Events

Halley Performs Halley

Sunday, May 14 at 4:00 pm at the Cathedral Church of All Saints, 1330 Cathedral Lane, Halifax. Paul Halley is director of music at University of King’s College and All Saints Cathedral. He’s also a five-time Grammy-winning composer who many feel has redefined “church music”. This rare performance of his own works features 15 new pieces for choir and organ, sung by choristers from the acclaimed University of King’s College Chapel Choir, with guest instrumentalists. From wedding anthems written for his children to commissions for choirs across North America, these works set beautiful texts – including psalms, and sacred poems by Tennyson, Neruda, Herbert, Manley Hopkins, Dickinson, and Mechthild of Magdeburg – in striking ways. Tickets: $20 regular, $10 student.

Available at the door, or in advance from King’s Bookstore (902.422.1270 ext. 261) and at
www.tickethalifax.com / 902.422.6278.

For more information, visit www.ukings.ca/concerts

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Prayers and liturgy

Monnica, Matron

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Monnica (c. 331-387), mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo (source):

O Lord, who through spiritual discipline didst strengthen thy servant Monnica to persevere in offering her love and prayers and tears for the conversion of her husband and of Augustine their son: Deepen our devotion, we beseech thee, and use us in accordance with thy will to bring others, even our own kindred, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: 1 Samuel 1:10-11,20
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17

Verrocchio, St. MonicaArtwork: Andrea del Verrocchio, Saint Monica, second half of 15th century. Oil on panel, Santo Spirito, Florence.

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Prayers and liturgy

Athanasius, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Athanasius (c. 293-373), Bishop of Alexandria, Theologian, Apologist, Doctor of the Church (source):

Ever-living God,
whose servant Athanasius bore witness
to the mystery of the Word made flesh for our salvation:
give us grace, with all thy saints,
to contend for the truth
and to grow into the likeness of thy Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 4:5-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:23-28

Master of San Ildefonso, St. AthanasiusSaint Athanasius is one of the most inspirational leaders of the early church. His dogged and uncompromising defence of the full divinity of Jesus Christ against the Arian heresy saved the unity and integrity of the Christian religion and church. He saw that Christ’s deity was foundational to the faith and that Arianism meant the end of Christianity.

Arius and his followers maintained that Christ the Logos was neither eternal nor uncreated, but a subordinate being—the first and finest of God’s creation, but a creature nonetheless. Despite being rejected at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, which Athanasius attended as deacon under the orthodox Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, Arianism remained popular and influential in the Eastern church for most of the fourth century.

Athanasius became bishop in 328 at age 33 and spent the next five decades fighting for Nicene orthodoxy. For his troubles, he was deposed and exiled five times, spending a total of seventeen years in flight and hiding, often shielded by the people of Alexandria. Six years of exile were spent in Rome, where he gained the strong support of the Western church, and another six years were spent under the protection of monks in the Egyptian desert.

He was finally able to return to Alexandria in 365 and spent the final years of his life bolstering orthodoxy, which ultimately triumphed at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Philip and St. James

“Believe me,that I am in the Father, and the Father in me;
or else believe me for the very works’ sake”

There is something quite powerful about the readings from the Gospel according to St. John which belong to the Sundays after Easter. The Gospel reading for the Feast of SS. Philip and James belongs to those readings from what is known as the Farewell Discourse of Jesus. They contribute to our understanding about the mystical theology of the Prayer Book.

Jesus speaks about Deus in se, God in himself in our text tonight. “I am in the Father, and the Father in me,” indicating that we believe in God because of God in himself through Jesus. But, on the other hand, there is the recognition that others come to faith through “the very works’ sake;” in other words, because of the words and deeds of Jesus which is Deus pro nobis, God for us. These are the two interrelated forms of the Christian Faith which provide two avenues of approach to the understanding of God and our life in God. Believe in God because of what he is in himself or through what he has done. His works are the outflowing of his being. These are not opposed forms of faith.

