Prayers and liturgy

Etheldreda, Queen and Abbess

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Etheldreda, Queen, Foundress and Abbess of Ely (d. 679) (source):

Saint Etheldreda windowO eternal God,
who didst bestow such grace on thy servant Etheldreda
that she gave herself wholly to the life of prayer
and to the service of thy true religion:
grant that we may in like manner
seek thy kingdom in our earthly lives,
that by thy guidance
we may be united in the glorious fellowship of thy saints;
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: Philippians 3:7-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:29-34

Artwork: Joseph Edward (Eddie) Nuttgens, Saint Etheldreda, 1952. Stained glass, St. Etheldreda’s Church, Ely Place, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Bishops and Martyrs

The collect for today, the commemoration of Hugh Latimer (1485-1555), Bishop of Worcester, and Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500-1555), Bishop of London, Reformation Martyrs (source):

Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servants Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:9-14
The Gospel: St. John 15:20-16:1

Burning of Ridley and Latimer

Two leaders of the English Reformation were burned at the stake in Oxford on this day in 1555. Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, were removed from their positions and imprisoned after Queen Mary ascended the throne in 1553. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1533, was deposed and taken to Oxford with Latimer and Ridley.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

“Be ye kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another,
even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

Paul’s strong and powerful words are complemented and illustrated wonderfully in the Gospel. The teaching of both is, perhaps, best concentrated for us in the Collect: “forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee: Mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.” For the readings all turn on the question about what is moving in our hearts. In short, the emphasis is upon the qualities of Christ present or absent in us and in ways that challenge our thinking.

Have we learned Christ? Have we heard him? Have we been taught by him, “as the truth is in Jesus”? The question is put to us directly, not as external rebuke but as the strong reminder of our new creation in Christ, having put off “the old manhood” – the term is inclusive, our old sinful humanity (τον παλαιον ανθρωπον) – and putting on “the new manhood” (τον καιον ανθρωπον), our humanity as made new in Christ. How? By being “renewed in the spirit of your mind.” This is altogether about our sanctification, literally, “the holiness of truth,” the complete counter to our current intellectual and spiritual despair of truth in a world of lies and deceit.

This has to do with the quality of our lives together in the body of Christ. We are bidden to put away lying and speak truth to each other because “we are members one of another.” We are not isolated, autonomous beings; we have our life and being with one another in the body of Christ. Paul’s words unpack the whole meaning of our life in Christ in thoughtful but shocking ways. “Be ye angry,” he says! What! Isn’t our world angry enough and way too angry? Yes. But there is a place for righteous anger about things which should disturb us because they diminish and destroy what belongs to the truth of our humanity. Such is the righteous wrath of Christ in the cleansing of the temple, to take but one example. “Be ye angry but sin not.” Don’t let your wrath possess you. “Let not the sun go down on your wrath: neither give place to the devil.”

There is nothing here that is mere ‘feel goody-goodism’ or obsessive self-righteousness. It is really about a kind of critical self-appraisal but without wallowing in self-pity. He goes on to consider the forms of our relationship with one another; not stealing but labouring, “working with [our] hands the thing which is good” but doing so for the good of others as well, “that [we] may have to give to him that needeth.” Once again, the emphasis is on the ethical, upon our being together as “members one of another.” So too with our speech which is not about evil talk but about what edifies and builds up and “ministers grace to the hearers.” All of these exhortations belong to the Holy Spirit moving in us without which we risk grieving the Holy Spirit, in effect denying the Spirit of Truth in self-contradiction, and negating our being in God. The Epistle sums up in a magisterial fashion what we are to put away from ourselves and what we are to do: “Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 16 – 22 October

Tuesday, October 17th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2003); and Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree, David George Haskell (2021).

Sunday, October 22nd, Trinity 20
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 18th
4:00-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Also please take note of the annual Missions to Seafarer’s Campaign for 2023. More information is posted below.

MISSION TO SEAFARERS SHOEBOX CAMPAIGN

The Parish of Christ Church is collecting items for The Mission to Seafarers (Halifax) for their annual Christmas Shoebox Campaign.

The Shoeboxes are filled with the necessities and holiday comforts that will bring the spirit of the season to each seafarer. The Mission to Seafarers visits every vessel which visits the Port of Halifax in December and delivers a shoebox gift to every seafarer.

