Sermons

Sermon for The First Sunday in Lent, 8:00am service

“Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness,
to be tempted by the devil”

Everything in this gospel must disquiet us. There is, first, the idea of Jesus being led “by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil”; secondly, there is the idea of the wilderness itself, an image which disturbs as much as it attracts.

Wilderness here is the place of temptation but under the guiding force of the Holy Spirit. This implies a kind of necessity about the wilderness in the understanding of the Christian pilgrimage. Somehow there is something good about temptation.

Wilderness. It is an intriguing term. What do we understand by the wilderness? It is an ambiguous concept for ancients and for moderns.

The wilderness can be a place of fearfulness and uncertainty, the wilderness of chaos as in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh. Alternatively, we might think of the wilderness as a place of pure nature, unsullied by human activity, a notion, perhaps, best captured in the twentieth century phenomenon of national parks, and now, the idea of wilderness sanctuaries where human intervention is held to a minimum. There is as well the idea of the wilderness as a place of sanctuary and escape; wilderness as a kind of paradise away from the greater wildness of the urban jungle.

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Events

Lenten Programmes and Events

On Tuesday evenings throughout Lent, there will be a special Lenten Service of Holy Communion with reflections on the Doctrine of Original Sin. The services are at 7:30pm on the following Tuesday evenings:

Tuesday, March 15th
Tuesday, March 22nd
Tuesday, March 29th
Tuesday, April 5th

On Saturday, March 19th there will be a Quiet Day held at King’s-Edgehill School from 9:00am-4:45pm; A Lenten Pilgrimage: Meditations on Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind into God. All welcome. Click here for more information.

Other services in Lent, apart from the services of Holy Week, are:

Thursday, March 17th 10:00am Holy Communion
St. Patrick
Thursday, March 24th 7:00pm Holy Communion
Eve of the Annunciation

The Cinema Paradiso movie night programme continues apace and there will be a showing of the film (not the pub) “The Spitfire Grill” on Thursday, March 17th at 6:30pm in the Parish Hall.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 13-20 March

Tuesday, March 15th
3:30pm Holy Communion – Windsor Elms
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies’ Mtg. – Parish Hall
7:30pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme: “Original Sin I”

Thursday, March 17th, St. Patrick
10:00am Holy Communion
6:30pm Christ Church Cinema Paradiso: “The Spitfire Grill”

Saturday, March 19th
9:00am-4:45pm Quiet Day – KES Chapel & Convocation Hall

Sunday, March 20th, Lent II
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30pm Evening Prayer at Christ Church

Upcoming event:
Sunday, April 3rd
Confirmation

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday in Lent

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

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:1-11

Artwork: Tintoretto, Temptation of Christ, 1578-81. Oil on canvas, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Gregory the Great

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Gregory the Great (540-604), Bishop of Rome, Doctor of the Church (source):

Ricci, Pope Gregory the Great before the Virgin MaryAlmighty and merciful God, who didst raise up Gregory of Rome to be a servant of the servants of God, and didst inspire him to send missionaries to preach the Gospel to the English people: Preserve in thy Church the catholic and apostolic faith they taught, that thy people, being fruitful in every good work, may receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: 1 Chronicles 25: 1a, 6-8
The Gospel: St Mark 10:42-45

Artwork: Sebastiano Ricci, Pope Gregory the Great before the Virgin Mary, c. 1700. Oil on canvas, Basilica di Santa Giustina (Basilica of Saint Justine), Padua. Photograph taken by admin, 7 May 2010.

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Events, Prayer Book Society

Lenten Quiet Day, King’s-Edgehill School, 19 March

Quiet Day
Saturday, March 19th
(9:00-4:45pm)

“A Lenten Pilgrimage: Meditations on Bonaventure’s Journey of the Soul into God”
(sponsored by the Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island)

9:00am Mattins – Hensley Memorial Chapel
9:20am-9:40am – Registration & Refreshments in Convocation Hall
9:45am First Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

11:15am Holy Communion – Hensley Memorial Chapel
St. Joseph (BCP – p. 319 & p. 113)

12:00 Lunch – Stanfield Hall (School Dining Room)

1:30pm Second Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

3:00pm Third Address – Convocation Hall
Silence

4:15pm Evensong – Hensley Memorial Chapel
4:30-4:45 Departure

A Quiet Day is a time for prayer and study and reflection, a part of the Lenten discipline, a part of the spiritual journey of Christian Faith.

