Where are our hearts? Ash Wednesday is the stark reminder that our hearts are in disarray, in darkness and confusion, in sin and folly. We don’t like to hear this perhaps and yet the message of Ash Wednesday is the strength and comfort of the Christian Gospel. It convicts us, to be sure, but only so as to set us on the path of redemption.

Year in and year out, it seems. The path is at once easy and hard, the ways at once difficult and yet altogether possible. It is about the grace of Christ in us and through us in the course of our daily lives.

Welcome deare feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authoritie,
But is compos’d of passion.

Wise words from the poet of the Anglican spiritual way, George Herbert. He has put his finger on the challenge of Lent. It is to be welcomed, even loved. Why? Because of the importance of temperance – one of the four cardinal virtues and the one which speaks directly to the matter of self-control – and because of the necessity of authority. As he rightly intuits, it is hard to imagine which we reject the most, the idea of temperance in the culture of self-indulgence, or the idea of authority in the culture of the tyranny of our own subjectivity; in short, “you are not the boss of me!” It is, I fear, the underlying mantra of the culture of arrested adolescence. Lent provides a counter to these disorders and disasters, a welcome counter, as Herbert suggests.

What does he mean by authority and by temperance? “The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now”. Nothing could be more concise, nothing more direct. It reveals, of course, an entire way of understanding about revelation and about the Church; the authority of God’s Word revealed to us in Jesus Christ and the authority of the Church understood as the body of Christ, subject to and measured by that Divine Word.

We reject this at our peril. The point is very simple. Lent is a discipline of the Church but it is one which is grounded in the witness of the Scriptures. Herbert, in proper Anglican fashion, has connected them. “Give to thy Mother,” meaning the Church, “what thou wouldst allow/ To ev’ry Corporation,” he goes on to say. So true and so precise. Yet we are so easily led by the currents and the fads of the contemporary world and so reluctant to pay heed, let alone follow, the path of redemption proclaimed in the Scriptures and provided in the pattern of discipline and worship mandated by the Church.

What we reject is the authority of God in our lives. Skeptical and cynical, angry and in despair, quick to point the fingers of accusation and blame for all of the miseries of our lives on others, if not God, we do everything to avoid the clarifying truth of Lent. Yet,  as the Exhortation in the Penitential Service (BCP, p. 611) suggests, Lent is about “self-examination and repentance, by prayer and fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word”. In the name of the Church, you are invited to the observance of a holy Lent. In the name of the Church, but in obedience to the collected wisdom of the Scriptures, themselves the Word of God towards us, you are invited to enter into Christ’s way of redeeming love.

We embrace it because it is commanded but in embracing Lent we make it our own. We go the way of redeeming love because we go with Christ. Lent is about nothing less and nothing more than the life of Christ in us.

Ash Wednesday reminds us of the inescapable and certain truth of the necessity of repentance and, paradoxically, of the deeper joy that is to be found in our living not for ourselves but for God in Christ. What do we treasure? What do we value? What has real worth in our hearts? The things which are of passing worth or the things of God? When we oppose temperance and authority, we become but the slaves of our passions, captive to the passing parade of endless distractions that take us “farther from God and closer to the dust”, as another poet, T. S. Eliot, puts it, the life “lost in living”, the wisdom “lost in knowledge”, the knowledge “lost in information”. His words are, I think, hauntingly prophetic.

Lent is our call to repentance and renewal. It recalls us to God and to the power of his life in us. Embrace it, and embrace it with joy!

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”

Fr. David Curry
Ash Wednesday, 2012

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

Artwork: El Greco, St Peter in Penitence, c. 1605. Oil on canvas, Hospital Tavera, Toledo.

That more excellent way is Paul’s great love-song. The image of our lives together as a body encompassing diverse gifts and distinct parts where each works for the good of the whole has its ultimate perfection only through the activity of love, the perfecting virtue. Without love, we are nothing, he says, but “sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal”, lives that are “full of sound and fury/ signifying nothing” as Shakespeare puts it in MacBeth. Charity is love, love in its profoundest sense, love as “setting love in order” and bringing to perfection each and every part of the complex of the body, each and every form of love. Ultimately, that body is the body of Christ, the Church, the body within which every other body, both individually and collectively, finds its place and voice.

Love is motion towards another. It does not arise simply from ourselves. For in ourselves our love towards one another is always suspect and self-serving; in short, selfish. It is always less than what it should be, even less than what we want it to be. The poverty of our own loves convicts us. In ourselves, our loves, our desires are incomplete, dangerous, destructive and even quite deadly. “We see in a glass darkly”, incompletely and confusedly, especially about our loves, it seems.

