Category: Prayer Book Society

Prayer Book Society, Statements and other writings

The Revd Dr. J.I. Packer RIP (1926-2020)

He was one of the giants of the Evangelical and Anglican world, like the California Redwoods which he used as an image for the Puritan theologians and pastors who had greatly influenced and shaped his life and ministry. A prolific writer of many books which spoke the Word of God in season and out of season to the contemporary world in its confusion and ignorance in Canada and beyond, his A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (1990) captures best perhaps the tenor of his soul and its quest. A work admired by the Revd Dr. Robert Crouse, it shows the maturity of vision and commitment to the qualities of the spiritual life to which Dr. Packer thought we are all called and which he saw in the wider traditions of spirituality reaching back to the Fathers and to Medieval writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux, but as grounded in the Scriptures; for him, the living oracles of God. He was one of a few Evangelical theologians, like Dr. Peter Toon, who understood and appreciated the doctrinal and spiritual qualities of the Common Prayer tradition and who remained committed to its promotion and use. He was an academic pastor of souls, a teacher and professor at Regent College for many decades, whose teaching has shaped the lives of many, many pastors and preachers. One of the Vice-Chairmen of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, his ministry reminds the Society of the richness and the depth of the reformed traditions that belong to the patterns of spirituality embedded in the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer.

The frontispiece to A Quest for Godliness from John Geree’s 1646 work on The Character of Old English Puritans is testament to Dr. Packer himself. “He was … [a man foursquare], immoveable in all times, so that they who in the midst of many opinions have lost the view of true religion, may return to him and there find it.” We give thanks to God for his life and ministry. May he rest in peace.

Humbly submitted,

Rev’d David Curry
Vice-Chairman, PBSC
July 20th, 2020

Other remembrances of Dr. Packer are posted at the websites of Regent College and The Anglican Planet.

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Events, Prayer Book Society

Notice of Cancellation of the PBSC NSPEI Quiet Day scheduled for Saturday, March 10th, 2018

Dear Friends,

Owing to the uncertainties of the weather for today and tomorrow, particularly in terms of temperature and precipitation, I think it advisable, in the interests of safety and to allay any anxieties about being on the road, to cancel the PBSC NS PEI Quiet Day that was to be held at King’s-Edgehill School on Saturday, March 10th, 2018 on the theme of The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation. Such are the realities of messy March! I will try to have the addresses posted on the Prayer Book Society’s website.

Blessings in the Miseries of March to you all!

Fr. David Curry

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Events, Prayer Book Society

Prayer Book Society Newsletter

The Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island has released its November 2017 newsletter, which includes a message from PBSC NS PEI President Rev’d David Curry. The following events are planned for 2018.

Jan. 27, 2018
9:30 am – 11:00 am Prayer Book Studies Programme at St. George’s, Halifax.

Jan. 28, 2018
5:00 pm Choral Evensong at St. George’s, Halifax.

Feb. 24, 2018
9:30 am – 11:00 am Prayer Book Studies Programme at St. George’s, Halifax.

March 10, 2018
9:30 am – 3:30 pm Lenten Quiet Day at King’s-Edgehill School, Windsor.

April 28, 2018
Prayer Book Studies Programme at St. Peter’s Cathedral, Charlottetown.

To read Fr. Curry’s message or to obtain more details on the scheduled events, download the newsletter, which is posted here and here.

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Prayer Book Society, Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints, Choral Evensong

“And he opened his mouth and taught them”

It is, to be sure, “that time of year… when yellow leaves or none or few/ do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold/ bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,” as Shakespeare puts it. And yet in the season of scattered leaves and in the culture of scattered souls, there is a gathering, a great and profound gathering. Christ the King strides across the barren fields of our humanity to gather us into glory. It is the glory of the Communion of Saints. It is his gathering, a kind of collecting together of all that is scattered and lost.

The image of human lives as scattered leaves goes back to the Sibylline Oracles of Roman Antiquity conveyed most wonderfully by Vergil and then used by Dante even more wondrously to capture our being gathered together into the Communion of Saints. The whole human story belongs to one book, divinely written, to be sure, but scattered about on the wind; the leaves of the pages, like the leaves of the trees, are scattered and blown about. But by God’s grace the scattered leaves are gathered together into one volume; the leaves of the autumn likened to the pages – the leaves – of a book.

