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

Vien, Jesus Healing Officer's SonArtwork: Joseph-Marie Vien, Jesus Healing the Son of an Officer, 1752. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, France.

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Sermons

Meditation for All Souls’ Day

“What are these who are arrayed in white robes?”

It is “that time of year,” in Shakespeare’s wonderful Sonnet # 73, “when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/ Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” And yet we find ourselves in a great company, the company of the saints, a company which embraces as well the solemnity of All Souls, the remembrance of our common mortality, the picture of death without which All Saints becomes simply an escape and a fantasy rather than a reality.

November is the barren month, to be sure, with the leaves all scattered on the wind and the fields all stripped of the harvest fruits, and where nature slowly settles into its winter’s sleep. In contrast to those natural themes we are recalled to our spiritual vocation and home. The vocation of our humanity is the call to holiness. “What are these?” the great lesson from All Saints’ Day asks about a multitude greater than any man can number. The same question is before us on All Souls’ Day. We try in our own poor way to remember those who have gone before us and whom we have known only to discover the frailties of our memories. Thus All Souls’ equally reminds us of the very thing which All Saints’ celebrates: the truth of our humanity as found in God which does not negate nor deny death.

“These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb.” It is all about how we are defined not by the circumstances and trials and tribulations in our lives but by grace, the grace of the lamb. That is the great point of both the lesson from Wisdom tonight and the great Gospel of The Beatitudes. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” It doesn’t mean that there won’t be loss and grief, suffering and death. Even more “blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” There is no hiding the grim and barren realities of our world and day which witnesses more and more to the radical instability of the self, to a kind of destructive nihilism, either of one self or others. All Saints and All Souls recall us to our spiritual identity in and through the realities of our everyday lives, including death. We are being given a way to think positively and in a healthy way about death and suffering, even about sin and evil.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 29 October

What are these?

Halloween. Sigh. Or is it ‘hooray’? How do we think about Halloween and the customs and activities that surround it in contemporary culture? Can we even think about it? The gentle reminder to students at Yale to be mindful about their costumes while acknowledging the inherently transgressive nature of mask and costumes at Halloween created a student uproar in which staff actually lost their jobs for not insisting on proscriptions about things which might be deemed offensive.

Halloween in the secular and popular culture is equally about something quite ancient. It is the idea of boundaries. The transgressive feature of Halloween is all about crossing over or fudging boundaries, not the least of which are things about death and evil, about gender and culture. The important point, perhaps, is to recognize that there are boundaries. In Chapel on Halloween, I looked out upon a rather strange collection of costumed students – a pirate, a pink unicorn from the Ukraine, pussycats from Deutschland and Asia, what I thought was a marshmallow from Beijing which turned out to be sushi (my bad!), two Franciscan monks, various princesses, a bottle of spicy mustard, a ninja warrior, various versions of zombies and different animals, several boys wearing school girl uniforms, two playing cards, and the Headmaster as a Sasquatch or so I thought, wrong again – it was really an Ewok! And so on and so on.

It seems to me worth thinking about these things. Masks, after all, both reveal and conceal and how are we to know? Taking a risk, I asked the Senior Chapel what would it mean for someone to dress up as Hitler, as Stalin, as Mao? Would that mean an endorsement of those figures and their programmes (and pogroms!) or would it be a satirical take on the monstrosity of their evil and depravity? They are certainly among the monsters of evil in the twentieth century. There is an inherent ambiguity that belongs to masks and costumes especially at Halloween.

But perhaps the best way if not the proper way to think about Halloween is to recall what it means spiritually and intellectually. I have in mind not just the ancient Celtic festivities of Samhain and other things, which reflect on the post-harvest death of the year and, by extension, death and the after-life, but its explicitly Christian meaning. Halloween is All Hallows’ Eve. The eve of All the Saints, the hallowed ones. The word is familiar from the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who are in Heaven, Hallowed by thy name.” Hallowed means the holy. In the lesson from Revelation read in Chapel, we are reminded of a multitude which no one can number of all peoples and nations. They are “those who have made their robes white in the blood of the lamb,” a reference to Christ in the Christian understanding. We are being reminded actually of the human vocation to holiness – to a sense of the perfection and truth of our humanity which is found in the spiritual community of All Saints. That calling is a calling to be better people, a calling which cannot be achieved simply on our own strength, hence the reference to the Lamb.

