KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 16 September

“And behold, it was very good”

“God is the beginning and end of all things, and especially of rational creatures,” Thomas Aquinas says at the beginning of his Summa Theologiae. It calmly and clearly states a philosophical understanding of the concept of God that belongs in one way or another to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Implied in the statement is the understanding that God is clearly not one of those things which God creates. What kind of thing is God? He is nothing, no kind of thing at all but is distinct from all things as their source and end; in short as Creator, the principle of the being and knowing of all reality.

Junior Chapel on Monday considered the first Chapter of Genesis, touching upon the first day and then leap-frogging ahead to the fourth and fifth days. The simple but profound point is that creation is an orderly affair that involves distinguishing one thing from another: light from darkness, heaven and earth, earth and sea, creatures of the air and creatures of the land and the sea. “God saw that it was good” is the recurring refrain throughout the entire chapter. It is a powerful statement that speaks to our contemporary anxieties and fears about the natural world as if it were something evil or threatening. At issue for us is about learning how to honour and respect nature or creation. This stands in contrast to both ancient and modern fears that chaos might just be stronger and greater than order. Creation is something intellectual. As the 12th century Islamic theologian, Al Ghazali, notes, eight of the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, Allah, are all about God as Creator. The Quran echoes Genesis and John:  “Originator (Badi’) of the heavens and earth. When He decrees a thing, He says only  ‘Be!’ and it is” (Qur’an 2:117).

The biblical account is not primarily descriptive; it is a poetic explanation, a way of thinking about the world and, ultimately, about our place in it. We are in this story. Thus the Thursday and Friday Chapels looked at the work of the sixth day and about the seventh day. Where do we as human beings fit into this orderly picture of a world spoken and called into being by an intellectual principle, God as Word? We are the work of the sixth day. Whatever we mean by day, and there are many different ways of marking time in various cultures such as the four day ‘market week’ in the Nigerian Igbo culture, it functions as an ordering principle and pattern in a rhythmic, liturgical and mnemonic way. Here it belongs to the unfolding or process of a world that exists for thought in its order and pattern; an order in which we ultimately find our humanity. We are the work of the sixth day.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ninian, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ninian (c. 360 – c. 432), Bishop of Galloway, Apostle to the Picts (source):

Almighty and everlasting God,
who didst call thy servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
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 thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 49:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20

Saint Margaret’s Chapel, Saint Ninian windowNinian was the first apostle of Christianity in Scotland. Born in Cumbria to Christian parents, he went to Rome for his education. After being ordained a priest and then a bishop, Ninian was commissioned by Pope Siricus to return to Britain to preach the Christian faith.

Tradition holds that Ninian’s mission to Scotland began in 397, when he landed at Whithorn on Solway Firth. The stone church he built there was known as Candida Casa (“White House”). Recent archaeological excavations in that area have found white masonry from what could be an ancient church.

Saint Ninian’s ministry was centred in the Whithorn and Galloway areas of Scotland, but he is also remembered for bringing the gospel to the “southern Picts”—people living in the areas now known as Perth, Fife, Stirling, Dundee, and Forfar.

As early as the 7th century, Christians were making pilgrimages to St. Ninian’s shrine. By the 12th century, a large cathedral had been built at Whithorn, but it fell into ruins after the Reformation. Yet today, pilgrims still travel there to visit St Ninian’s Cave, where the saint would go when he needed to pray in solitude.

During his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Scotland on Saint Ninian’s Day.

Saint Ninian’s Cathedral, Antigonish, Nova Scotia (“New Scotland”), is the Episcopal Seat for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish.

Artwork: Saint Ninian, stained glass, Saint Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh Castle. Photograph taken by admin, 24 July 2004.

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Prayers and liturgy

Holy Cross Day

The collect for today, Holy Cross Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O BLESSED Saviour, who by thy cross and passion hast given life unto the world: Grant that we thy servants may be given grace to take up the cross and follow thee through life and death; whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit we worship and glorify, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

With the Epistle and Gospel of Passion Sunday:
The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28

Caspar David Friedrich, Cross in the MountainsArtwork: Caspar David Friedrich, Cross in the Mountains (also known as the Tetschen Altar), 1808. Oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Cyprian (c. 200-258), Bishop of Carthage, Martyr (source):

O holy God,
who didst bring Cyprian to faith in Christ
and didst make him a bishop in the Church,
crowning his witness with a martyr’s death:
grant that, following his example,
we may love the Church and her doctrine,
find thy forgiveness within her fellowship,
and so come to share the heavenly banquet
which thou hast prepared for us;
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: 1 St. Peter 5:1-4,10-11
The Gospel: St. John 10:11-16

Paolo Veronese, St. Anthony Abbot with St. Cornelius and St. CyprianArtwork: Paolo Veronese, St. Anthony the Abbot with St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian, 1565-71. Oil on canvas, Brera, Milan.