It is a powerful image and one where the ancient culture speaks profoundly to our contemporary world. We are the culture of the scattered, the disconnected and the distracted. Nothing speaks more profoundly to the loneliness and the despair, the desperation and fears of our contemporary world than the idea of the Communion of Saints. We are reminded in the strongest way possible that we are part of something larger than ourselves, that we are not alone but belong to a company beyond number, a spiritual company.

All Saints’ Day recalls us to the vocation of our humanity. We are not called to heroic pretension and presumption but to holiness. We are called to the Communion of Saints. An article of Faith, the lovely vision of the City of God imaged in the Book of Revelation is nothing less than a vision of our redeemed humanity. It signals what God seeks and wills for us and reminds us that our life in Faith always places us in a community. But what kind of community?

(more…)

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Events, Prayer Book Society

Michaelmas Evening Prayer, St. Mary’s, Crousetown: Sunday, September 28th

Michaelmas, St. Mary's, Crousetown

Sponsored by the Prayer Book Society of Canada, Nova Scotia and PEI Branch.

Click here for a map of St. Mary’s, Crousetown.

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Anglican issues, Prayer Book Society, Statements and other writings, Theology

Address to the Prayer Book Society of Canada

Fr. David Curry yesterday delivered an address to the Annual General Meeting of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, held in Charlottetown. Here are the opening paragraphs (footnotes omitted):

“Through the eyes of John”

Philosophy begins not in wonder, as the ancients supposed, a contemporary English philosopher, Simon Critchley, claims, but in disappointment. The particular forms of disappointment for him belong to religion and politics and result in the culture of nihilism which confronts us everywhere. Nihilism is the breakdown of the order of meaning; it declares and asserts the meaninglessness of all life.

Philosophy begins not in wonder but in disappointment, he says. Critchley has in mind Plato and Aristotle both of whom, to be sure, spoke of philosophy as beginning in wonder. But is this a complete and adequate account?

Click here to download the full text of the address (pdf document).

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Events, Prayer Book Society

Lenten Quiet Day, King’s-Edgehill School, March 8th

Quiet Day
Saturday, March 8th, 2014
(9:00-4:00pm)

“Lent & Original Sin”
(sponsored by the Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island)

9:00am Mattins – Hensley Memorial Chapel
(Psalm 38, Genesis 41.1-40, Matthew 25.31-end)

9:20am-9:40am – Registration & Refreshments in Convocation Hall

9:45am First Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

11:15am Holy Communion – Hensley Memorial Chapel (BCP – p. 136)

12:15 Lunch – Stanfield Hall (School Dining Room)

1:30pm Second Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

2:30pm Third Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

3:30pm Evensong – Hensley Memorial Chapel
(Psalm(s) 39 & 41, Genesis 41.41-end, Romans 16)

4:00pm Departure

A Quiet Day is a time for prayer and study and reflection, a part of the Lenten discipline, a part of the spiritual journey of Christian Faith.

The cost for the day is $ 10.00 which includes lunch. Payment can be made on the day itself.

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Prayer Book Society, Sermons

Sermon for Candlemas, 5:00pm Choral Evensong

Fr. David Curry delivered this sermon at Candlemas Choral Evensong, St. George’s Round Church, Halifax, sponsored by The Prayer Book Society of Canada, Nova Scotia and PEI Branch.

“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”

Candlemas is a blaze of light in the darkness of the bleak mid-winter, a blaze of light and hope in the darkness of our world and day. There is something wonderfully endearing and comforting about Candlemas, and, yet, it is a most complicated feast!

It is, after all, a double-barreled feast: the Presentation of Christ and the Purification of Mary, the fons et origo of the true meaning of all our commemorations of Mary is found in their conjunction, the meeting of them both in one celebration; a feast of Mary and a feast of Christ. There can’t be one without the other and here they meet in one. It is a feast of meetings, we might say, a veritable hypapante as the Eastern Orthodox Church styles it, an encounter or a meeting, for here is the meeting of Law and Gospel, the meeting of God and Man, a meeting together of men and women, of old Simeon and aged Anna, of Joseph and Mary; a veritable feast of images and persons. So complex and yet so compelling. And comforting, for it is the early harbinger of spring, the turning point from Christmas to Easter, mid-way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Light signaling life; the triumph of light and life over darkness and death. As for that other meeting on this day, the Super-Bowl, that is entirely another matter!

And the encounter, the meeting, is in his temple; Templum Domini Dominum templi, “the temple of the Lord the fittest place for the Lord of the Temple”, as St. Bernard suggests. But how complex and intriguing, too, are the conceits of temple! Here is Mary, herself the temple, too, of the Lord, that pure, true and holy source of Christ’s humanity; no true temple anywhere that is not Mary, she who is defined by the Word of God, keeps the Word and ponders it in her heart and brings forth the Word. Such is the true meaning of our temples, our Churches. And we, are we not individually called to be temples of the Lord, too, even our bodies; our lives as lived for God and with God? To be sure. This feast calls us to be the living lights of Christ in the world.

