Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After The Epiphany

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

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of thy people, and grant us thy peace all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:6-16
The Gospel: St. John 2:1-11

Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Marriage at CanaArtwork: Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Marriage at Cana, 1530. Oil on panel, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 15 January

Unum necessarium

“One thing is needful,” Jesus says to Martha, “and Mary has chosen the better part.” What is that “better part”,  “the one thing needful”? Perhaps it is another Mary, the Mary of the Christmas story, who shows us best what is most needed. She is, in the Christian understanding, the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mother of God, who embodies the highest dignity and truth of our humanity, “most highly favoured lady” as a carol puts it.

The Christmas story in all of its richness carries over into Epiphany. For Orthodox Christians following the Old Calendar, the Julian calendar, as Stanislav, a student from the Ukraine reminded me the other day, January 7th was Christmas. January 19th will be their Epiphany. The shepherds journey to Bethlehem to “see this thing that has come to pass,” literally, this saying that has happened; in short, “the word made flesh.” The shepherds “make known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child,” awakening wonder in all that heard it. “But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” The one thing needful is to ponder the wonder of God.

Sometimes one story throws light upon another. The Christmas scene, quite frankly, is all a confusion of images, a great cluster of things seen and heard. At best we can only dance around it, looking in upon what is there and thinking about its meaning. In the story of Martha and Mary, sisters in Bethany, Jesus is a guest. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, “listening to his word.” Martha, on the other hand, is “distracted by much serving” and gets annoyed at Mary and complains to Jesus. Jesus’ response is a profound but gentle rebuke and one which speaks to the confusions and the busyness of our world and day. “Martha, Martha; thou art anxious and troubled about a multitude of things; one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen the better part.”

We so easily lose ourselves in our busyness as if being busy was the most important thing, as if we could justify ourselves by busyness alone. The problem is not that there aren’t things that have to be done, mouths to be fed, children and others to be cared for, and so on. No. It is more about our preoccupation with our busyness at the expense of the one thing needful. It is a question about ends and priorities. After all, our busyness can often be a form of sloth. Usually we think of sloth as being lazy but it is also about avoiding doing what is needed to be done, using our busyness as an excuse to avoid papers and assignments, studying and reading, for example. Jesus reminds us that contemplation, a kind of serious and thoughtful attention to what is wanted to be known and learned is the one thing needful. The Martha syndrome checked by the Mary solution.

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Prayers and liturgy

Hilary, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Hilary (c. 315-368), Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church (source):

Everlasting God,
whose servant Hilary
steadfastly confessed thy Son Jesus Christ
to be both human and divine:
grant us his gentle courtesy
to bring to all the message of redemption
in the incarnate Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 2:18-25
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:8-12

Workshop of Jeanne and Richard de Montbaston, The Ordination of Saint Hilary of PoitiersHilary was born in Poitiers, Gaul, of wealthy pagan parents. After receiving a thorough education in Latin classics, he became an orator. He also married and had a daughter. At the age of about 35, he rejected his former paganism and became a Christian through a long process of study and thought. Robert Louis Wilken describes his path to conversion in The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (p. 86):

[Hilary] found himself turning to more spiritual pursuits. In his words he wished to pursue a life that was “worthy of the understanding that had been given us by God.” Like Justin [Martyr] he began to read the Bible, and one passage that touched his soul was Exodus 3:14, where God the creator, “testifying about himself,” said, “I am who I am.” For Hilary this brief utterance penetrated more deeply into the mystery of the divine nature than anything he had heard or read from the philosophers. Shortly thereafter he was baptized and received into the church.

Around 353 he was chosen bishop of Poitiers and became an outspoken champion of orthodoxy against the Arians. St. Augustine praised him as “the illustrious teacher of the churches”. St. Jerome wrote that Hilary was “a most eloquent man, and the trumpet of the Latins against the Arians”. Hilary became known as “Athanasius of the West”.

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Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany

They found him in the temple

“They found him in the temple,” Luke tells us. The only question for us and for our world is “will we?” Nothing highlights better the symbolic significance of Epiphany than the story of Christ as a boy of twelve being found in the Temple. Doing what? You might ask. Asking and answering questions, teaching and learning, we might say. Nothing counters more completely the anti-intellectualism of our contemporary age. If anything we are in flight from thought and its demands. Epiphany suggests otherwise.

The Magoi of Anatolia, “wise men from the East”, as Matthew tells us, show us something of the universal desire for truth. They reveal the eros to know as Plato and Aristotle suggest about the desire to know truth in accord with each of our capacities to know. At issue is whether those capacities are alive in us or not.

