Christ Church

Due to the prolonged snowstorm, Fr. David Curry has decided to cancel services today. We hope to see you on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Morn.

The sermon will be posted as usual later this morning.

Due to uncertainties regarding the weather, tonight’s Lenten Programme on the Book of Homilies has been cancelled.

The meditation on the homily pertaining to the Holy Spirit will posted on the website shortly.

Fr. David Curry will be off on vacation for the month of July. During his absence, Sunday services at Christ Church will be led by Fr. Tom Henderson.

No sermons will be posted while Fr. Curry is away; they will resume in August.

I regret to inform you that the Bishop of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the Rt. Rev’d Sandra Fyfe, has issued a directive suspending all in-person worship in Anglican Parishes effective December 22nd, 2021 until January 12th, 2022, citing concerns about the spread of COVID-19 via the Omicron variant. The directive exceeds the latest restrictions of Public Health about the numbers of people allowed at faith services and the proscription about singing, measures about which we were acting in accord.

A lot of work and preparation has gone into the services for Christmas but I recognise that more often than not we have to patiently forbear many, many things in this vale of tears while continuing to find ways to glorify God and to care for one another. I will endeavour to provide audio services for Christmas Eve, Christmas Morning, and for the 8am Service on St, Stephen’s Day; these will be services of ante-communion and will include meditations.

It remains to be seen to what extent this directive will affect our end of year finances. I am very grateful for the amazing support that the Parish has demonstrated over the course of the ups and downs of COVID-19 and pray that we will continue to be strong in the faith. “This shall be a time for you to bear testimony” (Lk. 21.13), in quiet prayer, and in much patience with forbearance. As always there are blessings that are found even in our disappointments. For those wanting to submit envelopes and donations, please contact Kathy Cameron at 1-902-798-1876 to make arrangements.

I wish you all a blessed Christmas.

Fr. David Curry

Fr. David Curry and Christ Church Parish Council are pleased to announce that Christ Church will re-open for public worship this coming Sunday, 20 June, the Third Sunday after Trinity.

Christ Church closed as of 2 May, in accordance with a strict province-wide lockdown necessitated by a renewed wave of Covid-19. Since then, numbers of daily new cases and current active cases have declined sufficiently to allow a partial loosening of restrictions. From the Government of Nova Scotia website, here is the currently applicable regulation:

Faith gatherings hosted by a business or organization – 25% of the venue’s capacity up to 50 people indoors or 75 people outdoors with social distancing.

Thus, up to 50 worshippers can be accommodated in our church building.

On Sunday, 20 June, we will return to our usual Sunday schedule of two morning services at 8:00am and 10:30am. We will observe social distancing in accordance with the protocols posted at this website last year.

Protocols for Liturgies at Christ Church
(Approved by Parish Council, June 2nd, 2020)

The following protocols are intended to provide a clear set of guidelines about how best to proceed with Church services under the present health concerns about Covid-19 once we are able to open and are more or less functional, subject to our overriding commitment to the directives of the provincial Department of Public Health. These protocols may be subject to review and refinement as we learn how best to function in the context of worship to the glory of God and to the good of his Church and people. Apart from the primacy of worship within the integrity of our Anglican understanding and practice, our main concern is to take reasonable and prudent precautionary measures in the face of people’s fears and worries. It all comes down to trust, transparency, and a reasonable and principled flexibility.

The specific protocols for each service will be laid out below but first a few general procedures and observations.

People will be expected to observe the policy of social distancing in coming and going to and within the Church and Chancel. Given the size of Christ Church, this should not be a problem and for the sake of planning, the Nave and the Chancel can be regarded as two separate and distinct spaces.

The front door and the ramp door of the Church as well as the exterior vestry door will be open. People will enter and exit through either but being mindful of the social distancing practices that are now ubiquitous and common in our communities. Prayer Books and Hymn Books will be in two separate boxes; one for the 8:00am service, one for the 10:30am service, and one for any other service, such as Evening Prayer should that happen. After each service, the books will be returned to the designated box. Hand sanitizers will be strategically placed at the back of the Church as well as in the bathroom (where additional directives will be noted about sanitizing).

Pews will be designated for sitting: three pews apart on either side. Families will be allowed to sit together but in order to avoid confusion everyone is asked to maintain social distancing when moving from place to place within the Church just as is the pattern in the stores of our communities.

