Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

RAISE up, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:4-7
The Gospel: St John 1:19-29

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Sermon of John the BaptistArtwork: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Sermon of John the Baptist, 1566. Oil on oak, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Saint Thomas the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everliving God, who for the more confirmation of the faith didst suffer thy holy Apostle Thomas to be doubtful in thy Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly, and without all doubt, to believe in thy Son Jesus Christ, that our faith in thy sight may never be reproved. Hear us, O Lord, through the same Jesus Christ, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, now and for evermore. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 2:19-22
The Gospel: St. John 20:24-29

Vicente López y Portaña, The Incredulity of Saint ThomasSt. Thomas’s name is believed to come from an Aramaic word meaning twin, but it is not known whose twin he was. He is included in all the lists of the twelve apostles, but he is mentioned most often in St. John’s Gospel, where he is called “Didymus” (“twin” in Greek) three times (11:16; 20:24; 21:2).

St. Thomas appears to have been an impulsive man. He says he is prepared to go with Jesus to the tomb of Lazarus even if it means death (John 11:16). At the Last Supper, however, he confesses his ignorance about where Jesus is going and the way there (John 14:5). In response, Christ said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

After the resurrection, Thomas was unwilling to believe his fellow disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead (John 20:24). He would not believe, he declared, unless he actually touched the wounds. Eight days later, Jesus gave “Doubting Thomas” the evidence he had asked for, whereupon Thomas confessed him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus then pronounces a blessing on all who have not seen and yet believe.

(more…)

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Eve of Advent Ember Friday

“He shall teach us of his ways”

Peace in the world is the theme of the Advent Ember season. The Ember Days remind us of the Pentecostal ministry of the Church through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and of particular themes associated with the greater seasons within which they are placed. Peace in the world is much to be wanted. But how is it to be achieved?

The readings for the Advent Ember Days speak profoundly to the desiderata of peace in the world. The conjunction of a reading from the prophet Micah with part of Luke’s account of the Annunciation illuminates the deeper wonder of Advent. Peace is in God and in us through God’s being with us, teaching us his ways; most profoundly in the coming of Christ through Mary, “most highly favoured lady.”

Micah’s prophecy or insight is proverbial with “swords being beaten into plowshares” and “spears into pruning-hooks.” The imagery evokes the transition from war to peace and peace envisioned at once in agricultural ways and in contemplative ways. “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree,” Micah says, “and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.” Peace is meaningless unless it is without fear. Peace is ultimately at God’s word.

Mary wonders at the initial salutation of the angel Gabriel. She was, we are told, “troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind” what it signifies. Gabriel responds, “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name Jesus.” The angel goes on to speak of this child as “great” and as “the Son of the Highest” and “of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Among the names of Christ in the Christmas mystery as signalled by Isaiah is “Prince of Peace” and “mighty God” and “of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end.” Order and peace go together but they belong to God and so to God with us. “The Lord is with thee.”

Peace is a universal desire but as Micah shows it really belongs to teaching and to learning, to our learning the ways of God and walking in his paths. The Advent and Christmas message is that we are taught by God about God’s ways with us. Here that is signalled to us by prophecy and by the angel Gabriel. They are the messengers to us of what God seeks for us.

It belongs to the witness of the Church to recall us to these motions of divine love wherein we find our true peace. It is about nothing less than God in us and us in God. In Homer’s Iliad, there is a wonderful description of the proverbial Shield of Achilles. It depicts two cities, the city at war and the city at peace. Micah’s insight is about the transformation of the weapons of war into instruments of peace. That transformation is God’s will at work in us and most especially in the Annunciation to Mary through whom God becomes man and one with us, showing us by the nature of his being with us peace and salvation. It is not without price. Through his stripes we shall be healed, our peace purchased by his blood. Such is the greater transformation of human sin and wickedness into the peace of God in Christ, now and always.

“The peace of God,” as our liturgy constantly reminds us, is the peace “which passeth all understanding.” That is to say that it is not a matter of mere human contrivance, not a matter of our making, but of God’s making in us, in our hearts and in the banishing of all our fears. Such is the peace which Christ brings if we will be taught and learn of him.

“He shall teach us of his ways”

Fr. David Curry
Eve of Advent Friday Ember Day
December 19th, 2019

Print this entry

Sermons

Advent Meditation: Advent Psalms and Antiphons

Advent Psalms and Antiphons, 2019

Part One:

Advent is the season of anticipation, of an awakening to God as Word and Light coming to us in the darkness of the year and in the darkness of our souls. In a way it is a wonderful pageant or parade of Word and Song which is intended to awaken us and to enfold us in the power and wonder of the Divine Word coming to us and ultimately dwelling with us in the intimacy of Christ’s incarnation, literally “the Word made flesh”. The word ‘advent’ means the ‘coming towards’ us, ad venio, of God and thus to his being with us. “O come, O come, Emmanuel”.

