Author: CCW

Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-Second Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Millais, Unforgiving ServantLORD, we beseech thee to keep thy house hold the Church in continual godliness; that through thy protection it may be free from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve thee in good works, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 1:3-11
The Gospel: St Matthew 18:21-35

Artwork: John Everett Millais, The Unmerciful Servant, from Illustrations to `The Parables of Our Lord’, 1864. Relief print on paper, Tate Collections, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

Charles Simeon, Pastor

The collect for today, the commemoration of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Priest, Evangelical Divine (source):

O eternal God,
who didst raise up Charles Simeon
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and inspire thy people in service and mission:
grant that we, with all thy Church, may worship the Saviour,
turn away in true repentance from our sins
and walk in the way of holiness;
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 10:8b-17
The Gospel: St. John 21:15-19

Charles SimeonCharles Simeon served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1782 until his death. His zealous evangelical preaching was bitterly opposed by parish leaders, but proved immensely popular and influential among Cambridge undergraduates. He supported the British and Foreign Bible Society and helped to found the Church Missionary Society. His curate Henry Martyn became chaplain of the East India Company and one of India’s best-known missionaries.

Historian Lord Macaulay wrote of him, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”

A meditation on the life of Charles Simeon, by John Piper, is posted here.

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Prayers and liturgy

Remembrance Day

A prayer of The Very Rev Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), Dean of York:

Lest We ForgetO Lord our God, whose name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: We give thee high praise and hearty thanks for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; beseeching thee to give them a part and a lot in those good things which thou has prepared for all those whose names are written in the Book of Life; and grant to us, that having them always in remembrance, we may imitate their faithfulness and with them inherit the new name which thou has promised to them that overcome; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004.

Brussels Cathedral, Memorial TabletThis memorial tablet to the British Empire dead of the First World War was unveiled in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, Brussels, on 27 July 1927. Photograph taken by admin, 14 October 2014.

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Prayers and liturgy

Martin of Tours

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Martin (c 316-397), Monk, Bishop of Tours (source):

Almighty God,
who didst call Martin from the armies of this world
to be a faithful soldier of Christ:
give us grace to follow him
in his love and compassion for those in need,
and empower thy Church to claim for all people
their inheritance as the children of God;
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: Isaiah 58:6-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:34-40

Moreau, Saint MartinOne of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, Martin was born to pagan parents and, although intending to become a Christian, followed his father into the Roman army. About three years later, in Amiens, France, came the famous incident portrayed in the statue seen here.

On a cold winter day, he met a beggar at the city gates. Drawing his sword, he cut his military cloak in two and gave half to the man. In a dream that night, he saw Christ wearing the half-cloak he had given away and saying, “Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with his garment”. Martin was baptised shortly thereafter.

After being discharged from the army, he met St. Hilary at Poitiers upon the latter’s return from exile in 360. Hilary provided a piece of land where Martin founded the first monastic community in Gaul. He lived there for ten years until 371, when he reluctantly accepted a call from the people of Tours to become their bishop.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, 10:30am Morning Prayer

“With thee is wisdom”

The grey month of November is not only the month of remembering but also of wisdom. In the pattern of the readings for the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer we begin on this Sunday to read from the Apocrypha, from those books which stand between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and which have a special sort of status, wonderfully captured in the sixth article of our Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion which articulate an Anglican understanding of the Catholic Faith.

The article does not provide actually give a generic term for these books, such as Apocrypha or Deutero-canonical. It simply and in a wonderfully economical way refers to them as “other books” before actually naming them individually; it doesn’t even clearly state that they are or are not canonical.

They are an interesting and intriguing collection. At issue is how they are read and understood. This is the point of the article: having listed the Old Testament books, it goes on to say, “And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine” (BCP, p. 700). The appeal here is to the Patristic period which worked out both the essential doctrines of the Christian Faith ultimately creedally expressed and the canonical texts of the Bible. The reference to Hierome means Jerome, the outstanding translator of the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek into the Latin Vulgate which was the defining text for 1500 years and more for the cultures of the West.

