Events

Christmas at Christ Church, 2010

Friday, December 24th, Christmas Eve
7:00pm Children’s Crêche Service
9:30pm Christmas Eve Communion Service

Saturday, December 25th, Christmas Day
10:00am Christmas Morning Communion Service

Sunday, December 26th, St. Stephen/Sunday After Christmas
10:30am Holy Communion

Monday, December 27th, St. John the Evangelist
10:00am Holy Communion

Tuesday, December 28th, Holy Innocents
10:00am Holy Communion

Thursday, December 30th
10:30am ‘Prayers & Praises’ at Dykeland Lodge

Saturday, January 1st, 2011, Circumcision of Christ/New Years’ Day
10:00am Holy Communion, followed by Levée in the Hall

Sunday, January 2nd, Second Sunday after Christmas
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Christmas Lessons & Carols

Thursday, January 6th, Epiphany
7:00pm Holy Communion (in the Hall)

O God, who makest glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that as we joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come again to be our Judge; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

When Mary the Mother kissed the Child

When Mary the Mother kissed the Child
And night on the wintry hills grew mild,
And the strange star swung from the courts of air
To serve at a manger with kings in prayer,
Then did the day of the simple kin
And the unregarded folk begin.

When Mary the Mother forgot the pain,
In the stable of rock began love’s reign.
When that new light on their grave eyes broke
The oxen were glad and forgot their yoke;
And the huddled sheep in the far hill fold
Stirred in their sleep and felt no cold.

When Mary the Mother gave of her breast
To the poor inn’s latest and lowliest guest,–
The God born out of the woman’s side,–
The Babe of Heaven by Earth denied,–
Then did the hurt ones cease to moan,
And the long-supplanted came to their own.

When Mary the Mother felt faint hands
Beat at her bosom with life’s demands,
And nought to her were the kneeling kings,
The serving star and the half-seen wings,
Then there was the little of earth made great,
And the man came back to the God’s estate.

From The Book of the Rose,
Charles G.D. Roberts, 1903

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 20-26 December

Tuesday, December 21st, St Thomas
3:30pm Holy Communion – The Elms
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies/Sparks Mtg.
7:00pm Holy Communion
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Friday, December 24th, Christmas Eve
7:00pm Children’s Crêche Service
9:30pm Christmas Communion

Saturday, December 25th, Christmas Day
10:00am Christmas Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

Guillaume de Périers, St John the BaptistThe collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

RAISE up, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:4-7
The Gospel: St John 1:19-29

Artwork: Guillaume de Périers, St John the Baptist, 1492. Basilica di San Giovanni Laterano, Rome.  Photograph taken by admin, 29 April 2010.

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Mission

Photographs of St Matthew’s, Tisdale, Sask.

The Rev’d Gethin Edward, Rector of our prayer partner parish, St Matthew’s, Tisdale, Diocese of Saskatchewan, has sent us some photographs taken at his church. They have been uploaded to our new St Matthew’s photo album and can seen by clicking here. (Click on thumbnail photos to view larger versions.)

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Ignatius of Antioch

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ignatius (d. c. 107), Bishop of Antioch, Martyr (source):

St John the Baptist Cirencester, St IgnatiusFeed us, O Lord, with the living bread
and make us drink deep of the cup of salvation
that, following the teaching of thy bishop Ignatius,
and rejoicing in the faith
with which he embraced the death of a martyr,
we may be nourished for that eternal life
which he ever desired;
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: Romans 8:35-39
The Gospel: St John 12:23-26

Click here to read more about Saint Ignatius.

Artwork: St Ignatius, stained glass, Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Photograph taken by admin, 18 August 2004.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Christmas service for Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf

“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”

The Advent and Christmas season is a busy time with all manner of expectations, all manner of anxieties, all manner of fears and worries. There is a rich fullness, to be sure, to Christmas itself.

It is something which one day cannot presume to capture nor that even twelve days with all the festivities of our social, family and communal gatherings can ever hope to exhaust. Such things belong, to be sure, to the rich fullness of this season, but only as attendant events. They circle about the central scene of Christmas. In a way, the businesses of the Advent and Christmas season are really only our poor attempt to capture something of the rich fullness of the Mystery of Christmas.