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Prayers and liturgy

Richard Hooker

The collect for today, the commemoration of Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher of the Faith (source):

O God of peace, the bond of all love,
who in thy Son Jesus Christ hast made for all people thine inseparable dwelling place:
give us grace that,
Richard Hookerafter the example of thy servant Richard Hooker,
we thy servants may ever rejoice
in the true inheritance of thine adopted children
and show forth thy praises now and for ever;
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 Corinthians 2:6-10, 13-16
The Gospel: St. John 17:18-23

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Prayers and liturgy

All Souls’ Day

The collect for today, The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, commonly called All Souls’ Day (source):

Everlasting God, our maker and redeemer,
grant us, with all the faithful departed,
the sure benefits of thy Son’s saving passion
and glorious resurrection,
that, in the last day,
when thou dost gather up all things in Christ,
we may with them enjoy the fullness of thy promises;
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 Thessalonians 4:13-18
The Gospel: St. John 5:24-27

Morelli, Christian Martyrs Artwork: Domenico Morelli, Christian Martyrs, 1851. Oil on canvas, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.

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Prayers and liturgy

All Saints’ Day

Giovanni Bellini, San Giobbe AltarpieceThe collect for today, All Saints’ Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 7:9-17
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-12

Artwork: Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Francis, John the Baptist, Job, Dominic, Sebastian, Louis of Toulouse and Angels (San Giobbe Altarpiece), c. 1478. Oil on panel, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. (Originally in church of San Giobbe, Venice.)

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

“All things are ready”

Are we ready? “All things are ready,” we are told. Ready for what? What does it mean to be ready for the banquet, for the wedding feast? And what is the wedding garment which seems to be so necessary such that without it we are cast out just when we think we are safely in; indeed “cast into outer darkness” where “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Not exactly a pleasing prospect.

The times are never so bad that a good man cannot live in them. “The days are evil,” St. Paul reminds us, and yet he bids us “be ye not unwise”. The quality of the times in which we live cannot be the measure of virtue and character. The times in which we live are rather the setting in which virtue is shown and character is proved. The question for Christians “at all times and in all places” is whether we will be defined by circumstances or by grace. By grace, we mean the highest perfection of human virtue which is God’s work in us and for us, come what may in the world around us including the sad parade of our own sins and follies.

One thinks, for instance, of St. Augustine, dying in his Episcopal see of Hippo Regius in 430 AD, even as the armies of the Vandals were besieging the city, about to obliterate what had been the work of a life-time in the formation of Christian souls and the development of a Christian culture. It was the first of a series of invasions that would virtually obliterate any trace of North African Christianity. It was to survive principally in the writings of its theologians, chief of whom was Augustine, whose writings would contribute greatly to the shaping of Europe.

Or one thinks, perhaps, of a Dante, cast out of his beloved city of Florence and into the dark wood of exile. And yet, in spite of his exile, or, perhaps, because of it, he produced the greatest epic poem of Christian pilgrimage of all times, The Divine Comedy, “to lead those”, as he says, “in a state of misery to the state of felicity”.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 30 October – 5 November

Monday, October 30th
4:45-5:15pm World Religions/Inquirers Class – KES, Room # 206
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, October 31st, All Hallows’ Eve
6:00pm Prayers & Praises – Haliburton Place

Wednesday, November 1st, All Saints’ Day
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, November 2nd, All Souls’ Day
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, November 3rd
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 5th, Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity/In the Octave of All Saints
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Club Breakfast)
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 18th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 3rd
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols, with KES

Tuesday, December 19th
7:00pm Capella Regalis Concert

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twentieth Sunday After Trinity

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

Caspar Luyken, The Guest without a wedding robe is thrown outO ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:1-14

Artwork: Caspar Luyken, The guest without a wedding robe is thrown out, 1712. Engraving, Bowyer Bible.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Simon and St. Jude the Apostles

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Simon the Zealot and Saint Jude, Apostles, with Saint Jude the Brother of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect for the Brethren of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O HEAVENLY Father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: We bless thy holy Name for the witness of James and Jude, the kinsmen of the Lord, and pray that we may be made true members of thy heavenly family; through him who willed to be the firstborn among many brethren, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. Jude 1-4
The Gospel: St. John 14:21-27

Lorenzo Salimbeni, St. SimonIn the various New Testament lists of the Twelve Apostles (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13), the tenth and eleventh places are occupied by Simon and Judas son of James, also called Thaddeus.

To distinguish Simon from Simon Peter, Matthew and Mark refer to him as Simon the Cananaean, while Luke refers to him as Simon the Zealot. Both surnames have the same signification and are a translation of the Hebrew qana (the Zealous). The name does not signify that he belonged to the party of Zealots, but that he had zeal for the Jewish law, which he practised before his call. The translation of Matthew and Mark as Simon “the Canaanite” (as, e.g., KJV has it) is simply mistaken.

The New Testament contains a variety of names for the apostle Jude: Matthew and Mark refer to Thaddeus (a variant reading of Matthew has “Lebbaeus called Thaddaeus”), while Luke calls him Judas son of James. Christian tradition regards Saint Jude and Saint Thaddeus as different names for the same person. The various names are understood as efforts to avoid associating Saint Jude with the name of the traitor Judas Iscariot. The only time words of Jude are recorded, in St. John 14:22-23, the Evangelist is quick to add “(not Iscariot)” after his name.

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