The cost for the day is $ 10.00 which includes lunch. Payment can be made on the day itself. If you are interested in attending, all or some of the day, please contact Fr. David Curry.

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Sermons

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

“Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me”

Dust and ashes. Hardly an auspicious beginning, we might think. Usually we think of dust and ashes in terms of endings; the fire that ends in a heap of ashes, the dust that is swirls around in the wind, the detritus of the mundane world.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Dust and ashes are the dominant images of the day. Ashes are a symbol of repentance in the ancient biblical culture. Dust recalls us to the biblical story of creation and is the strong image of our creatureliness. Everything in the physical and material universe is made of dust, we might say. That is an important feature of our creation: we are the God-made dust into which God has breathed his spirit, even sanctified dust.

The two images coalesce in the ritual imposition of ashes on our foreheads, itself another image that signals the special nature of our creatureliness. We are made in the image of God by virtue of our reason and will symbolized in our foreheads. Ashes are imposed with the sign of the cross on our foreheads, and they are placed on our foreheads with the words, “Remember O man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.” Those words, too, suggest an ending. They seem to sound an ominous and serious note.

And yet, the business of this day is all about a beginning and as such there is something lovely and wonderful, even beautiful about Ash Wednesday. It is, we might say, a somber day of the soul’s rejoicing. Why? Because the operative word and idea of Ash Wednesday is repentance and repentance is great good news for our souls. We get to begin again.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ash Wednesday

The collect for today, The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 4:6-11a
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21

Ash Wednesday

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Thomas Aquinas

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

Almighty God, who hast enriched thy Church with the singular learning and holiness of thy servant Thomas Aquinas: Enlighten us more and more, we pray thee, by the disciplined thinking and teaching of Christian scholars, and deepen our devotion by the example of saintly lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

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

Sassetta, Vision of St Thomas Aquinas

Artwork: Sassetta, The Vision of St. Thomas Aquinas, c. 1426-27. Tempera on wood panel, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City

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Sermons

Sermon for Quinquagesima

“For now we see in a glass darkly.”

Love without truth is empty sentimentality while truth without love is simply death.  Love is not simply an emotion or a feeling. In Paul’s great hymn of love we enter into a tradition of reflection about love which reaches back to Plato and ahead to the theology of amor which shapes Christian culture in its medieval and modern expressions. In a way, Paul’s 13th chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians is the Christian manifesto about love as the foundational principle of the Christian religion. What he identifies here are the great theological virtues of faith, hope and charity or love. These three, the greatest of which, he says, is love.

They are the trinity of virtues, you might say, that signal God’s grace as the moving force and principle that seeks our good. They are the virtues which belong to the spiritual perfection of our humanity, the virtues that are about our life in Christ. Why is love the greatest of these? Because love joins faith and hope, uniting what is known with what is hoped for.

In a way, love is about our participation now, however imperfectly, in the realities of God’s life of love, the community of the Trinity. That is the truth of our fellowship. Without it we are nothing. “If I have not love,” Paul says, “I am nothing.” The Collect reminds us that this is Jesus’ teaching. “All our doings without charity are nothing worth,” and that charity or love is “the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee.” There is such a thing as being dead right; in other words, right but dead, because love is missing.

For “we see in a glass darkly,” meaning imperfectly and unclearly. Our vision and our understanding is limited; human love, too, on its own terms, is limited and incomplete. Where there is no clarity, there is no charity, too. The challenge of our lives is to see more clearly and to love more dearly. It takes a journey. It is the journey of our souls into the heart of God.

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