THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTION. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.
In our Gospel lesson today Jesus is speaking to His disciples about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, whose ‘ coming’ we will celebrate at Pentecost. It is the Holy Spirit working in and beyond the Church who takes the truth of Jesus Christ and applies it to our hearts, and overturns the false judgements of the world. In the face of the moral, spiritual, and theological confusion of our times, what is a Christian to do? Our Epistle lesson directs in the paths of thanksgiving for all God’s good gifts to us, being quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, and with meekness receive the implanted Word, Jesus Christ, who is able to save our souls.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTION. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS
The Gospel readings for these last three Sundays of Easter season all come from the 16th Chapter of John’s Gospel, the co-called Farewell Discourse, where Jesus is preparing His disciples for death on the Cross, and the anguish to come. But this anguish and sadness will be transformed into joy. This is the promise and the joyfaith in Christ’s resurrection. It sees beyond circumstances, and what is natural and inevitable. In place of resignation (“ it is what it is”), there is joy, and the hope and love that brings new things to birth.
In our Epistle lesson, St. Peter describes the moral and spiritual transformation Resurrection works in the lives of those who believe. They abstain from the “passions of the flesh” ( ie. gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, dejection, listlessness, pride etc.) and use their freedom to serve the common good.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTION. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS
The Gospel lesson for this Sunday underlines for us a key element of our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ which is not to be understood as the escape of a disembodied soul into a place called “heaven,” ( free at last!) but a raising, that is to say a transformation of the soul and body of Jesus Christ, into the life of God. In the encounter between the Risen Christ and his frightened disciples we discover what Resurrection means for us in the here and now: peace, forgiveness of sins, and partaking of the Holy Spirit. In our Epistle lesson we see that through faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, and through participation in the sacramental life of the Church (water= baptism, blood= Holy Communion) we become partakers and participants in the life of God, and so overcome all the negativity of the world that has fallen away from God through sin.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTION. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed, Alleluia! Today we celebrate the Feast of Feasts: the resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ, who “by His death has trampled down death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” Our Gospel lesson for today tell us how it was that the initial reaction to the discovery of the empty tomb was not the occasion of joy and gladness for the first followers of Christ, but rather surprise and confusion, which eventually gave way to wonder and joy in the bodily encounter with the the Risen Lord, that then also eventually gave way to understanding through the Scripture. But the Resurrection of Christ is not simply something to be believed, but rather a Life and Experience to be shared and participated in, right here and right now. How does the resurrection become for us a personal reality? St. Paul points the way in our epistle reading from Colossians: by “setting our minds on things above”, and by “putting sin to death, practices which define our life in the Church.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTION. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS
Today marks the beginning of Passiontide in our church calendar, which comprises the final two weeks of Lent leading up to Easter. Our Scripture lessons for today set the “tone” for the season, setting forth something of what the sacrificial death of Christ on the Cross is, and how the Cross of Christ provides us with the model and pattern for our own lives. The Epistle lesson from Hebrews speaks to us of what Christ has done for us. He is the mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death, we are set free from our sins, our consciences are purified by means of forgiveness, and we receive the promise of an eternal inheritance. Christ has done something for us, once and for all, which we could not do, but can only faithfully and thankfully receive. But the sacrifice of Christ is not just something that was done for us. It is something that must be done in us and through us, transforming our minds and hearts, and ultimately our lives, day by day. This is precisely the message of our Gospel lesson for today where in place of the pursuit of worldly ambition, power, and status, Christ calls his disciples to take His attitude of humble obedience, and make it their own.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.
In the Sunday Eucharistic lections in The Book of Common Prayer, the season of Lent is understood as pilgrimage of the soul. It is a hazardous journey through a spiritual wilderness of demonic trials and temptations that separate us from the true and living God, and hold us in bondage and captivity. The first three Sundays of Lent have been all about how it is that Christ liberates us from the deceptions and power of the Evil One. On this the Fourth Sunday in Lent, the Church holds before us the goal and end of our journey. IN our Epistle reading from Galatians, St. Paul refers to “Jerusalem which is above is free and is the mother of us all.” In symbolic terms, Jerusalem is our spiritual home, a place of freedom and peace where we enjoy union and communion with God in a fellowship of love. Such also is the parish Church, the earthly counterpart of the heavenly city, which brings us to birth through the waters of baptism, and like a good mother, nourishes us through Word and Sacrament and guides us in our way. The Gospel lesson relates the story of Christ’s feeding of the 5,000 in the wilderness with 5 loaves and two fish, which is for us an image of the Eucharist, where our “bodies and souls are preserved unto eternal life”, and where we are refreshed and given the strength we need to continue the journey home.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS
Lent is a season in which we are confronted with the reality of “ spiritual warfare,” that is our battle with “the demons”, which is to be interpreted not merely in a reductionist psychological sense, but in an actual spiritual sense of demons as actual “ malignant intelligences” and “ evil powers” that impact our lives and seek “to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.”( Book of Alternative Services p. 154) Our Gospel lesson today portrays Christ as the one who through the finger(power) of Godcasts out demons and overpowers Satan. In baptism, when we renounced “ the world, the flesh, and the devil” and united ourselves to Jesus in His death and Resurrection,we became partakers of Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the devil, and the house of souls was swept clean. But as we see in the parable which Christ tells, unless we continue in repentance and acquire thevirtues, the house of our souls remain vulnerable to demonic attack. In our Epistle lesson St. Paul unpacks Christ’s teaching, warning us to be especially on guard against the demons of sexual sin, covetousness, and idolatry.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.