We have to learn this in one way or another. At the same time, we have to learn the greater lesson of the perfecting grace of Christ. Christian love is not about comfort and convenience. It is about sacrifice and commitment. The love of Christ would teach us about the true love of God in and through the forms of our unloveliness but only so as to set us right in love. Without the love of God – so clearly and strongly indicated on this day – there could be no journey, no pilgrimage, no Lent; in short, no love. Without love we are dead.

“Behold we go up to Jerusalem”, Jesus tells us. He has something in mind that is greater than death. In that going up he would teach us and he would heal us. He would set our love aright. It is the simple truth that we do not really know what we want. We do not really know what is truly good for us or for others. We do not really know what is rightly to be wanted except through the perfecting path of his love. In the Gospel for this day, Jesus tells the disciples what it means for him to go up to Jerusalem with them:

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him, and put him to death; and the third day he shall rise again.

He speaks of terrible things which we do, terrible things which our hearts and minds in disarray think and do towards one another and ourselves, terrible thoughts and words and deeds which, ultimately, we do or try to do to God. In short; Christ speaks about his passion. It is not a dream. It is the deeper reality of the love of God which wills to pass through our loves in disarray and disorder so as to set our loves in order.

Christ speaks of his passion. “But they understood none of these things.” This complements Paul’s phrase about “see[ing] in a glass darkly”. We understand so little. It was hid from them and it is hid from us. In a way, we can’t begin to understand except through the journey of Lent.

Oh all ye, who passe by, whose eyes and minde
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blinde;
To me, who took eyes that I might you finde:
Was ever grief like mine?
(George Herbert, The Sacrifice, 1633)

So the poet, George Herbert, drawing upon the words of Isaiah and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, confronts us with the mystery of Lent, the mystery of human redemption. Christ “took eyes,” became man that he might find you and me, even in our blindness, so that we might see and be changed by what we see.

We have to go with Christ. We have to journey with love so that love can set us right. It is a life-long journey. It is simply concentrated for us in the pilgrimage of Lent. It is the way of the cross.

The problem is that we are blind. We both cannot and will not see what is set before us and what is proclaimed in our midst. There is the ignorance and the arrogance of our self-righteousness; there is the pettiness of our envyings and resentments; there are the posturings of our self-assurances and vanity, and so on. We are blind to ourselves and to God. We do not understand.

Yet to know our blindness is to begin to see and to begin to understand. At the very least, it might signal an openness to the healing mercy and love of God. Christ does not simply pass us by. He comes to be with us. He would have us journey with him so that we might indeed see and hear and understand. That, too, is part of the Gospel on this day. It is the point of the “certain blind man” who calls out ever so persistently: “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” Lent would teach us to avail ourselves of the only mercy there is, the mercy of God towards us. Lent is but one long Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy upon us.

You see, if love is motion towards another and if our motions of love are altogether compromised and, ultimately, deadly and destructive, then surely we need, totally and absolutely, the love of God. The motion of this perfect love of God towards us is what is given to set our loves in order. There can be no love apart from the love of God.

Jesus wants us to see and understand this. He wants us to enter into his project of redeeming and perfecting love. It means the pilgrimage of Lent with its disciplines and devotions. For such things are the lessons of love. They teach us an understanding of love. For love is not blind – at least, not the love of God – and that is the love which makes all other loves lovely without which they are not only blind but  deadly.

Lent is the pilgrimage of love. It is the season of mercy. We are called to repentance for without that we cannot turn to God. Through repentance and prayer, through discipline and devotion, we enter into the perfecting ways of love. We live in the mercies of God’s love towards us. That love is made visible in the drama of Christ’s going up to Jerusalem. Christ’s love is that more excellent way. He goes up to set our lives in order. Will we go with him that we may see and be saved? Or will we persist in our blindness and folly?

“I will show you a yet more excellent way”

Fr. David Curry
Quinquagesima, 2012

Tuesday, February 21st, Shrove Tuesday
4:40-6:00pm Pancake Supper
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Wednesday, February 22nd, Ash Wednesday
7:00am Penitential Service
12 noon Holy Communion with Imposition of Ashes
2:30pm Imposition of Ashes at KES Chapel
6:00-7:30pm Sparks Mtg. – Parish Hall

Thursday, February 23rd, Eve of St. Matthias
6:30-7:30pm Brownies’ Mtg. – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, February 24th, St. Matthias
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
3:30pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home

Sunday, February 26th, First Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion – Parish Hall
9:30am Holy Communion – KES
10:30am Holy Communion
2:00pm AMD Service of the Deaf

Upcoming Events:

Lenten Programme
On Tuesday evenings at 7:30pm during Lent, a service of Holy Communion followed by a talk on The Prodigal Son will take place in the Parish Hall. The dates are Feb. 28th, Mar. 6th, 13th, and 20th.

Confirmation Classes: Rm. 204 at KES, 4:45-5:15pm. The remaining dates are Feb. 27th & Mar. 5th. Please contact Fr. Curry, 798-2454.

O LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Spirit, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Gospel: St Luke 18:31-43

Artwork: Nicolas Poussin, Jesus Healing the Blind of Jericho, 1650. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris.

O GOD, who didst bestow upon thy Saints such marvellous virtue, that they were able to stand fast, and have the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil: Grant that we, who now commemorate thy Martyr Valentine, may ever rejoice in their fellowship, and also be enabled by thy grace to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27

Artwork: Christ with Saint Valentine (left) and Saint Zeno (right), 9th-century mosaic, Chapel of San Zeno, Basilica of Saint Praxades, Rome.

This paper, poor as it is, is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Jane Curran, whose wit and philosophical understanding and whose love of learning and language has meant so much to the lives of all who have been privileged to know her. She knew about the Word that underlies all words.

“Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come to the water….”so Miles Smith in his Translators to the Readers states at the outset of one of the most outstanding and most influential works of translation in human history, the King James Bible, words whose earthy pithiness capture the genius of William Tyndale. It is his translation of the Christian Scriptures that provides the ground of the celebrated King James Bible. The Preface, as it is commonly known, is actually a kind of apology for translation – that alone is remarkable in itself.

Translation matters, indeed, it is not too much to say that translation is an integral feature of the Judeo-Christian heritage and one which has its roots in antiquity. The Preface to the King James Bible actually provides as an argument of justification for its enterprise the fact that in the early seventeenth century there are “of one and the same book of Aristotle’s Ethicks … extant not so few as six or seven several translations.” It is an intriguing and interesting argument especially at a time when the arguments against Aristotelianism, particularly in what early moderns called ‘natural philosophy’, would outweigh apologetic arguments for Aristotelian physics and, by extension, metaphysics. This is but one of the many paradoxes of the King James Bible. Sometimes called the Authorised Version, it defends itself in part on the basis of multiple translations of the Bible already in existence about which, too, it shows a remarkable generosity of spirit; to wit, “[W]e do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession … containeth the word of God, nay, is the Word of God…”

The paradox is even greater when you consider that the Ethicks of Aristotle along with so many more of the works of the Aristotelian corpus came into the West by way of the Muslim Arabic scholars of the Iberian peninsula, themselves part of the religious tradition of Islam where there can be, in principle, no translation of the Qu’ran. Translation matters, but in very different ways, it seems.

A veritable library of books dealing with the King James Version of the Bible has appeared over the last decade and a half. Alistair McGrath’s In the Beginning, Benson Bobrick’s Wide as the Waters, and Adam Nicolson’s God’s Secretaries, for instance – all witness to a revival of interest and scholarly appreciation for the remarkable achievement of the King James Bible, even before the 400^th anniversary celebrations got underway, which have brought out even more shelves of books; to take but one as an example, David Crystal’s Begat. There is the enterprising and ingenious publishing endeavor of The Pocket Canons, undertaken in 1998, in which individual books of the Bible in the King James Version have been published in small volumes (each 4 1/8” by 5 5/8” in size) provided with, get this, introductions by a wide range of literary, philosophical, and religious figures. It is a truly amazing enterprise.

Click here to read the complete paper.

Wednesday, February 15th
6:00-7:30pm Sparks Mtg. – Parish Hall

Thursday, February 16th
3:00pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Brownies’ Mtg. – Parish Hall

Sunday, February 19th, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion – Parish Hall
9:30am Holy Communion – KES
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Saturday, February 21st
4:30-6:00pm Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

Confirmation Classes: Rm. 204 at KES, 4:45-5:15pm. The remaining dates are Feb. 20th, 27th, & March 5th. Please contact Fr. Curry, 798-2454.

O LORD God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11:21b-31
The Gospel: St Luke 8:4-15

Artwork: Vincent van Gogh, The Sower, 1888. Oil on canvas, Villa Flora, Winterthur, Switzerland.

A poster showing the full schedule and other information can be downloaded here (pdf).