Prayers and liturgy

Harvest Thanksgiving

The collect for today, Harvest Thanksgiving Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who crownest the year with thy goodness, and hast given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season: Give us grateful hearts, that we may unfeignedly thank thee for all thy loving-kindness, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional prayers of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God and heavenly Father, we glorify thee that we are once more permitted to enjoy the fulfilment of thy gracious promise, that, while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not fail. Blessed be thou, who hast given us the fruits of the earth in their season. Teach us to remember that it is not by bread alone that man doth live; but grant that we may feed on him who is the true bread which cometh down from heaven even Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour; to whom with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

O ALMIGHTY God, whose dearly beloved Son, after his resurrection, sent his Apostles into all the world, and, on the day of Pentecost, endued them with special gifts of the Holy Spirit, that they might gather in the spiritual harvest: We beseech thee to look down from heaven upon the fields, now white unto the harvest, and to send forth more labourers to gather fruit unto eternal life. And grant us grace so to help them with our prayers and offerings, that when the harvest of the earth is ripe, and the time for reaping is come, we, together with them, may rejoice before thee, according to the joy in harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 55:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 6:27-35

Hans Memling, Christ with Singing and Music-Making AngelsArtwork: Hans Memling, Christ with Singing and Music-Making Angels, 1480. Oil on panel, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Harvest Thanksgiving

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

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Sermons

Sermon for Harvest Thanksgiving

“There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save only this stranger”

Thanksgiving is a strong reminder of our identity with God. Somehow pumpkins and zucchini, apples and gourds, wheat and grapes, remind us of our being spiritual creatures who are precisely not defined by the things of this world. But neither are we in flight from the world. Harvest Thanksgiving honours the whole created order as spiritually given. Somehow all the elements of our natural, social, and political lives are gathered up into the primacy of our spiritual relationship with God in God and to God. Theology is all about the prepositions! Everything is gathered into thanksgiving.

The Fall is the season of gathering, the season of thanksgiving. And yet, it is the time of nature’s slow and graceful dying. Here in the Maritimes, it is a glorious death and spectacularly so this year. The bright and gentle array of the Fall colours in the clear, soft brightness of the October air will give way to the sombre greyness of November in the dying of the year. The paint brush of God’s palette has never seemed more vivid and intense than this year, it seems to me. And yet, we are in the midst of death and life.

But the Fall is more than the annual cycle of nature’s death and hoped-for rising and our reflections must be more than that awareness of the cycles of death and rebirth. No. The Fall is the season of spiritual harvest. It is really all about the idea of gathering, of everything each in its special creaturely distinction and character being gathered to God in whom and with whom and by whom each and everything has its truth and being.

There is the harvest festival, if you will, of all Angels in The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels at the end of September. It celebrates the community of spiritual and intellectual beings of which we, too, are a part. And in the passing of this month, what do we come to except the great harvest festivals of spiritual life in The Feast of All Saints’ and in the sombre Solemnity of All Souls’? Yet in between, juxtaposed, as it were, between the Angels and the Saints, is our thanksgiving in the land, the festival of Harvest Thanksgiving. But this, too, is profoundly spiritual.

They are all communal events. They are all the celebrations of the different moments of our spiritual lives in the Company of All Angels and the Communion of All Saints even in and through the grave of the common death of All Souls. They are the celebrations of our spiritual identity with God and in God and for God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection is the greater death and resurrection into which we have been privileged to enter. At the heart of his sacrifice is thanksgiving. The thanksgiving of the Son to the Father is offered on the Cross in the midst of our death and dying, in the midst of the greater desolations of sin and sorrow.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance

Thursday, October 17th, Eve of St. Luke
7:00pm Holy Communion

Saturday, October 19th, 9-11am
Church Clean-Up

Sunday, October 20th,, Trinity XXI
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Morning Prayer

Upcoming Events:

Christ Church Book Club postponed until Tuesday, October 29th
7pm – Coronation Room.