In truth, there is but one poor, humble scene of Christmas. It is the stable of Bethlehem. Therein lies all the rich fullness of Christmas. That poor, humble scene contains a great crowd of scenes, a great gathering of Christmasses; in short, it opens to view a rich fullness of grace, even “grace upon grace,” to use John’s arresting phrase. There is more here, we may say, than meets the eye. It is altogether something for the soul. We are bidden to ponder the Mystery of the Word made flesh. The attitude of the Church is an essentially Marian attitude. “Mary kept all these things” – all these wondrous things that were said about the Child Christ by Shepherds and Angels – “and pondered them in her heart.” And only so can they come to birth and live in us.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Third Sunday After Advent

“Art thou he that should come?”

Questions upon questions upon questions. Advent is the season of questions, questions that open us out to the majesty and the wonder of God. “How shall this be seeing as I know not a man?” Mary asks, and in this season of questions, everything, we may say, hangs upon her answer, “be it unto me according to thy word.” But to enter into this mystery, the mystery which takes flesh and comes to birth through her at Christmas, we need the figure of John the Baptist as well.

Mary and John. There is a pattern here, we may say, a pattern woven out of the coincidence of names: Mary and John the Baptist in Advent; Mary and John the Beloved Disciple in Lent and, most especially, at the Cross on Good Friday. Two different figures named John but one Mary, the Mother of God. Yet somehow this coincidence of names helps us to appreciate the role of Mary, on the one hand, and the complementary voices of prophecy and discipleship, on the other hand. And such things are very much to the point of the Advent season and especially on the Third Sunday in Advent. They remind us of the dual nature of the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

John the Baptist points us to the one who comes both by his questions – “art thou he that should come or do we look for another?”- and his declaration, “behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” Question and answer, in a way, even as Mary’s question leads to the response about “the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit” by which “the Lord shall be with thee.” Yet it is only through her answer: “be it unto me according to thy word” that this will be accomplished. Somehow John the Baptist and Mary complement one another to form the delightful and wonderful tableau of the Advent of Christ.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 13-19 December

Tuesday, December 14th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies/Sparks Mtg.

Thursday, December 16th, Eve of Ember Friday
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, December 17th
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
3:30pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home

Saturday, December 18th
9-11:00am Men’s Club – Decorating for Xmas

Sunday, December 19th, The Fourth Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7-8:00pm Readings from Dorothy L. Sayers’ “A Man Born to be King”
(Hot mulled cider & Cookies afterward)

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Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday in Advent

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

Gruber, St John the Baptist in PrisonO LORD Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
The Gospel: St Matthew 11:2-10

Artwork: Johann Erhard Gruber, St John the Baptist in the Prison, 1700. Wall painting, Church of the Jesuits, Nagyszombat (Trnava, Slovakia).

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Prayers and liturgy

A Meditation upon the Conception of Mary

17th Century Anglican Marian Devotion: A meditation
upon the Conception of Mary

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

“Until they are good Marians, they shall never be good Christians” avowed Anthony Stafford in 1637, words which apply to every age of Christianity. We meet to honour the female glory of Mary, Virgin and Mother, through whom “salvation to all that will is nigh,” as the poet John Donne puts it, Christ being that “immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,” his conception the immediate consequence of her Annunciation. Yet her annunciation stands upon the necessity of her conception. We meet on the eve of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the week of the Second Sunday in Advent.

There is a certain paradox in this commemoration. On the week which is governed by the pageant of God’s Word Written in the form of the Scriptures we find this minor Holy Day which commemorates a completely non-biblical event, namely Mary’s conception. Yet, this minor commemoration has been in The Book of Common Prayer since 1549 and connects with an older doctrinal and devotional tradition of reflection about the role and place of Mary in the understanding of human redemption.

On one level, we could say it is all rather prosaic. For Mary to exist she had to be conceived. But that only heightens the question. Why the conception? Whether with or without the equally perplexing adjective of immaculate, meaning pure or spotless? Is this not all a bit much and whole lot removed from the biblical perspective? Well, it is outside the Scriptures but it belongs to a form of theological reasoning upon the Scriptures which, after all, have to be thought upon. They are given for our learning. The Conception of Mary belongs to the theological reflection upon the meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. This feast is part of a wonderful Anglican tradition of Marian devotion, but one that is governed by a clearly defined theological understanding.

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