The Epistle and Gospel for this day reflect on the matter of Christian faith, illustrated best in the first Collect for this Feast. To know God truly is everlasting life. That is the end and purpose. As John’s Gospel argues, and profoundly so, Jesus says that he is “the way, the truth and the life” but the way in which we participate in that heavenly and divine life is through following the steps of the holy Apostles, particularly Saint Philip and Saint James, “steadfastly walk[ing] in the way that leadeth to eternal life.” The paradox, partially illustrated in the second Collect, is that we really don’t know much about either Apostle other than their names as enrolled in the list of the Apostles and the recognition of several James’s, for instance, one of which, along with Jude, are said to be in a quaint phrase “kinsman of the Lord”. Other translations say brother. The point here is a kind of honesty about the witness of the Scriptures.

Yet the overall point is clear in the context of Eastertide. It is all about the form of our participation in the life of God revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Something of the meaning of his going from us as indicated in the farewell discourses is about who he is in himself and who he is for us. The two aspects go together. Each shapes the understanding of the other. Each belongs to one of the avenues of faith. Either we believe because of the idea of God in Himself or because of his mighty works. Either way we come to God through Jesus Christ and participate in the divine life which Christ has opened out for us. In so doing we are one with the community of faith which is the Apostolic and Catholic Church, the Church mystical and universal. Such is the Resurrection; it is about our corporate life together in the body of Christ.

“Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me;
or else believe me for the very works’ sake”

Fr. David Curry
SS. Philip and James
May 1st, 2017

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Philip and Saint James the Apostles

The Collect for today, The Feast of Saint Philip and Saint James the Apostles, with Saint James the Brother of the Lord, Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the steps of thy holy Apostles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stedfastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional Collect, of the Brethren of the Lord:

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. James 1:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 14:1-14

Ribera, Saint Philip

Ribera, Saint James the Less

Artwork: Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Philip (left) and Saint James the Less (right), 1630-32. Oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Easter

“Jesus said, ‘I am the good Shepherd’”

It is one of the great and classic images of care and one which is much beloved. It appears frequently in glass and stone, in tapestry and mosaic even as the Shepherd’s Psalm (Ps. 23) shapes story and song, prayer and praise. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd is very much with us.

Yet we easily forget the radical nature of care that the image of Christ the Good Shepherd presents to us. The Good Shepherd, after all, “lays down his life for the sheep”. In other words, the care of the Good Shepherd has death and resurrection in it. The care is not so much cozy comfort as it is challenge. It is something which the poets help us to see as well.

Against the cheery optimism that so troubled Thomas Hardy, for example, because such an attitude was unable, as he puts it, to “exact a full look at the worst” of things, there is the deeper realization of Gerard Manley Hopkins that “there lives the dearest freshness deep down things”. Thus Hardy’s salutary caution that “delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom and fear” can give place to a world seen as “charged with the grandeur of God”, once we realize that God has not only looked upon the bleak, black darkness of our very worst but has entered into it. Such is the radical nature of the cure – the remedy – in the care.

Jesus says, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’. Through the eyes of John we learn just how radical an identification with us and with God that statement is. It involves an intensification and a re-working of at least two Old Testament passages: the Shepherd’s Psalm and the story of the revelation of God to Moses in the Burning Bush. In Christ, the Psalm takes on an added dimension. There is an inescapable identity with God who reveals himself to Moses in the Burning Bush as “I am who I am.”

“The Lord is my shepherd”, the psalmist says. Jesus in the Gospels, takes that image upon himself and gives it a deeper meaning. Beyond the accompanying presence of God with us in “the valley of the shadow of death”, there is the God who goes into the darkness and loneliness of each and every death, the God who embraces our death as well as our life.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 1 – 7 May

Monday, May 1st, SS. Philip & James
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, May 2nd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Wednesday, May 3rd
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, May 4th
3:15 Service at Windsor Elms

Friday, May 5th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, May 7th, Third Sunday after Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Saturday, May 13th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Lobster Supper. Take-out or Eat-in! Tickets: $ 30.00

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After Easter

The collect for today, The Second Sunday After Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Good ShepherdALMIGHTY God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St .Peter 2:19-25
The Gospel: St. John 10:11-16

Artwork: Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Good Shepherd, c. 1540. Oil on panel, Angermuseum, Erfurt.