Saturday, November 16th, 4-6pm
Annual Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Also please take note of the annual Missions to Seafarer’s Campaign for 2024. More information will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twentieth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:1-14

Jan Luyken, The Great Banquet (Matthew 22:11-14)Artwork: Jan Luyken (1649-1712), The Great Banquet (Matthew 22:11-14), etching, Bowyer Bible.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Philip of Caesarea, Apostolic Man

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Philip of Caesarea, Deacon, Apostolic Man (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Philip the Deacon, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the peoples of Samaria and Ethiopia. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom, that thy Church may make known the immeasurable riches of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 8:26-40
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:18-20

Salvator Rosa, The Baptism of the EunuchArtwork: Salvator Rosa, The Baptism of the Eunuch, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 10 October

Thanksgiving is all about prepositions

Theology, the science of thinking God, we might say, is really all about prepositions. They are those little words which position words and ideas in relation to one another. Little words like ‘to’, and ‘for’ and ‘with’ are particularly important in what was once known as the Queen of the Sciences, Theology as Metaphysics, which itself points us to another preposition. One of the meanings of meta is after; our thinking after and upon the things of God in creation or nature and beyond, even our thinking with God.

What does this have to do with Thanksgiving? Simply everything. Thanksgiving is the Headmaster’s favorite festival because it seems to be the one event which is the most free from commercial hype and fuss of busyness. That is true, I think. More importantly, it is profoundly spiritual and as such belongs to all of the great spiritual festivals that belong to the Christian Church and to many other religious traditions. Voltaire, who was a deist, a kind of enlightenment, quasi-Christian viewpoint, argues in his novel, Candide, that thanksgiving is the universal religion of our humanity.

Thanksgiving is not about getting but giving. It is primarily about returning and giving thanks as the classical thanksgiving story from Luke read in Chapel this week shows us. It is thanksgiving to God and for what we have received. Not the least of its importance, it suggests that whatever good things we enjoy we enjoy not because we are owed them; rather because they are a gift, something freely given. We can only work with what is given to us. It is the counter to the culture of entitlement. Thanksgiving cannot be forced. It is properly speaking a free motion from the heart. That you should be thankful for what you have received – all the things that are provided for you – is true but that truism cannot be forced.

This is the point of the Gospel reading where ten lepers – outcasts of society – are cleansed by Jesus but only one returns to give thanks. He does so in a most extravagant and heart-felt manner. All ten lepers were healed but only one “turned back” and “with a loud voice glorified God”, and “fell down on his face at [Jesus’s] feet, giving him thanks”. Luke tells us he was a Samaritan; an outsider in the Jewish culture of the time, but Jesus calls him a stranger. Somehow the stranger shows us what it means to be the neighbour! Meaning near to one another as belonging to our common humanity and so with one another as companions. The word companion, literally, means with bread, com panis. There is a profound social dimension to thanksgiving. We give thanks to God for what we have received and we do so with one another and, most profoundly, in the breaking of the bread, in the sharing of fellowship and food.

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Prayers and liturgy

Paulinus, Missionary and Archbishop

Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Saint PaulinusThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Paulinus (c. 584-644), Monk, first Archbishop of York, Missionary (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Paulinus, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the people of northern England. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land evangelists and heralds of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop or Archbishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

The St. Paulinus stained glass was made by the firm of C.E. Kempe of London and installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1913. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Denys, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Denys (d. c. 258), Bishop of Paris, Patron Saint of France, Martyr (source):

O GOD, who as on this day didst endow thy blessed Martyr and Bishop Saint Denys with strength to suffer stedfastly for thy sake, and didst join unto him Rusticus and Eleutherius for the preaching of thy glory to the Gentiles: grant us, we beseech thee, so to follow their good example; that for the love of thee we may despise all worldly prosperity, and be afraid of no manner of worldly adversity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-34
The Gospel: St Luke 12:1-9

Nicolas Guy Brenet, Martyrdom of Saint DenysArtwork: Nicolas Guy Brenet, Martyrdom of Saint Denys, 1767. Oil on canvas, Basilica of Saint Denys, Argenteuil.

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Prayers and liturgy

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Scholar (source):

William Morris from a design by Edward Burne-Jones, Bishop Robert GrossetesteO God our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Robert Grosseteste to be a bishop and pastor in thy Church and to feed thy flock: Give to all pastors abundant gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may minister in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:28-32
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:10-15

Artwork: William Morris from a design by Edward Burne-Jones, Bishop Robert Grosseteste, 1896. Stained glass, St. Paul’s Church, Morton, England.

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