KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 13 November

They desire a better country

The reading in Chapel on Tuesday from Hebrews 11 & 12 provided an opportunity for further reflection on the significance of Remembrance Day, something which perhaps we are only beginning to understand. It is really about contemplating the devastations and destructiveness of the technology of war in its global extent, on the one hand, and the idea of sacrificial love, on the other hand. These are ethical considerations about the overarching nature of the Good. Contemplating the miseries of our humanity in its destructive disarray actually belongs to our felicity, to blessedness, such as the Beatitudes show.

In a post-Christian, and even anti-Christian, culture and even more in the climate of anti-intellectualism, I am struck by the paradox of the hold that an older and principled ethical and philosophical discourse still has in our current world. “They desire a better country” is the motto of the Order of Canada, the highest honorific in our country. The phrase comes from the King James Version of Hebrews, itself translated into English in the 16th and  17th centuries from the Greek. The motto has been latinized (but not by reference to the Latin Vulgate translation): Desiderantes meliorem patriam.

That idea of a desire for a better country catapults our thinking into a reflection upon the Good and to the ways in which the ethical shapes our thoughts and actions. This is a fundamental feature of the great philosophical and religious traditions of the world. It is about the challenge of acting in accord with virtue as Aristotle says. The traditions of moral philosophy presuppose our openness to what is transcendent, to what comes into us through, for example, illumination, purgation, and perfection that belong to our lives as “strangers and pilgrims” seeking “a better country, that is an heavenly.” We are reminded of “a great cloud of witnesses” of those who have sought to will the good and were willing to sacrifice themselves for principles and ideals which they considered worth dying for because they belong to what dignifies life.

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Prayers and liturgy

Charles Simeon, Pastor

The collect for today, the commemoration of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Priest, Evangelical Divine (source):

O eternal God,
who didst raise up Charles Simeon
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and inspire thy people in service and mission:
grant that we, with all thy Church, may worship the Saviour,
turn away in true repentance from our sins
and walk in the way of holiness;
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: Romans 10:8b-17
The Gospel: St. John 21:15-19

Charles SimeonCharles Simeon served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1782 until his death. His zealous evangelical preaching was bitterly opposed by parish leaders, but proved immensely popular and influential among Cambridge undergraduates. He supported the British and Foreign Bible Society and helped to found the Church Missionary Society. His curate Henry Martyn became chaplain of the East India Company and one of India’s best-known missionaries.

Historian Lord Macaulay wrote of him, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”

A meditation on the life of Charles Simeon, by John Piper, is posted here.

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Prayers and liturgy

Remembrance Day Prayer

A prayer of The Very Rev. Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), Dean of York:

Lest We ForgetO Lord our God, whose name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: We give thee high praise and hearty thanks for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; beseeching thee to give them a part and a lot in those good things which thou has prepared for all those whose names are written in the Book of Life; and grant to us, that having them always in remembrance, we may imitate their faithfulness and with them inherit the new name which thou has promised to them that overcome; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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

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Prayers and liturgy

Martin of Tours

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Martin (c. 316-397), Monk, Bishop of Tours (source):

Almighty God,
who didst call Martin from the armies of this world
to be a faithful soldier of Christ:
give us grace to follow him
in his love and compassion for those in need,
and empower thy Church to claim for all people
their inheritance as the children of God;
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: Isaiah 58:6-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:34-40

Harry Clarke, St. Martin of ToursOne of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, Martin was born to pagan parents and, although intending to become a Christian, followed his father into the Roman army.

About three years later, on a cold winter day, he met a beggar at the city gates of Amiens, France. Drawing his sword, he cut his military cloak in two and gave half to the man. In a dream that night, he saw Christ wearing the half-cloak he had given away and saying, “Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with his garment”. Martin was baptised shortly thereafter.