The Gospel lesson for this First Sunday in Lent presents us with the story of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, which is of great importance for the pilgrimage of faith that is ours in the season of Lent, and extends throughout our lives. We are a party to and participants in a cosmic conflict between God and His Christ, on the one hand, and the devil, on the other. There are temptationsto be faced, and choices to be made. The Good News is that Jesus Christ has unmasked, exposed and defeated the devil at the point of temptation, and shares His victory with us. It’s why in our Epistle lesson for today St. Paul exhorts us not to accept the grace of God in vain, but to see the rough and tumble of life as the occasion for the proving of our faith and the faithfulness of God.
THE FATHER IS MY HOPE; THE SON IS MY REFUGE; THE HOLY SPIRIT IS MY PROTECTIOR. ALL HOLY TRINITY, GLORY TO THEE!
LIVE AUDIO STREAMING during today’s service is available on the Order of Service page. Recorded audio will be added following worship.
GETTING READY FOR SUNDAY: PREVIEW OF THE READINGS.
Quinguagesima is the last of Pre-Lenten Sundays. In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus declares to His disciples, “Behold We up to Jerusalem, and everything written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.” ( Luke 8. 31.) Here we see that Lent is a spiritual journey with Jesus to Jerusalem. It is not an accident that this prophecy of the Passion is followed by a miracle whereby Jesus restores the sight of blind man who then follows him on the road. Lent is a time for us to be healed of our spiritual blindness in regard both to our sin, and the forgiveness of God, which is our healing. The Epistle for today, St. Paul’s famous “ hymn to love” provides us with a further illumination of the character of our Lenten journey, and the journey through life as disciples of Jesus. It is a journey into spiritual maturity, of “giving up childish things,” and the perfection of love: God’s love for us and our love for God.
THE LESSON: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
THE HOLY GOSPEL: Luke 18:31-43
Then he took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.’ But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. As he approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard a crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazarethis passing by. ’Then he shouted, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Those who were in front sternly ordered him to be quiet; but he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him; and when he came near, he asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ He said, ‘Lord, let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, praised God.
PARISH LIFE NOTES
WELCOME Bishop Helen who will be preaching and presiding at The Holy Communion and administering the laying on of hands with prayer to Anya, who is renewing the vows of her baptism today. Sunday Salad lunch will follow the service in the Upper Hall. Please bring a salad to share!
PRAYING FROM WITHIN THE BELLY OF A WHALE. Today the Faithquest Children begin a new unit on story in The Book of Jonah. “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here! ” (Matthew 12.40,41.)
CONDOLENCES to the family of Malcolm Tait who passed away in Calgary on February 4. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
ASH WEDNESDAY PENITENTIAL SERVICE WITH IMPOSITION OF ASHES will take place next Wednesday at 5.45 p.m.
LENT is not intended to be an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. It is meant to be the church’s springtime, a time when, out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges.
Put another way, Lent is the season in which we ought to be surprised by joy. Our self-sacrifices serve no purpose unless, by laying aside this or that desire, we are able to focus on our heart’s deepest longing: unity with Christ. In him—in his suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph—we find our truest joy.” ( Dorothy Sayers)
RECTOR’S RETREAT. Claude Schroeder will be on spiritual retreat at Kingsfold Retreat Centre this week, returning to the parish next Tuesday.
LENTEN MISSION 2024
XIR193456 Sermon on the Mount, Scenes from the Life of Christ (mosaic) by Byzantine School, (6th century)
mosaic
Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy
Giraudon
out of copyright
Blessed are You:Living the Beatitudes
Guest Speaker: Dr. John Patrick,
President and Professor of the History of Science, Medicine and Faith
Augustine College, Ottawa
February 23 – 25
Friday and Saturday at 7:00 p.m.
Sunday at 10.30 a.m.
PUBLIC LECTURE with Dr. John Patrick: “What Hyppocrates Knew and The Practice of Medicine in the Modern Age.” The loss of transcendent values and religious faith in the modern age has had a profound effect on the practice of medicine for physicians and patients alike. What role, if any, does faith play in the practice of medicine, and what does Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine” have to teach us? Saturday, February 24 10.30 a.m.
SALT OF THE EARTH AND LIGHT OF THE WORLD LENT PARISH BIBLE STUDY. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus declared to His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” ( Matthew 5. 13-16.) Join us for 5 week Lenten Bible study on Chapters 5 and 6 on “The Sermon on the Mount.” Sign up sheet and contact information available on the table in the Narthex.
2023 TAX RECEIPTS will be available for pick up after the service today.
NOMINATIONS FOR 2024. Our Churchwardens, Andrew and John will be seeking out nominations for people to serve as warden and vestry members for the coming year.
ANNUAL MEETING has been scheduled for Sunday, March 3rd. The business will be to review ministry reports, financial statements and to elect parish officers for the coming year.
WORSHIP THIS WEEK
Morning Prayer
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at 9:00 a.m.