The Psalms are a critical feature of our liturgy and hymnody. And there are as well the various Antiphons, scriptural sentences, that are used with purpose to highlight certain seasonal themes, most poignantly, it seems to me in what are known as the Great ‘O’ Antiphons of Advent used with the Magnificat at Evening Prayer from December 16th to the 23rd, originally omitting St. Thomas’ Day on the 21st and adding later “O Virgo Virginum”. The Advent Antiphons anticipate with increasing intensity and expectation the meaning of Christ’s coming as the Babe of Bethlehem and the Crucified Lord of Calvary, as God and Man, as Lord and Saviour. They draw upon a rich range of imagery from the Hebrew Scriptures just as the Psalms, themselves a digest of the Hebrew Scriptures, are used to deepen our understanding of our life in Christ in the liturgy.

The Psalms of David are the Prayer Book and Hymnal of both Jews and Christians alike. Classified in the Jewish understanding as one of the Writings, as distinct from the Law and the Prophets, the Psalms embrace a wide range of poetic forms of expression. The Psalter serves as a way of praying the Scriptures. The Antiphons serve as an interpretive matrix for our reading and understanding of the Scriptures and the liturgical canticles, particularly, the Magnificat, as bracketed by the “O” Antiphons in Advent.

Among the many treatises of Augustine, one of the most instructive devotionally is his Enarrations or Expositions on the Book of Psalms. For the English reader, it was only translated in the 19th century as part of the project of recovering the Patristic heritage of the Church, an interest both in England and on the continent. E.B. Pusey, one of the outstanding figures of the Oxford Movement, provided in December of 1857 an advertisement for the translation into English of Augustine’s work on the Psalms. As he remarks,

St. Augustine was so impressed with the sense of the depth of Holy  Scripture, that when it seems to him, on the surface, plainest, then he is the more assured of its hidden depth. True to this belief, St. Augustin pressed out word by word of Holy Scripture, and that, always in dependence on the inward teaching of God the Holy Ghost who wrote it, until he had extracted some fullness of meaning from it. More also, perhaps, than any other work of St. Augustin, this commentary abounds in those condensed statements of doctrinal and practical truth which are so instructive, because at once so comprehensive and so accurate.

This doctrinal and practical sensibility about the Psalms means that they are read in the light of a certain theology of Revelation. They are not read as a mine of historical information and they are not read ‘critically’ as that term has come to be used by the schools of biblical and historical criticism, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are read with a certain insight into the nature of scriptural revelation philosophically considered. In Augustine’s case, they are read from a Christian perspective as bearing constant testimony to Jesus as the fulfilling of the Law and as divine Truth present with us.

(more…)

Print this entry

Events, Month at a Glance

Christmas at Church Church 2019

Tuesday, December 24th, Christmas Eve
7:00pm Children’s Crèche Service
9:30pm Christmas Eve Communion Service

Wednesday, December 25th, Christmas Day
10:00am Christmas Morning Communion Service

Thursday, December 26th, St. Stephen
10:00am Holy Communion

Friday, December 27th, St. John the Evangelist
10:00am Holy Communion

Saturday December 28th, Holy Innocents’ Day
10:00am Holy Communion

Sunday, December 29th, Sunday after Christmas
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Christmas Lessons & Carols

Wednesday, January 1st, 2020, Octave Day of Christmas/Feast of the Circumcision/New Year’s Day
10:00am Holy Communion

O God, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that as we joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come again to be our Judge; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Ignatius, Bishop & Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ignatius (d. c. 107), Bishop of Antioch, Martyr (source):

Feed us, O Lord, with the living bread
and make us drink deep of the cup of salvation
that, following the teaching of thy bishop Ignatius,
and rejoicing in the faith
with which he embraced the death of a martyr,
we may be nourished for that eternal life
which he ever desired;
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 8:35-39
The Gospel: St. John 12:23-26

St. Stephen Church, Nessebar, Bulgaria, St. Ignatius of AntiochIgnatius, who became Bishop of Antioch c. 69, is a key witness of the early church in the era immediately following the apostles.

Nothing certain is known of his episcopate before his journey from Antioch to Rome as a prisoner condemned to death in the arena. Arrested during the persecution of the emperor Trajan, he was received in Smyrna by Bishop (later Saint) Polycarp and delegates from several other churches in Asia Minor.

While at Smyrna, Ignatius wrote letters to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, and Rome. Later, at Troas, he wrote to the churches at Philadelphia and Smyrna, and to Polycarp.

In his letters, Ignatius clearly affirmed Christ’s divinity and his resurrection from the dead. He encouraged all Christians to maintain church unity in and through the Eucharist and the authority of the local bishop, and he wrote against a heresy that contained elements of Docetism, Judaism, and possibly Gnosticism.

(more…)

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent

Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?

John the Baptist and Mary the Blessed Virgin are essential figures in the spiritual landscape of Advent. They meet together, as it were, on the Third Sunday in Advent and illumine the nature of what it means to be “the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” They do so through the conjunction of repentance and rejoicing.