After being discharged from the army, he met St. Hilary at Poitiers upon the latter’s return from exile in 360. Hilary provided a piece of land where Martin founded the first monastic community in Gaul. He lived there for ten years until 371, when he reluctantly accepted a call from the people of Tours to become their bishop.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity

And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him

Do we? The word of Jesus is the word of life. Apart from that word we are simply dead.

“I had not thought that death had undone so many,” T. S. Eliot says in The Wasteland, channeling Dante the Pilgrim’s observation about the throngs of souls in the Vestibule of Hell in Dante the Poet’s Inferno. They are souls who are neither worthy of Heaven nor Hell, a Dantean invention of great insight. They are those “who against God rebelled not, nor to Him were faithful, but to self alone were true.” Hell is, in Dante’s vision, the place for the miserable race of “those who have lost the good of intellect.” Not to will at all is part of the loss of intellect. It means an aimless life following this and that fad of the moment, what Dorothy L. Sayers calls “the weather-cock mind, the vague tolerance which will neither approve nor condemn, the cautious cowardice for which no decision is ever final.” Even more, as she suggests, they chase aimlessly after the whirling banners “stung and goaded by the thought that, in doing anything definite whatsoever, they are missing doing something else.” It is a contemptible and pitiful picture of an aspect of our humanity in its disorder and disarray, and yet one which in its inability to commit, to will at all, is part of our world and day.

Power, wisdom and love are attributes of the Trinity that speak to the image of God in us. “If there is God, if there is freewill,” Charles Williams notes, “then man is able to choose the opposite of God. Power, Wisdom, Love, gave man freewill; therefore Power, Wisdom, Love, created the gate of hell and the possibility of hell.” And so there is in Dante’s powerful vision a gathering together of those who have chosen the opposite of God and who are ferried by Charon across the river of death to the City of Dis, to Hell. The image is autumnal. “And as, by one and one, leaves drift away/ In autumn, till the bough from which they fall/ Sees the earth strewn with all its brave array,/So from the bank there, one by one, drop all/ Adam’s ill seed.” Yet, the souls in the Vestibule are not even worthy of being gathered into Hell.

Such grey and dark thoughts are hardly pleasing, and yet the whole purpose of Dante’s Divine Comedy is to lead us from misery to felicity. That requires sombre and serious reflection upon the forms of misery that belong to the images of sin in the self and in the human community. And that is part of the challenge of Remembrance Day. Eliot was commenting by way of Dante about ‘the wasteland of modernity’ occasioned by the devastations of the First World War and beyond that make the twentieth century the most destructive period in human history. It is a tale of madness belonging to the global export of technocratic power without parallel. We are only beginning to understand the importance of Remembrance Day. It is not about cheering for King and Empire, for Queen and Commonwealth, but rather about contemplating the complexity and complicity of human evil in the times of “collective madness.” The phrase is from Robertson Davies.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 11 – 17 November

Monday, November 11th, Remembrance Day Observances
11:00am Windsor Cenotaph followed by Ceremony at KES Cenotaph

Tuesday, November 12th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, November 14th
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms

Saturday, November 16th
10:30-12:00pm Four Seasons orchestra in Church
4:30-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 17th, Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 23rd
7:00-9:00pm Newfoundland & Country Evening of Musical Entertainment

Sunday, December 8th
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols, with KES

I regret to inform you that Capella Regalis will not be able to come to Windsor this year.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-First Sunday After Trinity

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

GRANT, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 6:10-20
The Gospel: St. John 4:46-54

Tissot, Healing of the Officer's SonArtwork: James Tissot, The Healing of the Officer’s Son, 1894. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, Brooklyn Museum.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 6 November

He taught them saying, blessed are you

The Beatitudes complement and complete the ethical and educational project of The Book of Exodus. At issue is our awareness of an ethical principle, the idea of the Good which shapes and informs all our thinking and doing. The Beatitudes mark the beginning of Christ’s famous Sermon on the Mount. They present us with a challenging set of ethical principles that are profoundly counter-culture and yet belong to a long and rich tradition of ethical and philosophical thinking. To read them in the lead up to the Remembrance Day observances along with Christ’s words about sacrificial love, “greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends,” words which adorn a thousand cenotaphs throughout the world, is particularly poignant.

