Prayers and liturgy

The Epiphany of Our Lord

The collect for today, The Epiphany of Our Lord, or The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles: Mercifully grant, that we, who know thee now by faith, may be led onward through this earthly life, until we see the vision of thy heavenly glory; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:1-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 2:1-12

Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1618-19Artwork: Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Magi, c. 1618-19. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 5 January

Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they are not.

The story of the flight into Egypt was read in Chapel this week (Matt. 2.13-18). Central to that story is the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem. It is a shocking story, perhaps made even more shocking when you realize that it is actually a Christmas story! Christ is God’s “great little one,” as Richard Crashaw says, whose “all-embracing birth lifts earth to heaven and stoops heaven to earth” God becomes a child to remind us that we are all the children of God. But at what cost?

This story challenges all the sentimental emotions and feelings of hyggelig, of cozy cheer and comfort which seems to overwhelm the celebrations of Christmastide. It does not simply negate such things but deepens our understanding of the radical nature of God’s engagement with our humanity in the birth of the child Christ. It speaks directly to our divided and violent world in the oppressor/oppressed framework of our current ideologies. The story of the death of the little ones of Bethlehem stands as a striking indictment of the powers of this world, past and present, who out of fear and resentment destroy innocent lives. It is also a story that speaks to the griefs and sorrows of our wounded and broken hearts and points us to the greater comfort that can only come from God to us.

The hymns and carols of the Christmas season do not conceal this side of the Christmas story yet it often gets overlooked and ignored. It also challenges and corrects a mistaken view of the Incarnation. It signals in no uncertain terms that Jesus Christ in the Christian understanding is the God who becomes human to redeem and save. The Incarnation, God made flesh, is not the affirmation of our existential lives and aspirations, of ourselves in all of the conflicts and divisions of our self-interests. The wonder and mystery of Christmas does not hide from view the world of sin and evil, of violence and death, of sorrow and loss both within and without. “Jesus Christ was born for this.” For what? To overcome the darkness of our hearts and world. He comes to redeem and save by means of his sacrifice on the Cross. His life was “a continuous cross,” as Lancelot Andrewes notes; “his Christmas Day and his Good Friday were but the evening and the morning of one and the same day,” as John Donne puts it, reminding us that his whole life was but “a continuall passion.” This is the necessary corrective. It means seeing the centrality of the Passion, the suffering of Christ, in the mystery of Christmas.

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Events

Calendar of Services and Events, January through April 2024

The Calendar of Services and Events for the period January through April 2024 (tentative) can be downloaded here as a pdf document.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ

The collects for today, The Octave Day of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ, being New Year’s Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Of the Circumcision:

ALMIGHTY God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the law for man: Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that, our hearts, and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the New Year:

O IMMORTAL Lord God, who inhabitest eternity, and hast brought thy servants to the beginning of another year: Pardon, we humbly beseech thee, our transgressions in the past, bless to us this New Year, and graciously abide with us all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Isaiah 9:2-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:15-21

Leonaert Bramer, Circumcision of ChristArtwork: Leonaert Bramer, Circumcision of Christ, 1640s. Oil on panel, National Museum, Warsaw.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Sunday after Christmas Day

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Sunday after Christmas Day.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas Day

“He thought on these things”

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span;
Summer in winter; day in night;
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth.

Love comes down at Christmas to enfold us in God’s eternal embrace. Christ, the babe of Bethlehem, is God’s “great little one,” in the poet Richard Crashaw’s lovely phrase, who speaks to us even as an unspeaking infant, one who is, literally, without speech. Such are the paradoxes of Christmas, “all wonders in one sight.” The wonder and mystery of Christmas is the mystery of God and the mystery of our humanity, a double mystery, the mystery of God and the mystery of God with us. Today we are meant to be like Joseph who “thought on these things.” What things? Mary being “found with child of the Holy Ghost.” Tomorrow, on the Octave Day of Christmas, we are meant to be like Mary who “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart;” all these things concerning this child. There is something profoundly meditative and reflective about Christmas; the counter and corrective to all our calculative thinking.

