Tuesday, April 21st
3:30pm Holy Communion – Windsor Elms
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
Thursday, April 23rd
1:30-3:00pm Seniors’ Drop-In
Friday, April 24th, Eve of St. Mark
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
3:30 pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home
Sunday, April 26th, Easter II
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
2:00 pm AMD Service of the Deaf
4:30 pm Holy Communion or Evening Prayer at King’s-Edgehill School
The collect for today, The Octave Day of Easter, being The Sunday After Easter Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may alway serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St John 5:4-12
The Gospel: St John 20:19-23
Artwork: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ’s appearance behind locked doors (from Back Crowning of The Maestà), 1308-11. Tempera on wood, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena.
c/p: Nova Scotia Scott
The collect for today, Tuesday in Easter Week, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
For the Epistle: Acts 13:26-33
The Gospel: St Luke 24:36-48
Artwork: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ’s appearance when the apostles are at table (from Back Crowning of The Maestà), 1308-11. Tempera on wood, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena.
c/p: Nova Scotia Scott
The collect for today, Monday in Easter Week, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
For the Epistle: Acts 10:34-43
The Gospel: St Luke 24:13-35
Artwork: Rembrandt, The Supper at Emmaus, 1648. Oil on wood, Louvre, Paris.
c/p: Nova Scotia Scott
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, “early when it was yet dark,” John tells us. She “seeth the stone taken away.” And so it begins. She runs to tell the others, apostle apostolorum, an apostle to the apostles, as the Fathers put it. She says “to Simon Peter and to the other disciple” that “they have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” He is not there. Who has taken him? Who are ‘they’ that “have taken [him] away”? Confronting something that counters her expectation, she suspects a conspiracy, it seems. Don’t we all? Simon Peter and “that other disciple” run and see. They, too, find only an empty tomb. And so it continues. It is the Resurrection.
With apologies to President Obama, and for that matter most politicians, the Resurrection is change you can believe in. This is what the Gospel accounts show us. In a way, of course, it can only be believed in. There is, after all, no ‘CSI Jerusalem’ with respect to the Resurrection, nor can there be. There is no DNA. There is no forensic evidence whatsoever; not much to go on, it might seem. Folly to even think there could be, it seems to me.
At best, we might say there is only evidence which points to an absence beginning with the stories of the empty tomb. Then, there are the accounts of angels. Ah, an angel told me! Right! Hardly convincing, it might seem, at least to the empirically minded. Then, there are the supposed eye-witness accounts of strange encounters with the risen Christ who appears and disappears behind closed doors. Right! Explicable, perhaps, according to “superstring theory” in Physics, but then one might feel about that the same way the British travel writer, Alexander Kinglake, felt about churches in England, wanting to inscribe upon their lintels the caveat, “interesting, if true.” Perhaps that is where we are with the Resurrection, “interesting, if true.”
If so, why are we here this morning? (more…)
Monday, April 13th, Easter Monday
10:00am Holy Communion
Tuesday, April 14th, Easter Tuesday
10:00am Holy Communion
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting
Thursday, April 16th, Easter Thursday
1:30-3:30pm Seniors’ Drop-In
Saturday, April 18th
7:00-9:00pm Newfoundland and Country Evening of Musical Entertainment, Parish Hall
Sunday, April 19th, Octave Day of Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30 pm Evening Prayer or Holy Communion at King’s-Edgehill School
The collect for today, Easter-Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962) :
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life: We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: Colossians 3:1-11
The Gospel: St John 20:1-10
Artwork: Paolo Veronese, The Resurrection of Christ, c. 1570. Oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.
c/p: Nova Scotia Scott
The collect for today, Easter Even, or Holy Saturday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that, through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 St Peter 3:17-22
The Gospel: St Matthew 27:57-66
Artwork: Fra Angelico, The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (San Marco Altarpiece), 1438-40. Tempera on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
c/p: Nova Scotia Scott
“All the people hung upon his words.” So Luke tells us in his account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. These words are read at Evening Prayer on Palm Sunday. “Take with you words,” the prophet Hosea, says, “and return to the Lord.” These words are read at Evening Prayer on Monday in Holy Week.
Words, and our attention to them, are one of the strong features of our Anglican heritage with respect to the observances of Holy Week. The point and purpose of this week has been to immerse us in the totality of the Passion of Christ, reading from all four of the Gospel accounts of the Passion. No other Christian tradition demands quite so much. For the attention deficit culture, it is, perhaps, too much. And yet, so necessary.Along with the Passion, readings from the Old Testament and the New, as well from the Old Testament Apocrypha, such as The Book of Wisdom, offer a rich commentary upon the spectacle of Holy Week. Once again, there is much of a muchness, once again, it is de trop. And yet, so necessary and so instructive.
Holy Week is the spectacle of sin and love, the spectacle of our betrayals, on the one hand, and the redemptive love of Christ, on the other hand. Everything converges on the Cross, “that strange and uncouth thing” as the poet, George Herbert, puts it. And yet, as another poet, John Donne, puts it, himself no stranger to the hideous realities of sin and suffering, the image of the crucified is itself a “beauteous form” that “assures a piteous mind.”
The collects for today, Good Friday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
Almighty God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before thee for all estates of men in thy holy Church, that every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, may truly and godly serve thee; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Epistle: Hebrews 10:1-25
The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to St John
The Gospel: St John 18:33-19:37
Artwork: Veit Stoss, Crucifixion (High Altar of St Mary), 1477-89. Wood, Church of St Mary, Cracow.
c/p: Nova Scotia Scott