Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 19 – 25 May

Monday, May 19th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, May 20th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: The City of Words, by Albert Manguel, and Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Power.

Thursday, May 22nd
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Friday, May 23rd
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge

Sunday, May 25th, Fifth Sunday After Easter/Rogation Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Morning Prayer
2:00pm AMD Service of the Deaf
4:30pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Monday, May 26th, Rogation Monday
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, May 27th, Rogation Tuesday
7:00pm Holy Communion

Thursday, May 29th, Ascension Day
7:00pm Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday After Easter

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St. John 16:5-15

Vasetnov, Study for The Holy EucharistArtwork: Viktor Vasnetsov, Study for The Holy Eucharist, 1901. The mosaic of this work was placed in the apse of the St. Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw. Polish authorities ordered the cathedral destroyed in 1918.

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King's-Edgehill School Sermons

Reflections for King’s-Edgehill School Cadet Church Parade, 2014

Reflections for the Cadet Church Service at Christ Church
May 16th, 2014

Readers: Nandini Mishra, Tristan Kimball, Miranda Walsh, Primrose Chareka, Brayden Graves, Michael Dennis

I. “Arise my love, my fair one and come away, for lo, the winter is past”

The winter is past and spring, at least in its mythic Maritime guise, is upon us. We have survived the tempests of the winter and pause to look back upon the year and, even more, upon the miracle of 225 years.

“How came we ashore?” Miranda asks her father, Prospero, in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. He answers, “By Providence divine”. It is, perhaps, by Providence divine that we gather in the 225th year of the School.

It is May. The year is 1789. We come to the near end of the first year of King’s Collegiate School, now King’s-Edgehill. What kind of a year has it been? A gathering of a few students, merely seventeen in this first year, now swollen to hundreds, huddled against the winter winds and snows, have embarked upon the beginnings of a journey and a venture in education that continues to this day. What kind of education?

Gentleness, learning and manhood, humanitas, as it were. These are the qualities that are literally written on the walls. You can find them in the Chapel. They are there to be written in our hearts. These are principles and ideals that shape character and inform our common life. We neglect them at our peril. They are as important now as they were 225 years ago. They contribute to an education that is about public service and commitment to others, an education that is about being part of an intellectual and spiritual community. It is captured in the mottoes of the School. Fideliter – faithfulness – is the motto of Edgehill. Deo Legi Regi Gregi – for God, the Law, the King and the People – is the motto of King’s.

To come to the end of the first year is to be returned to the principles that define a culture of learning and service. It is about learning to think and live beyond ourselves.
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Prayers and liturgy

Florence Nightingale, Nurse

The collect for today, the commemoration of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), Nurse, Social Reformer (source):

Steell, Florence NightingaleLife-giving God, who alone hast power over life and death, over health and sickness: Give power, wisdom, and gentleness to those who follow the example of thy servant Florence Nightingale, that they, bearing with them thy Presence, may not only heal but bless, and shine as lanterns of hope in the darkest hours of pain and fear; through Jesus Christ, the healer of body and soul, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 58:6-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:31-46

Artwork: Sir John Robert Steell, Florence Nightingale, 1862. Bronze, Florence Nightingale Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London. Photograph taken by admin, 25 August 2004.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter

“Your sorrow shall be turned into joy”

The mystery of motherhood belongs, paradoxically, it might seem, to the mystery of the Son’s going to the Father. It belongs to the mystery of the Resurrection. The Resurrection is radical new birth and radical new life. The Resurrection goes to the root of all life itself. That root is the reciprocal love of the Son for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. We are brought to birth in this new life out of the tombs of our sorrows, out of the prisons of our souls, out of the graves of our wills still wrapped in “a cloak of maliciousness,” the spirit of ill-will that is so deadly to our souls and our communities.

The idea of new birth and new life is a mothering image, an image about giving birth. Sorrow and pain give place to joy. We have only to live that joy which is not about our arbitrary moods and feelings but a joy which is beyond the fluctuations and changes of this world, a “joy [that] no man taketh from you”. Why? Because it has to do with our being opened out to the divine life of God himself. This is the great meaning of the Resurrection. The Risen Christ is in our midst in the power of his Spirit. He lives in us and we in him. Such is the burden of our liturgical life which extends outwardly to give shape to our lives socially, politically, morally, and so on.

