The collect for today, the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 5:25-6:5
The Gospel: St Luke 17:11-19
Two new groups are planned for the coming year at Christ Church: a book club and a movie discussion group. All are welcome.
Christ Church Cinema Paradiso will meet to view and discuss a film at 7:30 pm on the fourth Thursday of each month from September through May (except December). The first film will be Waking Ned Devine on 24 September. The complete schedule is posted here.
Christ Church Book Club will meet at 6:30 pm on the first Tuesday of most months from October through May. (No meetings are set for January, March, and April.) The first book is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows. The full list of books and dates is posted here.
Both groups will meet in the Parish Hall.
The Fall 2009 issue of Christ Church Chronicles can be downloaded here as a pdf document. (Previous issues can be downloaded via this page.)
There are several great lines for homilies in this Gospel passage. “Who is my neighbour?” “When he saw him he had compassion on him.” “Go, and do thou likewise.” Powerful stuff and yet, in a way, they all hang upon this rather unique question, a question which Jesus asks, a question which illumines all of the great questions of the Scriptures, the great questions of religion itself. “How do you read?”
We might think that the real question is ‘what do you read?’ Certainly, that is an important question. What we read will, it goes without saying, influence how we think about things. It is not a matter of indifference about what students and children read; what the curriculum is, as it were. And there are, as well, the more disturbing issues of censorship and political correctness that attempt to circumscribe what we read, what we hear and what we say. These obscure the bigger question which is about how we read.
We are too familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan. A powerful story, to be sure, and one which impels us powerfully to good works, what we often overlook is the extraordinary significance of the context in which Jesus tells this story. As such, I think, we miss its deeper meaning. It ends with the precise and positive exhortation to “go and do thou likewise”, but the possibility of that actually depends not on ourselves, but on the movement of God’s grace in us accomplishing what we could not and cannot do on our own. This is the message that we do not want to hear.
We conveniently overlook the faith basis of the action that we bidden to do. The Gospel provides an amazingly radical faith statement. We know it in the Prayer Book liturgy as the Summary of the Law, proclaimed and heard at the beginning of the Communion Service. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul; and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.” Here, Jesus draws this out of “a certain lawyer” who tempted him with a question. His question, raised not for the purposes of understanding but for sophistic entrapment, was “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ response was, in perfect Socratic fashion, to ask two related questions, “what is written in the law?” and “how readest thou?” Beautiful. It is in response to ‘the what and the how’ that the Lawyer speaks about the love of God and the love of neighbour, concentrating in a marvelous fashion the whole of the Torah, the Law.
The collect for today, the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy faithful people do unto thee true and laudable service: Grant, we beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 5:16-24
The Gospel: St Luke 10:25-37
Artwork: William Hogarth, The Good Samaritan, 1737. Oil on canvas, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Aidan (d. 651), Monk of Iona, Missionary, first Bishop and Abbot of Lindisfarne (source):
O loving God, who didst call thy servant Aidan from the Peace of a cloister to re-establish the Christian mission in northern England, and didst endow him with gentleness, simplicity, and strength: Grant, we beseech thee, that we, following his example, may use what thou hast given us for the relief of human need, and may persevere in commending the saving Gospel of our Redeemer Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
The Gospel: St Matthew 19:27-30
Artwork: St Aidan, 19th-century stained glass, from the East window, North transept, Cartmel Priory, England.
Closed book, closed mind; open book, open mind. It seems simple and straightforward, almost obvious. But, of course, you might say that it depends on what you read; to which, I would add, and how you read.
We are only too well aware of the so-called fundamentalist approach to what are regarded as sacred texts that makes us altogether skeptical of religion in general and suspicious of sacred writings in particular. Sadly, we are largely ignorant of them as well. So open books seem to create closed minds while supposedly open minds are closed to those same books and ignorantly dismissive of them! Curious!
Allan Bloom’s provocative book, The Closing of the American Mind, written in 1987, brings out a further aspect of our paradoxical uncertainties. A cry against the moral and intellectual relativism then and now pervasive in the universities, he saw that the supposed openness of such relativism was really a closing of the mind to the formative and foundational texts of our intellectual culture. A closing of the mind to both the letter and the spirit.
St. Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, points out the dilemma. “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” What is at issue is what and how we read and, for the digito agitato culture, to coin a phrase, the culture of the digitally agitated that flits from one image to another with barely a pause to think, there is the further issue of whether we are really reading at all. The task, of course, lies in reading with the spirit, the spirit of understanding.
The collect for today, the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 3:4-9
The Gospel: St Mark 7:31-37
The collect for today, the Beheading of St John the Baptist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O God, who didst send thy messenger, John the Baptist, to be the forerunner of the Lord, and to glorify thee by his death: Grant that we, who have received the truth of thy most holy Gospel, may bear our witness thereunto, and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
For the Epistle: Jeremiah 1:17-19
The Gospel: St Mark 6:17-29
Artwork: Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, The Beheading of St John the Baptist, c. 1869. Oil on canvas, National Gallery, London.
The collect for today, the Feast of St Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo, Doctor of the Church (source):
O merciful Lord,
who didst turn Augustine from his sins to be a faithful bishop and teacher:
grant that we may follow him in penitence and godly discipline,
till our restless hearts find their rest in thee;
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: Hebrews 12:22-24,28-29
The Gospel: St John 14:6-15
Artwork: Vittore Carpaccio, St Augustine in his Study, c 1511. Oil on canvas, Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice.