Category: Prayers and liturgy

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cyril (826-69) and Saint Methodius (c. 815-85), Apostles to the Slavs (source):

O Lord of all,
who gavest to thy servants Cyril and Methodius
the gift of tongues to proclaim the gospel to the Slavic people:
we pray that thy whole Church may be one as thou art one,
that all who confess thy name may honour one another,
and that from east and west all may acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and thee, the God and Father of all;
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: Ephesians 3:1-7
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:15-20

St. Cyril and St. Methodius were brothers born in Thessalonica who went to Constantinople after being ordained priests. (Cyril was baptised Constantine and did not become known as Cyril until late in his life.) Around AD 863, Emperor Michael II and Patriarch Photius sent the brothers as missionaries to Moravia, where they translated into Slavonic the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. With his brother’s help, Cyril created an alphabet that later developed into Cyrillic, thus laying the foundation for Slavic literature.

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The collect for today, The Ascension Day, being the fortieth day after Easter, sometimes called Holy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continuously dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-11
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:14-20

Artwork: Andrea Mantegna, Ascension of Christ (detail from Uffizi Triptych), c. 1460-64. Tempera on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

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The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday After Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:22-27
The Gospel: St. John 16:23-33

Artwork: Michael Damaskinos, The Last Supper, c. 1591. Egg tempera on wood, Monastery of Agia Aikaterini, Heraklion, Crete.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Monnica (c. 331-387), mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo (source):

O Lord, who through spiritual discipline didst strengthen thy servant Monnica to persevere in offering her love and prayers and tears for the conversion of her husband and of Augustine their son: Deepen our devotion, we beseech thee, and use us in accordance with thy will to bring others, even our own kindred, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: 1 Samuel 1:10-11,20
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17

Artwork: John Nava, Saint Monica, 2003. Jacquard tapestry, Church of Saint Monica, Trenton, N.J.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Athanasius (c. 293-373), Bishop of Alexandria, Theologian, Apologist, Doctor of the Church (source):

Ever-living God,
whose servant Athanasius bore witness
to the mystery of the Word made flesh for our salvation:
give us grace, with all thy saints,
to contend for the truth
and to grow into the likeness of thy Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 4:5-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:23-28

Saint Athanasius is one of the most inspirational figures of the early church. His dogged and uncompromising defence of the full divinity of Jesus Christ against the Arian heresy saved the unity and integrity of the Christian religion and church. He saw that Christ’s deity was foundational to the faith and that Arianism meant the end of Christianity.

Arius and his followers maintained that Christ the Logos was neither eternal nor uncreated, but a subordinate being—the first and finest of God’s creation, but a creature nonetheless. Despite being rejected at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, which Athanasius attended as deacon under the orthodox Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, Arianism remained popular and influential in the Eastern church for most of the fourth century.

Athanasius became bishop in 328 at age 33 and spent the next five decades fighting for Nicene orthodoxy. For his troubles, he was deposed and exiled five times, spending a total of seventeen years in flight and hiding, often shielded by the people of Alexandria. Six years of exile were spent in Rome, where he gained the strong support of the Western church, and another six years were spent under the protection of monks in the Egyptian desert.

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The Collect for today, The Feast of Saint Philip and Saint James the Apostles, with Saint James the Brother of the Lord, Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the steps of thy holy Apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional Collect, of the Brethren of the Lord:

O HEAVENLY Father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: We bless thy holy Name for the witness of James and Jude, the kinsmen of the Lord, and pray that we may be made true members of thy heavenly family; through him who willed to be the firstborn among many brethren, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 14:1-14

Artwork: Pompeo Batoni, St. Philip (left) and St. James the Less (right), c. 1740-43. Oil on canvas, National Trust, Basildon Park, Berkshire, England.

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The collect for today, The Fourth Sunday After Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St. John 16:5-15

Artwork: Antonio Estruch i Bros, Last Supper, 1904. Oil on canvas, Sabadell Art Museum, Sabadell, Spain.

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“Be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be”

What things? Deceptions, “of wars and rumours of wars,” of “nation against nation,” of “earthquakes in divers places,” of “famines and troubles,” ultimately, what Mark sums up as “the beginnings of sorrows.” Sounds like the evening news or the endless dystopia of your social media ‘news’ feed. What has changed? It is a pretty sobering picture of the suffering and hardships of our disordered world.

And yet Mark is really the first Eastertide Saint who we commemorate invariably in the Easter Season, though this year the Annunciation was transferred from Monday in Holy Week to week of the Octave of Easter. In a way, that helped to emphasize the intimate and inescapable connection and interplay between Passion and Resurrection in terms of the meaning of the Incarnation which cannot be thought about apart from them. And so, too, with the Feast of St. Mark as the readings make rather clear. The Gospel might seem to be rather dark and threatening about the things that must needs be that are disturbing. Yet the Resurrection provides a way to face such things and to “be not troubled.”

The Resurrection changes everything. Mark’s Gospel in its so-called shorter ending concludes with the words “they were afraid.” This acknowledges the reality of the human condition but his gospel addresses it with a way to face such stark realities. They do not need to define us. We are more than though not less than the circumstances and situations of our world and day and even of our own experiences. In every way, the Resurrection points us to the joy of our life in Christ and focuses our thoughts on his Passion and Resurrection which becomes our life as the reading from Ephesians so clearly indicates. We are given a way to face things and be not troubled but to speak the truth in love, and grow up into him in all things. In other words, the Resurrection is about our life in Christ whose life in us signals the building up of the body in love. That body is the body of Christ, the Church. Our task is to heed the Collect taken from the Epistle that we not be “like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine,” “tossed to and fro,” but rather “established in the truth” of the Gospel.

“And the gospel must first be published among all nations,” Mark concludes in the reading for his feast day. That requires it being published in the midst of the troubles of our world and day. That is our vocation and our joy.

“Be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be”

Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Mark, April 25th, 2024

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