(more…)

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Anglican issues, Events, Prayer Book Society

The Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island

The following notes were included in the Order of Service for the Choral Evensong held this afternoon in commemoration of The Rev’d Dr. Robert Crouse and sponsored by The Prayer Book Society of Canada, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island Branch.

St. Michael and All Angels
Choral Evensong
St. Mary’s, Crousetown
4:00pm Sunday, September 29th, 2013

Weyden, Last Judgment 1450The Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island welcomes you to the first of this season’s anchor events. This is the First Annual Choral Evensong commemorating the Rev’d Dr. Robert Crouse.

On Sunday, January 26th, 2014 (Epiphany III), the Society will sponsor a Choral Evensong at the University of King’s College Chapel, Halifax, followed by a reception in the Senior Common Room.

The Society is pleased to sponsor the annual Lenten Quiet Day to be held at King’s-Edgehill School, Windsor, Nova Scotia on Saturday, March 8th from 9:00am-4:00pm on the theme of Lent and Original Sin, led by Rev’d David Curry.

The Society is committed to celebrating the deep prayerfulness and the rich spiritual understanding of the Prayer Book tradition that speaks so powerfully to the complexities of our contemporary church and world.

The Society is most grateful for the gracious hospitality of Fr. Oliver Osmond and the Parishes of Petite Riviere and New Dublin in allowing the Society to hold this service at St. Mary’s, Crousetown, the Church which evokes so much of the spirit and legacy of Fr. Crouse.

[…]

Rev’d Dr. Robert Darwin Crouse

The Rev’d Dr. Robert Crouse spent a life-time of dedicated service to God as a teacher, a scholar, and a priest. A noted Patristic and Medieval scholar, his passion was Dante. Through his patient and passionate commitment to the texts of our spiritual and intellectual tradition, he instilled a deep love of learning in generations upon generations of students. Acknowledged as “the conscience of the Canadian Church,” he constantly and consistently reminded the church of the spiritual integrity of the Common Prayer tradition and its fundamental importance for our Christian identity. We may say of Dr. Crouse what Dante said of St. Luke, that he is the “scriba mansuetudinis Christi,” the scribe of the gentleness of Christ, a gentleness which is firm and resolute on the high things of God, the things which are our joy and delight, the things, too, which are embodied in the spiritual riches of The Book of Common Prayer. Through it we may learn what Dante showed us and what Fr. Crouse taught us: that we are “soul[s] made apt for worshipping.”

The Rev’d Dr. Thomas Curran teaches at the University of King’s College and Dalhousie University. He is the past president of the Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and PEI. We are most grateful for his wisdom and guidance over many years and for being the preacher at this special commemorative service.

Nico Weltmeyer is the Organ Scholar at the Chapel of the University of King’s College, Halifax

The Rev’d Fr. David Curry is the Rector of Christ Church, Windsor, and Chaplain, English, History and Philosophy Teacher at King’s-Edgehill School. For many years he has been one of the Vice-Presidents of the Prayer Book Society of Canada and is now also President of the Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and PEI.

Artwork: Rogier Van Der Weyden, Last Judgment, c. 1445-50, Beaune, France.

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Events, Prayer Book Society

Lenten Quiet Day, King’s-Edgehill School, 9 March

Quiet Day
Saturday, March 9th, 2013
(9:00-4:45pm)

“Praying the Scriptures: What, When, & How?”
(sponsored by the Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island)

9:00am Mattins – Hensley Memorial Chapel
9:20am-9:40am – Registration & Refreshments in Convocation Hall
9:45am First Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

11:15am Holy Communion – Hensley Memorial Chapel (BCP – p. 323 & p. 145)

12:00 Lunch – Stanfield Hall (School Dining Room)

1:30pm Second Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

3:00pm Third Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

4:15pm Evensong – Hensley Memorial Chapel
4:30-4:45 Departure

A Quiet Day is a time for prayer and study and reflection, a part of the Lenten discipline, a part of the spiritual journey of Christian Faith.

The cost for the day is $ 10.00 which includes lunch. Payment can be made on the day itself. If you are interested in attending, all or some of the day, please contact Fr. David Curry.

Quiet Day 2013 PosterClick here to download poster (pdf format).

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