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Archbishop Ron Cutler has, effective immediately, suspended all public liturgies in the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island until April 3rd, at which time a decision will be made regarding Holy Week and Easter worship.

The Archbishop’s full statement is posted here.

“Only Luke is with me.”

I have always loved this simple yet poignant remark of Paul. There is a compelling kind of elegance and simplicity to it. It captures something of the nature of the loneliness of the ministry in its deep truth and meaning. Even more, it captures something of the spiritual significance of Luke, “Evangelist and Physician of the soul,” as the Collect puts it, for the life of the Christian Church. There is, it seems, something profoundly comforting about the presence of Luke with Paul. And so, too, with us.

Luke is the Church’s great and primary spiritual director, as it were, especially in the long Trinity season. There is a certain felt quality to his writings, both in his Gospel and in The Book of The Acts of the Apostles, generally attributed to him. Dante captures the special quality of Luke’s approach to the mystery of God in Christ, the mystery of human redemption, in a phrase. Luke, he says, is “scriba mansuetudinis Christi,” the scribe of the gentleness of Christ. I have often been struck by that phrase. It seems to capture the real meaning and truth of our spiritual pilgrimage, the journey of the soul to God with God in Jesus Christ. It highlights a special quality to that pilgrimage – gentleness. Not our gentleness but the gentleness of Christ, which at once provides a profound insight into God’s engagement with our wounded and broken humanity and a strong corrective to the negative views of divine judgment; a counter to our despair and our anxieties.

We have been pondering the powerful teachings of the Trinity season, emphasising, in our own poor way, the idea of an ethic of action rooted in compassion. Not surprisingly, Luke has been our principal instructor about such an ethic which speaks so profoundly to the confusions and lunacies of our day where either Profit or the Self is God which neither can possibly be. In the absence of any kind of principled ethical discourse, and even on the eve of a federal election here in Canada, there is really only the tyranny of global corporatism or the subjective tyranny of the self. Yet here in this feast, almost as a kind of counter to those totalizing concepts, we are reminded that “only Luke is with [us]”. It seems somehow to make a difference to our thinking and our doing.

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The website administrator will be away travelling for most of the next month. During this time, I will have occasional access to the internet and will keep the site up to date as I have opportunity, but delays can be expected in posting sermons, week at a glance, and other items. I apologise in advance for any inconvenience.

Posts with propers and artwork for Sundays and major festivals have been prepared and will appear on schedule.

An explanatory note may be in order about the readings used this Sunday. On page 258 of the Canadian BCP, at the end of the appointed readings for the Trinity Season, there is the following rubric:

If there be an additional Sunday preceding the Sunday before Advent, the Service of the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany shall be used; if there be two additional Sundays, the Services of the Fifth and Sixth.

Thus at Holy Communion this morning at Christ Church, the Propers for Epiphany VI (p. 131, ff.) were used. In the Sunday and Weekday Office Lectionary (BCP, pp. xvi-xlv) provision is made for the Office readings for the Twenty-fifth and the Twenty-sixth Sundays after Trinity at Morning and Evenings Prayer, following a Year One and Year Two pattern (depending on whether Advent Sunday in any given ecclesiastical year is an even or odd numbered year). So there is an ambiguity. This year, 2013, we have twenty-five Sundays after Trinity. Following the rubric of page 258, the Collect, Epistle and Gospel for Epiphany VI are directed to be used. But what if the second service in a Parish happens to be Morning Prayer? A different Collect associated with different readings? Or the same Collect with the Office Readings appointed for the twenty-sixth Sunday? I chose to keep the connection between the Office and the Eucharist – same Collect of the Day and the readings belonging to both the Eucharist and the Service of Morning Prayer.

An argument could certainly be made for using the readings appointed for Morning Prayer for Trinity XXV along with the Collect for Epiphany VI. The intent of the Office and Weekly pattern is, I think, fairly clear, but here is an instance of an ambiguity and one which I happily confess to have exploited in the interest of the intriguing reading from The Prayer of Manasses. Such are the vagaries of time and the limits of all our systems. At issue really are the principles which govern the readings at the Holy Eucharist and its connection to the reading of the Scriptures at the Sunday Offices. All this relates to a much deeper concern: the principles that belong to the Theology of Revelation without which the Scriptures cease to be the Scriptures and merely relics of the past.

Fr. David Curry