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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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 1 May

Interpretation is all!

How do we learn anything? What does it mean to learn? In Latin, and subsequently in English, a learner is a disciple, one who follows a teaching in the sense of coming to know or discern meaning. It derives from discere, to learn. In Greek, a learner is mathetes, derived from mathein, to learn. It is from this that we get mathematics which is really a certain process or form of learning. In schools and universities we talk about different disciplines meaning different areas of learning. This suggests that discipline in its moral and social sense about behaviour really concerns habits of mind. In that sense discipline is more than a matter of external authority and regulatory compliance and more about self-control and responsibility. That is something worth learning for all of us!

The story of the encounter between two disciples and Jesus on the Road to Emmaus is a wonderful illustration about how we come to learn or to know certain ideas. In this case, the story belongs to the understanding of the Resurrection. The story shows how the learning happens through their engagement with Jesus. They are in perplexity and confusion about the events of the Passion and its aftermath. They are on the road to Emmaus, a little village about seven miles away from Jerusalem. While “they communed together and reasoned,” Jesus comes alongside them, unrecognized by them. That is part of their confusion. Thinking he was dead, they aren’t looking for him.

He enters into conversation with them and draws out of them their perplexity and confusion. They recount to him what had happened concerning Jesus in terms of his crucifixion and burial, the report from certain women about the empty tomb, about the vision of angels, and, subsequently, the confirmation of the fact of the empty tomb by some of the disciples. In other words, they acknowledge what they don’t understand and what perplexes them and confuses them. It is all contrary to what they expected.

It is only at that point of knowing our not-knowing that learning can begin. But how? In what way? The Chapel reading from Luke this week gives us the first form of learning in this story. Jesus names their unknowing: “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” What the prophets have spoken is what is written in the scriptures. “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” What things? The things concerning the suffering and the glory of Christ.

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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

Paolo Veronese, Saint Philip and Saint James the LessArtwork: Paolo Veronese, Saint Philip and Saint James the Less, 1560-69. Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Mark

“Be not affrighted.”

Mark’s Gospel account of the Resurrection is one of two Gospel readings for Easter Day. Like John’s Gospel, it emphasizes the empty tomb, the first moment in the process of thinking about the Resurrection. In Mark’s case, it is about Mary Magdalene and another Mary coming to the tomb with the intent to honour and respect the dead. They come bearing burying spices only to discover that the one whom they seek, “Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified, is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him.” Only then are they directed to go their way and to tell the other disciples and Peter that “he goeth before you into Galilee: there will ye see him.” There is something wonderfully concise in this short Gospel pericope.

Yet the short ending of Mark’s Gospel actually ends with the words which are not included in the Easter Day reading. He ends his Gospel, at least in its short form, with the words, “For they were afraid.”

This is different from “be not affrighted” or “be not amazed” (RSV). Amazement conveys a sense of wonder. That signals the idea of the unexpected that marks the beginning of the dawning awareness of the idea of the Resurrection and its radical meaning that changes everything, quite literally. But the short ending is quite suggestive about Mark and his gospel. It was Austin Farrer who best grasps its significance by linking the ending to Mark’s account of the Passion with the curious scene in the Garden when Christ is taken captive; it is the scene of the young man who ran away naked. Farrer suggests it was Mark himself.

As we have been suggesting, the Resurrection makes visible what is already present in the Passion, albeit in different modes of realization. To know one’s fears and to face them and acknowledge them goes a long way towards overcoming them. The greater amazement or wonder here is that the Resurrection speaks to our fears and uncertainties and provides a way to think things in a new and radical manner. It opens us out to a new way of thinking about death and suffering by recalling us to the greater wonder of essential life. That is Christ who wills to suffer for us and whose death and resurrection are the triumph of life over death. Life is absolutely prior and as such death is changed.

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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

Emmanuel Tzanes, St. Mark the EvangelistThe 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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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Octave Day of Easter

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Octave Day of Easter.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Octave Day of Easter

“He showed unto them his hands and his side”

From Christ crucified and dead to the empty tomb, from the empty tomb to the marks of the Cross in the Crucified Christ. Quite a spectacle. We go from the intensity of the Passion on Palm Sunday to Easter to the wonder and mystery of the Resurrection on Easter to the Octave Day of Easter. Easter Week like Holy Week is one long liturgy: the beginnings of reflection and meditation on the Resurrection. Just as we have immersed ourselves in the Passion of Christ through the Scripture readings of Holy Week, especially through the four accounts of the Passion in the Gospels, so in Easter Week we immerse ourselves in readings that turn on the mystery of the Resurrection.