Christmas is not about things as objects that can be wrapped in tinsel and ribbon. They last but for a day or a season only to be tossed away on the rubbish heap of the New Year, like Christmas trees, bedraggled and forlorn, lying at the end of driveways before Christmastide has hardly begun. It is as if Christmas is over and done with, merely a passing moment in the endless rush of things that belong to human calculation and interest. This is not Christmas.

It is not simply that there are the proverbial twelve days of Christmas; it is the greater wonder of the meaning of Christmas itself that abides and embraces us in something eternal, something of everlasting truth. In a way, Christmas is the opening to the mystery that cannot be reduced to the parade of things, to objects, or to the thinking that turns ourselves into things, ourselves as objects to be used and manipulated by one another. The wonder of Christmastide is our abiding in the abiding mystery of God. Love is not something which can be wrapped in a box of transitory delights; the chocolates, after all, are already gone.

The readings of the Christmas season show us the wonder of divine love and place us within its embrace. “The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise,” Matthew tells us in his account of the Christmas story; it signifies the unique and special nature of Mary’s holy child. She is “found with child of the Holy Ghost.” “When the fulness of the time was come,” Paul tells us in Galatians, “God sent forth his Son,” the Son who already was and always is God’s Son, but now “made of a woman, made under the law.” The imagery is rich and profound about what ultimately is professed in the Creed and which we heard on Christmas Eve and Christmas Morn. God’s great little one is “God of God; Light of Light; very God, of very God; Begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father,” and yet, as the Christmas Preface puts it, he was “made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin.” The mystery of God and the mystery of our humanity are before us in one and at the same time. In Christ.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday After Christmas Day

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

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:18-25

Juan de Borgana, The Dream of St. JosephArtwork: Juan de Borgana, The Dream of St. Joseph, c. 1535. Oil on panel, altarpiece from Diocesan Museum, Carboneras de Guadazón, Cuenca, Spain.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Wycliffe, Scholar and Translator

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wycliffe, (c 1320-84), Scholar, Translator of the Scriptures into English (source):

O Lord, thou God of truth, whose Word is a lantern to our feet and a light upon our path: We give thee thanks for thy servant John Wyclif, and those who, following in his steps, have labored to render the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people; and we beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may overshadow us as we read the written Word, and that Christ, the living Word, may transform us according to thy righteous will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:9-16

Wycliffe College Chapel, John WycliffeArtwork: John Wycliffe, stained glass, Wycliffe College Chapel, Toronto.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Becket (1117-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):

O Lord God,
who gavest to thy servant Thomas Becket
grace to put aside all earthly fear and be faithful even unto death:
grant that we, caring not for worldly esteem,
may fight against evil,
uphold thy rule,
and serve thee to our life’s end;
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: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

Tommaso Dolabella, The Martyrdom of St. Thomas BecketThomas Becket was a close personal friend of King Henry II of England and served as his chancellor from 1155. When the Archbishop of Canterbury died in 1162, Henry, seeing an opportunity to exercise control over the church, decided to have his chancellor elected to the post. Thomas saw the dangers of the king’s plan and warned Henry that, if he became archbishop, his first loyalty would be to God and not the king. He told Henry, “Several things you do in prejudice of the rights of the church make me fear that you would require of me what I could not agree to.” What Thomas feared soon came to pass.

After becoming archbishop, Thomas changed radically from defender of the king’s privileges and policies into an ardent champion of the church. Unexpectedly adopting an austere way of life in near-monastic simplicity, he celebrated or attended Mass daily, studied Scripture, distributed alms to the needy, and visited the sick. He became just as obstinate in asserting the church’s interests as he had formerly been in asserting the king’s.

Thomas rejected Henry’s claim to authority over the English Church. Relations with the king deteriorated so seriously that Thomas left England and spent six years in exile in France. He realised that he had to return when the Archbishop of York and six other bishops crowned the heir to the throne, Prince Henry, in contravention of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rights and authority.

He returned to England with letters of papal support and immediately excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the six other bishops. On Christmas Day 1170 he publicly denounced them from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral. It was these actions that prompted Henry’s infamous angry words, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”

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