The Psalms in the Prayer Book bear quiet but eloquent testimony to the influence of Jerome’s translation: Latin titles derived from the first words of each psalm remain part of the Prayer Book Psalter and have since Coverdale’s 1535 translation. They remind us of the greater legacy and lineage of scriptural doctrine and introduce an important qualifier about the rightly celebrated reformation claim, sola scriptura, ‘scripture alone’. Yes, but in and through a tradition of translation and reception. In this case, the reformed elements of classical Anglicanism defer knowingly to the received understanding of the Patristic period, referring, after all, to Jerome, the Prince of Translators, and specifically to his understanding about the nature of these “other books.”

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, 8:00am Holy Communion

“Above all, take the shield of faith”.

The scriptural images before us today have a wonderful cogency and power; they at once disquiet us, I suspect, as well as comfort us. We may indeed be inclined to prefer the gospel story of the healing of the son of a nobleman, not a poor man, we note, but one who is presumably well off; that alone, of course, might give us cause to pause. Yet, it is the story about something which is done by Jesus for us and so it suits the predilection of this age of entitlement to suppose that God should heal us and provide for us whatever we think we want. After all, ‘He owes us’, we might secretly think. We are happy to be on the receiving end, takers all and givers none. Of course, the gospel story itself will allow none of that kind of nonsense.

The challenge of the gospel is the wonderful openness to the grace of God by the nobleman who “believed the word which Jesus had spoken unto him”. He did not insist that Jesus make a house call. Jesus’ word was enough. That is the wonder and the effect of the grace of Christ at work in human lives. It illustrates what it means to “be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might” that St. Paul talks about in his Letter to the Ephesians, the strength and the might to work with what is conveyed to us by the Word of God. We are not just passive receivers, the couch potatoes of spiritual blessings, as it were; no, we are called to be actively engaged with what the Word of God opens out to us.

If comforted by the gospel, at first glance, then, I am sure we are equally made uncomfortable about the images in the epistle reading from Ephesians. The images are, in their sustained rigour, unmistakably military. They suggest an aggressiveness, even a kind of bellicosity that surely makes us pause, if not shudder uncomfortably.

“Put on the armour of God,” Paul tells us and he continues to tell us through the language of image and metaphor that we contend “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual wickedness in high places”. Strong stuff. I wonder if we can hear it even in the approach to Remembrance Day and at a time when we confront the forms of active nihilism even here in Canada which arise out of our communities and ghettoes of passive nihilism, out of our spiritual emptiness; the nothingness of evil which breeds a destructive nothingness.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 10 – 16 November

Monday, November 10th
4:45-5:15pm World Religions/Inquirer’s Class – Room 206, King’s-Edgehill School
6-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, November 11th, Remembrance Day
11:00am Service at Windsor Cenotaph
12:30pm Service at KES Cenotaph
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, November 13th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 16th, Trinity XXII
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 22nd
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 30th
4:00pm Advent Lessons and Carols, with KES, Gr. 7-11

Friday, December 19th
7:00pm Capella Regalis Christmas Concert: “To Bethlehem with Kings”

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-First Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 6:10-20
The Gospel: St. John 4:46-54

Breenburgh, Healing Capernaum Nobleman's SonArtwork: Bartholomeus Breenbergh , Christ and the Nobleman of Capernaum, c. 1630. Oil on panel, Private collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

Willibrord, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Willibrord (658-739), Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle to the Frisians, Patron Saint of the Netherlands (source):

Cornelis Bloemaert, Holy WillibrordO Lord our God, who dost call whom thou willest and send them whither thou choosest: We thank thee for sending thy servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve thee, the living God; and we entreat thee to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of thy service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-9
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-9

Artwork: Cornelis Bloemaert, The Holy Willibrord, c. 1630, Copper Engraving.

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Prayers and liturgy

All Souls’ Day

The collect for today, The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, commonly called All Souls’ Day (source):

Everlasting God, our maker and redeemer,
grant us, with all the faithful departed,
the sure benefits of thy Son’s saving passion
and glorious resurrection,
that, in the last day,
when thou dost gather up all things in Christ,
we may with them enjoy the fullness of thy promises;
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 Thessalonians 4:13-18
The Gospel: St. John 5:24-27

Korosfoi-Kriesch, All Souls DayArtwork: Aladár Körösföi-Kriesch, All Souls’ Day, 1910. Oil on canvas, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest.

(This commemoration has been transferred from 2 November.)

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