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Prayers and liturgy

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

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

“Be not anxious”

“Take no thought,” the King James Version following Tyndale puts it. Other translations have the disconcerting phrase “be not careful.” “Be not anxious” is a more modern rendering and reflects the contemporary therapeutic culture in its various nostrums. But are we really to be without thought and without care? Is anxiety simply about our emotional and psychological state of being? No. I think the readings for today speak very directly to the question about how we think about nature and thus ourselves. They counter some of our modern obsessions and preoccupations; in short, our worries are the things in which we over-invest ourselves, thinking about things in the wrong way. Hence Jesus bids us three times to be not anxious as part of another way of thinking about ourselves and the world. It is about seeing the world in God and God in the world.

There are no end of worries and concerns, fears and anxieties that beset our troubled world: concerns about the environment and climate, about the economy and jobs, about adequate housing and food security, let alone the myriad of disturbing preoccupations with respect to identity politics that more and more are about a sense of alienation from the body and nature. For all of these worries and anxieties belong to a common problem: the sense of our disconnect from creation and nature and thus from one another and ourselves, even our bodies. The last two hundred and fifty years or so bear witness to what some have called “the great acceleration” referring to the forms of our technocratic mastery over nature and over ourselves that has altered the very world in which we find ourselves in destructive ways, a world which we sense is increasingly unlivable and threatening. This is to state the obvious.

Yet what is required has very much to do with our thinking, about how we think about nature or creationChanges. If we assume, as many have, that nature is just dead stuff there for us to manipulate and use however we wish, we can only discover that this is ruinous and destructive of the natural world and ourselves.  There are, it seems to me, three conflicting modern approaches to the natural world which in their separation from one another contribute to our contemporary dis-ease. One approach is this idea of our complete mastery or dominance of nature that ultimately fails to respect the natural order. It arises out of a sense of our separation from nature that leads to an instrumental manipulation of nature, the consequences of which are now more fully before us. It is, however, an overstatement about ourselves as distinct and separate from the natural world in its externality.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 13 – 19 September

Tuesday, September 14th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, September 19th, Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, September 21st
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Ross King’s The Bookseller of Florence (2021) & Burning The Books (2020) by Richard Ovenden.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity

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

KEEP, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy; and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 6:11-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 6:24-34

Joseph Wright of Derby, The Old Man and DeathArtwork: Joseph Wright of Derby, The Old Man and Death, 1774. Oil on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.

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Prayers and liturgy

Edmund J. Peck, Missionary

The collect for today, the commemoration of Edmund J. Peck (1850-1924), Priest, Missionary to the Inuit, Translator (source):

Edmund J. PeckGod of our salvation, whose servant Edmund James Peck made the testimony of the Spirit his own and gladly proclaimed the riches of Christ among the Inuit people, give the joy of your gospel to us also, that we may exalt you in the congregation of all peoples and praise you in the abundance of your mercies; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 5:6-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 9 September

Beginnings

“In the beginning.” These words begin both of the readings read in the first Chapel services of the year: one from Genesis 1.1-5, and the other from John 1. 1-5. “In the beginning God” … “In the beginning was the Word.” They are profoundly formative and foundational texts that belong to a long and complex history of human culture. The start of the School year is certainly a beginning for half the student body of the School who are new this year, But for everybody, there is a sense of excitement and, no doubt, a mixture of uncertainty about the beginning of the year. It is all about stepping into the order and pattern of the life of the School.

Chapel is an integral part of the School’s life. It relates to all four pillars of the educational project at King’s-Edgehill and in a sense holds them together: academics, athletics, aesthetics (Arts) and leadership. All four are front and center in each Chapel service. We sit to listen and think about what is being read and said just like in class, hence academics. We stand to sing and praise – ‘Yay God,’ and all that jazz, as it were! We kneel to pray. Thus standing, sitting, kneeling (or squatting) are our morning calisthenics, thus athletics! The Arts pillar is there in terms of the music and the spatial qualities of the Chapel in its architecture and stained glass windows which, of course, tell a story. Our Head Boy, Will Ahern, is also our organist on Mondays and Tuesdays while Mr. Steven Roe plays on Thursdays and Fridays. We may not have a mass choir but at present we have a masked choir – all the students in Chapel! Singing involves paying attention to written words and music and so contributes to the acquisition of two skills and certainly this is important for students who are learning English as a second language. Leadership is present by way of the Chapel Prefects under the direction of the Head Chapel Prefect, Stanislav Matkovskyi. Students exercise leadership in reading the Scripture lessons, in leading the Prayers, and in serving. All of these pillars go together and reinforce each other.

The Chapel service is intentionally and explicitly Christian and reflects the School’s history and Anglican origins. But faith or religion like education cannot be forced. Students and faculty come from a great variety of religions and non religions, cultures and linguistic communities. The point of Chapel is educational. It is about exploring the great questions that belong to human culture and which never really go away. Through the readings from the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures we engage the philosophical questions that relate to other religions and philosophies as well such as Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the different forms of atheism. The point is to do this through the idea of the dignity of difference; in other words, respecting the different outlooks and thinking that belong to our humanity in all of its remarkable variety.

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