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Sermons, Theology

Redire ad principia: The Mystical Theology of The Book of Common Prayer

Fr. David Curry delivered this address to the AGM of the Prayer Book Society of Canada in Halifax on 29 April 2017. The version posted here omits footnotes. To download a pdf version complete with footnotes, click here.

Redire ad principia: The Mystical Theology of The Book of Common Prayer

There may be fifty ways to lose your lover and even fifty shades of grey which may or may not be the same thing, but the ways to lose your humanity? Not so many, it seems.

There is really only one question for our institutions, be they schools or churches, social clubs or societies. It is whether your institution is a factory producing robots or a breeding ground for Jihadis. In other words, are they places which contribute to a deeper understanding of our common humanity or are they simply the ghettoes of nihilism, having despaired of anything intellectual and spiritual; in short, the places where we lose our humanity by becoming machines or by blowing everything up including ourselves?

When Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk agree that the greatest threat facing our humanity is AI, artificial intelligence, then perhaps it is time to pause and think about our technocratic exuberance. For the concerns are very real especially for the millennial generation most wedded to the digital forms of the technocratic world. At issue is what it means to be human. In Albert Camus’ 1942 novel, The Outsider, the robot-woman is the image of a technocratic society in which technology is allowed to reign and rule and which in turn crushes and destroys our humanity and our individuality. We become robots. We make the machine that unmakes us. The novel ends with the Meursault going to his death which has been wrongfully decided on the basis of the absurdities of reason. He goes, tellingly, to the guillotine. The machine which itself is mindless is the machine that takes off your head. And that is the point.

The contradictions are startling. Homo Deus (2015) by Yuval Noah Harari turns out not to be about our humanity in God and with God but about our humanity as digitally enhanced as if that were a kind of divinity, a deus ex machina, I suppose. And while raising various problems about technology – all of which are, of course, solvable, since the naïve idealism of progress is his assumption – he denies that you exist. The idea of a self is an illusion. There is no you. We are nothing more than organic algorithms! He is oblivious to the ethical and philosophical problems pointed out last week in the Chronicle Herald by Professor Teresa Heffernan at St. Mary’s whose research programme, Where Science Meets Fiction: Social Robots and the Ethical Imagination, looks at big data and algorithms. They can only replicate the human biases inherent in their structure. Brains are not minds and machines cannot think.

In a way, this is not new. In 1749, the year Halifax was founded, Julien Offray de la Mettrie wrote L’homme machine, ‘Man the Machine’, a completely materialist and atheist account of our humanity. Romanticism and Existentialism both would react against the reductive assertions of a narrow and empty rationalism which looks at the world and our humanity in mechanistic terms. That is part of the importance of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, where the monster is not the thing that is made but the one who makes it. We are the monsters of our own nightmares and the makers of our own destruction. As Wendell Berry observes: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” This, too, is our world. George Bernanos wisely noted in 1946 that “between those who think that civilization is a victory of man in the struggle against the determinism of things and those who want to make of man a thing among things, there is no possible scheme of reconciliation.”

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Mark the Evangelist

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast instructed thy holy Church with the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark: Give us grace, that, being not like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, we may be established in the truth of thy holy Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:11-16
The Gospel: St. Mark 13:1-10

Tintoretto, Finding of the Body of St. MarkThe author of the second gospel, Saint Mark is generally identified with John Mark, the son of Mary, whose house in Jerusalem was a meeting place for the disciples (Acts 12:12,25). John Mark accompanied his cousin Barnabas and Paul on their missionary journey to Cyprus, but Mark’s early departure to Jerusalem caused a rift between Paul and Barnabas, following which Barnabas took Mark on the next mission to Cyprus while Paul and Silas traveled through Syria and Cilicia (Acts 15:37-41).

Paul later changed his mind about Mark, who helped him during his imprisonment in Rome (Col. 4:10). Just before his martyrdom, Paul urged Timothy: “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11).

Also, Peter affectionately calls Mark “my son” and says that Mark is with him at “Babylon”—almost certainly Rome—as he writes his first epistle (1 Pet. 5:13). This accords with church tradition that Mark’s Gospel represents the teaching of Peter.

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