer festival of Christ’s Transfiguration which is the vision of glory in anticipation of Christ’s Resurrection and the hope of our transformation. John notes that while “we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” As Paul says, we shall know even as we are known in Christ.
Sunday, August 10th, Trinity 8
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, August 17th, Trinity 9
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, August 24th, St. Bartholomew/Trinity 10
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, August 31st, Trinity 11
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Fr. Curry is priest-in-charge for Avon Valley Parish and Hantsport from August 4th until September 8th 2025 while Fr. Tom Henderson is on vacation.
The collect for today, the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth: We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which be profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Romans 8:12-17
The Gospel: St. Matthew 7:15-21
Artwork: Harry Hanley Parker, Sermon on the Mount, 1905. Mural, Calvary United Methodist Church, Philadelphia.
The collect for today, the Feast of the Name of Jesus, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Apostle hast taught us that there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved, but only the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Grant, we beseech thee, that we may ever glory in this Name, and strive to make thy salvation known unto all mankind; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
For The Epistle: Acts 4:8-12
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:20-23
Artwork: Guido Reni, Four Saints and Six Angels Adoring the Name of Jesus, first quarter of 17th century. Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, Louvre, Paris.