The Beatitudes are the great Christian ethic of grace and belong to the challenge about what truly defines us, a question which belongs to the traditions of ethical and philosophical thinking. Socrates argues that it is far better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. He lived and died what he taught, accepting the suffering imposed upon him by Athens, his death for teaching (accused of corrupting the youth). Confucius in the Analects calls attention to the inner qualities of ren, of virtue and goodness. Sri Krishna advises Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita to follow his dharma as a warrior but without attachment to results or outcomes. Buddhism will extend the theme of detachment from desires to the extent of the complete extinguishment of the self. There is no you. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all teach the theme of renunciation and sacrifice, the idea of being defined by something greater than yourself that shapes thought and action.

“Blessedness includes every concept of goodness,” the great mystic Cappadocian theologian of the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa, observes, “from which nothing answering to good desire is missing.” He goes on to note that “to tell the truth, blessedness is the divine itself.” The Beatitudes are about nothing less than our participation in the illuminating, purifying, and perfecting grace of God which dignifies and defines our humanity. Nothing could be more counter-culture and nothing could better help our remembering about the sombre realities of the devastating and destructive wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They speak to what God seeks for us even in spite of ourselves.

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Prayers and liturgy

Willibrord, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Willibrord (658-739), Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle to the Frisians, Patron Saint of the Netherlands (source):

Cornelis Bloemaert, Holy WillibrordO Lord our God, who dost call whom thou willest and send them whither thou choosest: We thank thee for sending thy servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve thee, the living God; and we entreat thee to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of thy service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-9
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-9

Artwork: Cornelis Bloemaert, The Holy Willibrord, c. 1630, Copper Engraving.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints (tsf.) / Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

These are they which came out of great tribulation

The softness of a maritime October gives way to the grey barrenness of November. Leaves lie scattered on the wind in heaps of burnished gold and glowing amber; their autumnal beauty fading into the darkness of nature’s death. It is “that time of year,” as Shakespeare so wonderfully puts, “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” (Sonnet # 73). Such is the twilight of nature’s year. Yet in the season of scattered leaves and in the culture of scattered souls there is a gathering, a gathering into fullness and glory. Such is the meaning of All Saints.

The lesson from Revelation signals the conclusion of the long journey of our souls as well as the nature of that journey of the mind to God, the itinerarium of the soul. It is a vision of the end of a kind of exodus, a going forth and return to the homeland of the spirit. It is the vision of the heavenly city, the gathering into truth of what otherwise remains scattered and broken, barren and empty. All Saints reminds us of who we are in the truth of God and of what we are called to be. The vision is redemptive of all that is scattered and broken, distracted and destructive in our confused and fearful world. It speaks to the confusions of souls everywhere. The vision is universal; “a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.” Beyond counting.

The gathering is into a communion of spirit united in prayer and praise, a community of angels and men; a community that extends beyond the present and embraces the past. The vision centers on the worship of God. But is this simply a flight from the world? A kind of escape from reality? No. The whole point is that the vision is the reality, the reality of the spirit without which our lives are empty and nothing.

The vision signals the redemption of images in the gathering of all things to the truth of their being. Ours is a culture obsessed with images and profoundly forgetful that images are not reality; they are only images of the real. Their truth is found not simply in themselves but in what they are and mean in truth. In Plato’s famous image of the Cave, we mistake the flickering images before us for truth. Only by being turned around do we embark upon the long process of education that leads us from the images to the things of which they are the images, and then to mathematical entities abstracted from them, and then to the forms or ideas of things visible and invisible, and ultimately to the realization of the Good as the principle upon which the whole structure of thought and being depends. Such is the  journey of the soul to God.

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