Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 11 – 17 March

Monday, March 11th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, March 12th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, March 14th
12:30-2:30pm Valley Region Clericus – Auburn
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, March 17th, The Fifth Sunday in Lent/Passion Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

On Tuesday evenings throughout Lent, there will be special Lenten Services of Holy Communion with reflections on The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal & Forgiveness in the Scriptures. The final service in this series will be at 7:00pm on Tuesday, March 19th.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Limbourg Brothers, Feeding of the MultitudeGRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:26-5:1
The Gospel: St John 6:5-14

Artwork: Limbourg Brothers, The Feeding of the Multitude, c. 1416. Illumination (from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry), Musée Condé, Chantilly.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Aquinas, Doctor and Poet

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), Priest, Friar, Poet, Doctor of the Church (source):

Everlasting God,
who didst enrich thy Church with the learning and holiness
of thy servant Thomas Aquinas:
grant to all who seek thee
a humble mind and a pure heart
that they may know thy Son Jesus Christ
to be the way, the truth and the life;
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:47-52

Born into a noble family near Aquino, between Rome and Naples, St. Thomas was educated at the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino until age thirteen, and then at the University of Naples. When he decided to join the Dominican Order, his family were dismayed because the Dominicans were mendicants and regarded as socially inferior to the Benedictines. Thomas’s brothers kidnapped and imprisoned him for a year in the family’s castle, but he finally escaped and became a Dominican friar in 1244.

The rest of Thomas’s life was spent studying, teaching, preaching, and writing. Initially, he studied philosophy and theology with Albert the Great at Paris and Cologne. Albert was said to prophesy that, although Thomas was called the dumb ox (probably referring to his physical size), “his lowing would soon be heard all over the world”.

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Prayers and liturgy

Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their companions (d. 203), Martyrs at Carthage (source):

O holy God,
who gavest great courage to Perpetua,
Felicity and their companions:
grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice
and be received into the garden of peace;
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: Hebrews 10:32-39
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:9-14

Perpetua, Felicitas, and five other catechumens were arrested in North Africa after emperor Septimus Severus forbade new conversions to Christianity. They were thrown to wild animals in the circus of Carthage.

The early church writer Tertullian records, in what appear to be Perpetua’s own words, a vision in which she saw a ladder to heaven and heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Perpetua, I am waiting for you”. She climbed the ladder and reached a large garden where sheep were grazing. From this, she understood that she and her companions would be martyred.

Tertullian’s The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas is posted here.

St. Perpetua, Archiepiscopal Chapel, Ravenna.Artwork: Saint Perpetua, c. 500, Vault Mosaic (detail), Archiepiscopal Chapel, Ravenna.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, 10:30am Morning Prayer

“God, be merciful to me a sinner”

The theme of divine mercy triumphs over human presumption and folly. Divine mercy, however, makes no sense whatsoever if we do not know ourselves to be, in fact, sinners. In a way the shadows of the Cross reach backwards as well as forwards. We are illumined, paradoxically as it may seem,  by the shadows of the Cross.

There is the grace of revelation and the grace of redemption and nowhere, perhaps, is that seen more wonderfully than in the 18th chapter of the Book of Genesis both in terms of this morning’s lesson and in terms of what precedes it, namely, the encounter between God and Abraham under the shade of the oaks of Mamre, a scene in which God gives the promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah in their old age, the proverbial ‘promised son’. God appears to Abraham in threefold aspect and Abraham prepares a meal for them and waits upon them. The scene becomes the basis for the icon of the Trinity in Eastern Orthodoxy, an image at once of the Eucharist and the Trinity, the communion of our humanity with the communion of God. All under the shade of the oak of Mamre for such is the grace of revelation which in turn signals the grace of redemption which is what we see in the story which immediately follows and which is our first lesson this morning.

We are presented with a most remarkable exchange between Abraham and God about human wickedness and divine mercy, about the power of righteousness and the powerlessness of sin. The question has to do about Sodom and Gomorrah, cities which are the proverbial images for all that is wicked and perverse, a wickedness and perversity that has very much to do with our hearts of judgment and self-righteousness.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, 8:00am Holy Communion

“He that is not with me is against me: and he that
gathereth not with me scattereth”

It is an intriguing and, to my mind, a terrifying Gospel. It signals the moment of the most intense kind of darkness in the Lenten journey, at least before the heart-rending darkness of Holy Week. And yet, there is a great good for us in the discovery of the “dark wood” of the soul, as it were, a light in the darkness. It is about awakening to the light of Christ without which we are simply in darkness and despair. It may be, like Dante, that we shall discover there “a great good” precisely through the darkness of the “dark wood” of the soul.

The Gospel shows us the picture, the terrifying picture, of the despairing soul. And what is at the center of that darkness and despair? Simply ourselves as divided against ourselves. Simply ourselves as presuming upon ourselves to fix ourselves and everything else around us. Simply ourselves, too, when we are buried in our own griefs and sorrows for that, too, is really all about us. The devil is in us when we forget about who we truly and fundamentally are in the sight of God. We become the enemies of God, our souls divided against ourselves because we are separated from God.

This is the great truth and insight of the great religions. Our humanity is radically incomplete without God. That basic insight is intensified in the Christian understanding; we are more than merely incomplete, we are destructive and dangerous to ourselves and to others. This is where Jesus’ stark words come fully into play. “He that is not with me is against me.” There is, we might say, no neutral ground, no place for indifference. It is a matter of being with God or being against God. Without God there is simply a great emptiness within the human soul, a God-shaped hole, we might say, in our very being.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 4 – 10 March

Monday, March 4th
4:45-5:15pm Confirmation Class, Room 206, KES
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, March 5th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme: The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal & Forgiveness in the Scriptures – III

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

Saturday, March 9th
9:00am-4:30pm Lenten Quiet Day – King’s-Edgehill School: “Praying the Scriptures: What, When, and How?”

Sunday, March 10th, Lent IV/Laetare Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion (followed by Simnel Cake)

Upcoming Events:

On Tuesday evenings throughout Lent, there will be special Lenten Services of Holy Communion with reflections on The Kiss of Judas: Themes of Betrayal & Forgiveness in the Scriptures. The services are at 7:00pm on the following Tuesday evenings: Mar. 5th and Mar. 19th.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Lent

The collect for today, the Third Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

WE beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:1-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 11:14-26

Doré, Jesus Healing Man PossessedArtwork: Gustave Doré, Jesus Healing the Man Possessed with a Devil, c. 1866, Engraving, The Holy Bible with Illustrations by Gustave Doré.

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Prayers and liturgy

John and Charles Wesley

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wesley (1703-91) and Charles Wesley (1708-88), Evangelists, Hymn Writers, Leaders of the Methodist Revival (source):

Merciful God,
who didst inspire John and Charles Wesley with zeal for thy gospel:
grant to all people boldness to proclaim thy word
and a heart ever to rejoice in singing thy praises;
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: Isaiah 49:5-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 9:2-6

Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old ManHudson, Reverend Charles Wesley

Artwork:
(left) Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old Man, 1932. Oil on canvas, John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism, London, U.K.
(right) Thomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley, 1749. Oil on canvas, Epworth Old Rectory, Epworth, Lincolnshire, U.K.

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Prayers and liturgy

Chad, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Chad (d. 672), Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary (source):

Saint ChadAlmighty God,
who, from the first fruits of the English nation
that turned to Christ,
didst call thy servant Chad
to be an evangelist and bishop of his own people:
grant us grace so to follow his peaceable nature,
humble spirit and prayerful life,
that we may truly commend to others
the faith which we ourselves profess;
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: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1,7-14

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