Jesus would teach us about that radical new life of the Spirit which he has inaugurated and established through his Death and Resurrection. We can only be nurtured in what we have received; in what has been given to us. We can only give as mothers give – sacrificially and selflessly – through what God has given and established in us. What we have received from God has to be nurtured in us by God. The love of mothers falls short, after all, of the completeness of God’s love for us. Our loves find their perfection and their fullness only in the love of God revealed to us in Christ Jesus.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 12 – 18 May

Monday, May 12th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, May 13th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, May 15th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Friday, May 16th
3:00pm KES Cadet Church Service

Sunday, May 18th, Fourth Sunday After Easter
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, May 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: The City of Words, by Albert Manguel, and Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Power.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday After Easter

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

ALMIGHTY God, who showest to them that be in error the light of thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness: Grant unto all them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, that they may forsake those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 2:11-17
The Gospel: St. John 16:16-22

Crespi, Last SupperArtwork: Daniele Crespi, The Last Supper, c. 1624-5. Oil on canvas, Brera, Milan. Originally in the Benedictine monastery at Brugora, in Brianza.

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Prayers and liturgy

Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop and Doctor

St. Gregory of NazianzusThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-89), Monk, Bishop, Theologian, Doctor of the Eastern Church (source):

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. John 8:25-32

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Anglican issues, Prayer Book Society, Statements and other writings, Theology

Address to the Prayer Book Society of Canada

Fr. David Curry yesterday delivered an address to the Annual General Meeting of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, held in Charlottetown. Here are the opening paragraphs (footnotes omitted):

“Through the eyes of John”

Philosophy begins not in wonder, as the ancients supposed, a contemporary English philosopher, Simon Critchley, claims, but in disappointment. The particular forms of disappointment for him belong to religion and politics and result in the culture of nihilism which confronts us everywhere. Nihilism is the breakdown of the order of meaning; it declares and asserts the meaninglessness of all life.

Philosophy begins not in wonder but in disappointment, he says. Critchley has in mind Plato and Aristotle both of whom, to be sure, spoke of philosophy as beginning in wonder. But is this a complete and adequate account?

Click here to download the full text of the address (pdf document).

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Easter

“The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”

The dominant icon in the little Chapel at King’s-Edgehill School in Windsor is the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. The dominant icon at Christ Church is the image of Christ Crucified. Together they belong to the spiritual landscape that shapes our Anglican and Christian identity here in Windsor.

They go together. The further paradox is that they both belong to the teaching of the Resurrection. In other words we only think the Crucifixion through the doctrine of the Resurrection and the image of Christ the Good Shepherd, too, is a Resurrection image. It belongs to the radical meaning of the Resurrection, something which we know about primarily through the eyes of John.

John’s  Gospel shapes our thinking about the Resurrection throughout  the whole of the Easter Season and right through to Trinity Sunday. We learn to think the radical meaning of the Resurrection through the eyes of John.

“The good shepherd,” Jesus says, “giveth his life for the sheep.” It is impossible to think about the idea of the good shepherd apart from the reality of Christ’s sacrifice. That is critical to the idea of care which the image conveys but it is care in a far deeper and profounder sense than the forms of care in our contemporary therapeutic culture. This care is about suffering and death which have to be gone through and not simply bandaging and medicating with drugs. Christ dies and rises. Death and Resurrection underlie the more radical care of Christ for us.

The teaching of the Resurrection is largely conveyed to us through the eyes of John. He shows us the dialectic of sorrow and joy and the transition from disappointment to wonder. We may cling to our pains and sorrows, our bitterness and our resentments. We are rather good at doing that and in a way we live in a culture which encourages our complaints rather than the idea of passing through them. We refuse the radical care of Christ the Good Shepherd. That more radical care has to with how the Resurrection opens us out to the love of God.

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