Holy Week and Easter Week are not polar opposites of one another, mere mood swings from sadness to gladness, as something psychological. First, you’re down, then you’re up (and of course vice versa! Where’s the good in that?). No Passion without the Resurrection, no Resurrection without the Passion. They are intimately and profoundly connected. The theological point is that the Resurrection makes visible what is hidden but present in the Passion; namely, the absolute self-giving life of God as sacrificial love. This is the meaning of the Trinity and belongs to the wonder and mystery of human redemption.

The readings of Easter Week point us towards the logic of the Resurrection, a logic or way of thinking that shows a constant and necessary emphasis on the Passion. The past (and the present and future) of human sin and evil are not eclipsed and negated but radically transformed in the triumph of life and goodness over death and evil. The point is that life is utterly prior and absolute; that life is the essential life of God made visible in the Crucified and Risen Christ.

The Resurrection speaks profoundly to the confusions and contradictions of our contemporary world. It belongs to a long tradition of reflection, philosophically and religiously, on the question of what it means to be human. The Resurrection is the strongest possible affirmation of our individuality understood not as autonomous selves, isolated and separated from one another, but as found in a community of reciprocal love and care as individuals committed to the good of one another. All as grounded in the self-giving life of God. That sensibility about human individuality has to do with our lives together as embodied beings. The logic of the Resurrection is that the body matters. It is not merely extraneous and indeterminate, endlessly malleable. There is no disembodied self.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Month at a Glance, April – May 2025

Tuesday, April 29th, St. Mark (transf.)
7:00pm Holy Communion

Sunday, May 4th, Easter II
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, May 11th, Easter III
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, May 13th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, May 18th, Easter IV
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Tuesday, May 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Leon Battista Alberti: Writer & Humanist, Martin McLaughlin (2024) and Inside the Stargazer’s Palace: The Transformation of Science in 16th-Century Europe, Violet Moller (2025).

Sunday, May 25th, Easter V (Rogation Sunday)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Octave Day of Easter

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

Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may alway serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 5:4-12
The Gospel: St. John 20:19-23

Marie Bashkirtseff, Myrrh Bearing WomenArtwork: Marie Bashkirtseff, Myrrh Bearing Women (Holy Women at the Sepulchre of Christ), 1883. Oil on canvas, Radishchev State Art Museum, Saratov, Russia.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 24 April

Crucified and Risen! Radical new life!

Death and Resurrection. They provide the basic and essential pattern for Christian spirituality and life. It is always about dying to ourselves and living for God and for one another. In a way, it is a profound critique of the notion of the autonomous self. The ethical point emphasized in Chapel over and over again is that we can only be ourselves in the truth of our individuality through our lives in community with one another. The deeper point is that it entirely depends on the total self-giving nature of divine love which is the meaning of the Trinity in the Christian understanding.

Christ is risen is the Easter proclamation. What does it mean? The doctrine of the Resurrection belongs to a wider consideration about what it means to be human. How do we understand ourselves as embodied beings? There is no disembodied self – that is a kind of philosophical absurdity or fantasy. How do we understand the relationship between soul and body? Does the body matter? Or is it simply something extraneous and endlessly malleable? We may not be ‘happy’ about our ‘body image’, quick to find fault with others and ourselves in our image obsessed ‘selfie’ culture. Nonetheless, it seems to me that we are more though not less than our bodies. They are an essential aspect of ourselves.

The Resurrection of Christ belongs to a reflection on the idea of the self in relation to our bodies. It is not the same as reincarnation in either the Hindu sense or in Plato’s imaginary, though both are wrestling with the same question: the relation of the soul to the body in a kind of necessary interrelation. The Resurrection – a concept found in late Judaism as well as in Islam – is, in its Christian form, the strongest affirmation of human individuality understood not as a gnostic flight from material reality and the body as somehow evil but rather as the redemption of creation and therefore of the embodied nature of our being. More importantly, the Resurrection is the radical affirmation of life as greater than sin and death, and as the underlying principle of our being and knowing. That life is what is presupposed in everything. “God is the beginning and end of all creatures, especially rational creatures,” Aquinas observes.

The Resurrection is not simply the ending of Holy Week. Rather it makes visible what is hidden yet present in all of the events of the Passion. The stories of the Resurrection show the process of the birth of the understanding of Christ’s Resurrection in us. It is mostly about making sense of what is seen and heard, of coming to grasp the radical teaching of Christ and doing so in no small manner through the Scriptures of the Old Testament. In Easter Week and throughout Eastertide, we follow the processes of thinking our way into the mystery of Christ whose Resurrection is not the eclipse of the past (and future!) of human sin and experience but its transformation. We are given to see how the idea becomes real in human thinking.

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