Luke’s account is the only story of the boyhood of Jesus in the canonical Gospels. There are various stories invented much later that seek to fill in the gaps between the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke and the stories of the ministry of Christ as an adult, stories which, in my view, diminish and distort both the humanity and the divinity of Christ presented in the Gospels. Only Luke gives us this rich and powerful story of Christ as a boy of twelve. It is, we might say, his bar mitzvah. It marks the transition from boyhood to manhood, to the responsibilities of adulthood and conveys to us the idea of maturing in faith.

But even more, it highlights the important Epiphany theme of teaching, of the idea of things being made known to us about the nature of God through the humanity of Jesus. Here Jesus is found in the company of the learned doctors of the Jewish Law, the Law or Torah of our humanity, we might say, at least in terms of its concentrated form in the Ten Commandments, something given and yet given for thought, known and grasped as belonging to universal reason. Christ is placed with the doctors of the Law in the temple of Jerusalem, a place dedicated to the honour, the glory, and the truth of God. There is a rich significance to these allusions. That Christ is found in the temple amidst the doctors of the Law is not accidental.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 13 – 19 January

Monday, January 13th
4:35-5:15pm Confirmation Class – KES
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, January 14th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, January 16th
3:30pm Service – Windsor Elms

Friday, January 17th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders/Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, January 19th, Second Sunday after the Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES

Upcoming Event:

Sunday, February 9th
Pot-Luck Luncheon & Annual Parish Meeting following the 10:30am service.

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday After The Epiphany

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

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:1-5
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:41-52

Giotto, Christ Among the DoctorsArtwork: Giotto di Bondone, Christ Among the Doctors in the Temple, 1304-06. Fresco, Capella Scrovegni, Padua, Italy.

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Prayers and liturgy

William Laud, Archbishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):

Southwark Cathedral, William LaudKeep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servant William Laud, 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, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: Hebrews 12:5-7,11-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:32-39

A Prayer for the Church by William Laud:

Gracious Father, I humbly beseech thee for Thy holy Catholic Church, fill it with all truth; in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in error, direct it; where it is superstitious, rectify it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it; where it is right strengthen and confirm it, where it is in want, furnish it; where it is divided and rent asunder, make up the breaches of it; O Thou Holy One of Israel. Amen.

Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. (Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004), p. 55.

Artwork: William Laud, stained glass, Southwark Cathedral, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 October 2014.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 8 January

There came wise men from the east

The Magoi of Anatolia, “wise men from the East,” are an outstanding feature of the Christmas story, perhaps its most iconic and familiar image across a range of cultures. They are the heralds of the Epiphany which marks the end of Christmas and inaugurates a new focus of interest. Epiphany means manifestation, ‘making known’. The ‘making known’ of what we may ask? The ‘making known’ of the essential divinity of Jesus Christ in the Christian understanding. That ‘making known’ has a universal aspect. With the coming of the Magoi to Bethlehem, Christmas goes global. It is omni populo, for all people, which is why one half of the Christian world, the Christian East in the churches of Greek, Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Armenian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Russian Orthodoxy (and others), celebrate Christmas on January 6th. Merry Christmas, then, to a number of our students!

No story perhaps illustrates the idea of the universal significance of the Christmas story more profoundly, more intriguingly, and more eloquently than Matthew’s account of the wise ones, the magoi, coming to Bethlehem and worshipping the child Christ with “sacred gifts of mystic meaning.” They are gifts that teach.

For centuries upon centuries, the Magi were a dominant feature of the Christmas story in art and song. It is not just that they have captured the imaginations of centuries of artists, which they certainly have, but that they concentrate for us something of the deeper wonder and truth of the Christmas story. It is for all. It is universal. The Magi are not from within Israel yet they belong entirely to the mystery of God revealed through the history and story of Israel.

The Magi are the original ‘come-from-aways’, we might say, as well as the original ‘Johnny-come-latelys’! They illumine so much for us about the mystery of God and his dealings with our humanity in the God made man, Jesus Christ. And the Magi speak powerfully to your life as students. For in every way at the heart of their story is the idea of worship, which is about what is worthy of your attention, and thus the concept of teaching and learning. The Magi belong very much to the nature of education. They provide the origin, too, of the Christian and cultural traditions of gift-giving.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Baptism of Our Lord

The collect for today, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Gherardo Starnina, The Baptism of ChristO HEAVENLY Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ did take our nature upon him, and was baptized for our sakes in the river Jordan: Mercifully grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may also be partakers of thy Holy Spirit; through him whom thou didst send to be our Saviour and Redeemer, even the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 42:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 1:1-11

Artwork: Gherardo Starnina, The Baptism of Christ (right panel, Altarpiece of Friar Bonifacio Ferrer), 1398-1409. Tempera on panel, Valencia Museum of Fine Arts, Valencia, Spain.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Epiphany of Our Lord

The collect for today, The Epiphany of Our Lord, or The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, who know thee now by faith, may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:1-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 2:1-12

Tintoretto, Adoration of the MagiArtwork: Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto, Adoration of the Magi, 1582. Oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice.

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