Tuesday, April 9th
6:00pm Prayers & Praises – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Thursday, April 11th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall
Friday, April 12th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall
Sunday, April 14th, Palm Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church
The collect for today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, commonly called Passion Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
WE beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28
Artwork: Hans Memling, The Virgin Showing the Man of Sorrows, 1475 or 1479. Oil on oak panel, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Fr. David Curry has collected his four Lenten Programme addresses into a single pdf document. Click here to download “Thinking Sacramentally”.
The collect for today, the Feast Day of St. Ambrose (339-397), Doctor of the Church, Poet, Bishop of Milan (source):
Lord God of hosts,
who didst call Ambrose from the governor’s throne
to be a bishop in thy Church
and a courageous champion of thy faithful people:
mercifully grant that, as he fearlessly rebuked rulers,
so we may with like courage
contend for the faith which we have received;
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 2:7-11, 16-18
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:35-37, 42-44
Artwork: Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Ambrose of Milan, c. 1626-27. Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts of Seville.
Discipline. It is a loaded word, one which is freighted with a lot of baggage, and largely viewed negatively. I am sure it makes Mr. Faucher cringe to be thought about as the disciplinarian! But that is to overlook the positive and stronger feature of discipline as something essential to education and maturity. Discipline is really about learning.
In the spiritual traditions of the world’s religions and philosophies, there are those special times which are about a recovery and a renewal of the mind and soul in the ethical principles that belong to ourselves as embodied beings capable of grasping meaning and truth. Such things are about spiritual discipline.
Lent is a time for“self-reflection and repentance”, for “prayer, fasting and self-denial”, for “reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 615). To that end, we have embarked upon a series of reading from The Book of Judges, in part, because it provides a self-critique of human reason and presumption, a necessary check upon ourselves, somewhat akin to Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex. It offers a critical view of our humanity in its adolescence, we might say. One of its recurring themes is “the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” The other recurring theme which also ends the work is the phrase “in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did as was their wont.” There is the question about how the truth and order of the will of God in the Law are to be mediated to the people of Israel. In a way, The Book of Judges is a reminder, yet again, of the destructive folly of our humanity when left to our own devices. It reveals the necessity of the Law as the overarching set of ethical principles that shape individual and communal behaviour. Judges shows us what happens when we fail to attend to those principles. As such it recalls us to their necessity. It is a profound check on all and every form of humanism which thinks itself to be self-complete.
It is, to be sure, a pretty violent book with a number of pretty disturbing stories including the ugliest and most disturbing story in the whole of the Scriptures, the story of the Levite’s concubine (which we are not reading this year!). The Judges are motley collection of charismatic individuals raised up by God to try to return Israel to God. It is not about their personal qualities; they are all flawed and importantly so. Yet this awareness of the limitations of our humanity in itself is the important lesson. That awareness can only open us to the need for God’s will and grace in our lives.
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Richard (1197-1253), Bishop of Chichester (source):
Most merciful redeemer,
who gavest to thy bishop Richard
a love of learning, a zeal for souls
and a devotion to the poor:
grant that, encouraged by his example,
we may know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly,
day by day;
who livest and reignest with the Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
ever one God, world without end.
The Epistle: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25: 31-40
The collect for today, the commemoration of Reginald Heber (1783-1826), Bishop of Calcutta, Missionary, Hymn writer (source):
Almighty God,
you granted to Reginald Heber
a manifold life of service,
to shepherd a rural parish in England
and to preach in the cities of India.
Give to your people such faithfulness,
that in every place and circumstance
they may sing of your power
and minister your gifts
for the glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 3:1-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-9
Jesus identifies himself as the bread of life in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. It is one of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus in John’s Gospel which point to his essential divinity at the same time as providing a host of metaphors that concern our humanity in terms of our dwelling and abiding in him. Such is the whole matter of thinking sacramentally. “I am the door”, “I am the way, the truth and the life”, “I am the resurrection and the life”, “I am the good shepherd”, “I am the light of the world”, “I am the vine” and “I am the bread of life”. They are all really sacramental in scope and application. They speak to the forms of our incorporation in Christ. But the most ostensibly and obviously sacramental is when Jesus says he is “the bread of life”.
The Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Lent is John’s account of Jesus’ feeding the multitude in the wilderness. It comes from the sixth chapter where Jesus says he is the “bread of life” and belongs to its sacramental intensity. It belongs, in other words, to what Christ is teaching us about himself and his relation to us. First, he is saying something profound about himself in relation to God who reveals himself as “I am who I am” in and through the burning bush, itself a sacramental image about the invisible made known through the visible, and without the destruction of the natural. The bush burns but is not destroyed. Secondly, he is saying something profound about us in our relation to him. In other words, his relation to the Father in the Communion of the Trinity is the ground of his relation to us through these metaphors of incorporation; in short, metaphors about our life in Christ.
Articles XXV through XXXI of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion deal with the matter of the sacraments in a reformed understanding and in the context of the intense debates about the sacraments at the time of the reformation. Article XXVIII deals explicitly with the Lord’s Supper. It is crucial to keep in mind Article XXV which treats of the sacraments in general and makes the important point that they are “effectual signs of grace”; in other words, they effect what they signify. What is critical for the Anglican reformers is preserving the essential nature of the sacraments as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. What that means is the necessity of preserving the sign in relation to the thing signified and that requires maintaining the integrity of the natural in relation to the supernatural. This is the key point which shapes the Anglican Reformed understanding of the sacraments. Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.
The collect for today, the commemoration of Henry Budd (1814-75), first North American Indian to be ordained to the ministry in the Church of England, Missionary to the Cree nation (source):
Creator of light, we offer thanks for thy priest Henry Budd, who carried the great treasure of Scripture to his people the Cree nation, earning their trust and love. Grant that his example may call us to reverence, orderliness and love, that we may give thee glory in word and action; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18
The Gospel: St. John 14:15-21
Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.
To thee, Redeemer, on thy throne of glory:
lift we our weeping eyes in holy pleadings:
listen, O Jesu, to our supplications.
Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.
O thou chief cornerstone, right hand of the Father: way of salvation, gate of life celestial:
cleanse thou our sinful souls from all defilement.
Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.
God, we implore thee, in thy glory seated:
bow down and hearken to thy weeping children: pity and pardon all our grievous trespasses.
Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.
Sins oft committed, now we lay before thee:
with true contrition, now no more we veil them:
grant us, Redeemer, loving absolution.
Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.
Innocent captive, taken unresisting:
falsely accused, and for us sinners sentenced,
save us, we pray thee, Jesu, our Redeemer.
Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Psalm 51.17
Lord, for thy tender mercies’ sake, lay not our sins to our charge; But forgive that is past, and give us grace to amend our sinful lives; To decline from sin, and incline to virtue; That we may walk with a perfect heart before thee, now and evermore. (BCP, Penitential Service, p. 614)
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 138)