What is the ministry of John the Baptist? It is the ministry of “preaching a gospel of repentance for the  forgiveness of sins,” as Mark and Luke tell us and to which Matthew also alludes. What does that mean? It means a form of self-awareness, an awareness of our faults and failings which is predicated upon the desire for wholeness or righteousness in us; in short, for truth. It complements Mary’s fiat mihi which is about being defined by the Word of God’s truth coming to her and through her to us. Repentance leads to joy, to the note of rejoicing signaled on this Sunday which is also known as “Gaudete” Sunday from the Introit taken from Philippians (and which also is the Epistle for next Sunday) and symbolised with the rose candle on the  Advent wreath. “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.” And why? Because “the Lord is at hand.”

But why is John in prison? Matthew only tells us several chapters later. He dared to speak truth to power. There is a confusion of Herods in the New Testament, all part of the Herodian dynasty, all related to Herod the Great of the Christmas story. Herodias was first the wife of Philip, also a Herod, but divorced him to marry his more powerful brother, Herod Antipas, who in turn divorced his wife to marry her. Herodias’ name is itself a feminine form of Herod. She was a Jewish princess with great ambitions but marrying Herod Antipas, whom Matthew calls, somewhat confusingly, Herod the Tetrarch, caused an outrage since it was a violation of Jewish law for a man to marry his brother’s divorced wife. As Matthew tells us, it was John the Baptist who said to him “It is not lawful for you to have her,” and so he was put in prison.

This leads to the famous story of the beheading of John the Baptist through the connivance of Herodias and her daughter Salome. Salome dances so pleasingly before Herod Antipas that he promised to give her whatever she wanted. Herodias prompts her to say, “the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The story has captured the imagination of many artists such as Caravaggio, Titian, and Artemisia Gentileschi, to name but a few. The phrase “one’s head on a platter” has become an idiomatic and hyperbolic expression for a very harsh punishment. Indeed. Obviously there is nothing new about our contemporary questions about “constitutional legitimacy” (quoting Habermas) or about ethical corruption in what Maclean’s calls our disordered world.

(more…)

Print this entry

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 16 – 22 December

Tuesday, December 17th, Comm. of Ignatius of Antioch
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme: Advent Psalms and Antiphons

Thursday, December 19th, Eve of Ember Friday
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, December 20th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 22nd, Fourth Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Sunday, December 29th
10:30am Christmas Lessons & Carols

We will retreat to the Parish Hall for services in January, February, and March 2020.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the Third Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 11:2-10

Baciccio, Sermon of St. John the BaptistArtwork: Baciccio, Sermon of St. John the Baptist, c. 1690. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.

Print this entry

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 11 December

Light in darkness

The last lesson in the Advent/Christmas Service of Nine Lessons and Carols is the beginning of John’s Gospel (Jn. 1.1-14), known as the Prologue (though technically it ends at verse 18). This year, too, our Carol Services on Sunday, December 8th, came at the end of the last week of classes. With the Prologue, we end where we began back in September at the first Chapel Services.  “To make an end,” as T.S. Eliot observes, “is to make a beginning” for “the end is where we start from.” He means an end in the sense of a first principle as that upon which the being and the knowing of all things depends.

The lesson from John is the great Christmas Gospel that shapes a whole way of understanding about the nature of God’s engagement with our humanity. It speaks profoundly to the darkness of our world and day about the light which is greater than the darkness. “And the darkness comprehended it not” as the King James’ Version puts it, signalling precisely the intellectual aspect of light, as if to say that the darkness is not able to understand the light. The light understands the darkness but the darkness does not understand the light. The darkness in this sense is the absence of light, a negative.

The reading from John is also known as the last Gospel referring to a medieval practice whereby it is read, often silently, at the end of the Mass. Such practices underscore the significance of the Prologue of John’s Gospel for our understanding.

It opens us out to the idea of an intellectual principle as that upon which everything depends in spite of our uncertainties and fears, our anxieties and worries. John is speaking about Jesus Christ entirely in terms of Word, Light, and Son, yet Jesus is not even mentioned by name in John 1.1-14. Word and Light in relation to the idea of God are intellectual and spiritual commonplaces with respect to a number of religious and philosophical traditions. Augustine will note that he learned the “Word” which was “in the beginning,” which “was with God,” and which “was God” from the libri platonici, the books of the Platonists. Word that is light in the darkness of ignorance and evil is not a concept unique to the Christian religion.

How that Word lives in us belongs to the Christian insight of the Word made flesh, the principle of the Incarnation, one of the essential mysteries of the Christian faith. Yet that mystery speaks to the various ways in which cultures and peoples attempt to understand themselves in relation to a first principle, to the various ways in which that principle may be realized in human lives; in short, to the way in which it lives in us. There can’t be life or knowledge without the principle of life and light. “The life was the light of men,” John tells us. This testifies to an insistence on the primacy of ideas, to the significance of the Light which is greater than all and every form of darkness.

(more…)

Print this entry