Each shoebox includes:

HAT, SCARF, GLOVES OR MITTS, SOCKS, WRAPPED HARD CANDY (NO CHOCOLATE), SOAP, TOOTHPASTE, TOOTHBRUSH, SHAMPOO, SHAVING FOAM, RAZORS, DEODORANT AND LYPSYL, PLAYING CARDS, MEMENTO OF NOVA SCOTIA, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND OR CANADA.

Full size toiletry items are preferred to sample/travel sizes.

Please, no alcohol, or sharp objects.

For safety concerns, no drawstrings, tassels, or pom poms.

For those who like to knit, a scarf and hat pattern are available at the back of the church.

If full shoeboxes are donated, please do not seal the shoeboxes. Any and all items to fill shoeboxes are also gladly accepted in all quantities.

We are also in need of shoeboxes (no boot boxes) and gift wrap.

Drop Box is available at the church for donations.

Deadline for donations at Christ Church Windsor is the last Sunday in November (Nov. 26, 2023).

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Prayers and liturgy

The Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:17-32
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:1-8

Stanley Spencer, The Paralytic Being Let into the Top of the House on his BedArtwork: Stanley Spencer, The Paralytic Being Let into the Top of the House on his Bed, c. 1920. Oil on panel, Private collection.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 13 October

Beguiled

Thanksgiving, we suggested, is a kind of thoughtfulness about God and the goodness of creation and thus a reminder to us about our place within that God-created order. But where then does evil arise? Unde malum? From whence evil? The Chapel readings from Genesis 3 this week speak directly to this question. It is the famous (or infamous) story of the Fall. Sadly, these reflections also follow upon the ugly spectacle of war in Israel that broke out this weekend, and in the extreme form of the rejection of the two-state solution by the militant organization ‘Hamas’ for whom the existence of the Jewish state is anathema, and even worse, the existence of all Jews. These are all part of the confusions and divisions within our global world. They have to do, in one way or another, with the idea of evil.

What kind of evil? “From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine … Good Lord, deliver us.” The Litany was the first service to be translated (and modified) into English from Latin by Thomas Cranmer in 1544. It reminds us of another dimension of thanksgiving: our thanksgiving from the threats of the natural world, what later thinkers in the Enlightenment, like Voltaire and Leibniz, called “physical or material evil”. We have experienced some of these things this spring and summer. But added to that phrase is the prayer for deliverance “from battle and murder, and from sudden death.” Such things belong to the disorders and disarray of human hearts in the various forms of “moral evil”. And they are very destructive, cruel and deadly.

That we come to the question about evil after the pageant of creation and the creation of our humanity within that order is most significant. The concept of the Good is absolutely prior and thus counters from the outset the pathological dualism of seeing things in absolute contraries. The story, moreover, seeks to show how we come to self-consciousness through an awareness of ourselves as selves. It happens through our separation from the goodness of the created order and, especially, in relation to the commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At issue is how we come to the knowledge of good and evil. Will it be through separation by way of disobedience or in some other way? We choose the former with all of its fatal consequences. The Law and Mary’s fiat – her “be it unto me according to thy Word” (Grace) – suggest the other ways that belongs to human redemption.

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Prayers and liturgy

King Edward the Confessor

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor (c. 1003-1066), King of England (source):

Our Lady of the Assumption & St. Gregory Roman Catholic Church, St. EdwardO Sovereign God,
who didst set thy servant Edward upon the throne of an earthly kingdom
and didst inspire him with zeal for the kingdom of heaven:
grant that we may so confess the faith of Christ by word and deed,
that we may, with all thy saints, inherit thine eternal glory;
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 Lesson: Ecclesiasticus 31:8-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:35-40

Artwork: S.Eduardus, Mosaic, Our Lady of the Assumption & St. Gregory Roman Catholic Church, Warwick Street, London.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Philip of Caesarea, Apostolic Man

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Philip of Caesarea, Deacon, Apostolic Man (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Philip the Deacon, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the peoples of Samaria and Ethiopia. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom, that thy Church may make known the immeasurable riches of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 8:26-40
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:18-20

Pieter Lastman, The Baptism of the Eunuch, 1623Artwork: Pieter Lastman, The Baptism of the Eunuch, 1623. Oil on panel, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, Germany.

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Prayers and liturgy

Paulinus, Missionary and Archbishop

Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Saint PaulinusThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Paulinus (c. 584-644), Monk, first Archbishop of York, Missionary (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Paulinus, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the people of northern England. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land evangelists and heralds of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop or Archbishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

The St. Paulinus stained glass was made by the firm of C.E. Kempe of London and installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1913. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.

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