Almighty and everlasting God, who didst send thy servant Anskar as an apostle to the people of Scandinavia, and didst enable him to lay a firm foundation for their conversion, though he did not see the results of his labors: Keep thy Church from discouragement in the day of small things, knowing that when thou hast begun a good work thou wilt bring it to a faithful conclusion; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-9
The Gospel: St. Mark 6:7-13

ALMIGHTY and everliving God, we humbly beseech thy Majesty, that, as thy only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple in substance of our flesh, so we may be presented unto thee with pure and clean hearts, by the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Malachi 3:1-5
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:22-40

Artwork: The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, stained glass, Eglise Sainte-Marie, Church Point, Nova Scotia. Photograph taken by admin, 26 August 2009.

King of kings and Lord of lords,
whose faithful servant Charles
prayed for his persecutors
and died in the living hope of thine eternal kingdom:
grant us, by thy grace, so to follow his example
that we may love and bless our enemies,
through the intercession of thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

with the Epistle and Gospel for a Martyr:

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

Artwork: Anthony van Dyck, Charles I, King of England, 1636. Oil on canvas, Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, UK.

“When icicles hang by the wall,/ And Dick the Shepherd blows his nail,/ And Tom bears logs into the hall,/ and milk comes frozen home in pail,/ When blood is nipped and ways be foul” … “When all aloud the wind doth blow,/ And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,/ And birds sit brooding in the snow,/ And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,/ When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,/ Then nightly sings the staring owl,/ Tu-who/ Tu-whit, Tu-who – a merry note,/ While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.” Ah, winter, at least as Shakespeare envisions it in Love’s Labour’s Lost, a wee bit threatening but mostly manageable, even “a merry note”.

How do we think about winter? Is it something that we dread and fear? Something from which we seek to flee, seeking out some warmer clime, fleeing the bitter cold as if fleeing from discomfort if not from death itself? Or is winter, as another poet, William Cowper puts it, the “king of intimate delights”? Certainly, the season and experience of winter varies from place to place, from culture to culture, and even from age to age. “Winter in Venice”, Adam Gopnik observes, “is very different from winter in Whitehorse”, or, for that matter, Windsor! It is “a truth”, as Alden Nowlan, the Canadian poet from Stanley, just down the road from Windsor, puts it in a poem entitled “January Night”, “that all men share but almost never utter. This is a country where a man can die simply from being caught outside.” Winter has to be respected.

But how we think about winter is part of a larger question about how we think about nature and how we think about the created order. In other words, it belongs to how we think about God and about creation and redemption. This Gospel story speaks directly to those ideas and extends them into the world of our hearts and minds as well. There is a storm at sea and all seems lost. Jesus is with them, asleep. He seems indifferent to the fearful fatalism of the men. They awaken him: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” It isn’t a request for anything to be done; only a wake-up call to our imminent death and destruction in the storm.

We know only too well about the winter storms of nature. There are, too, the winter storms of our hearts and souls, the winter storms of our discontent and unease. How do we face such things? Jesus is with us in the winter storms and that makes all the difference. So the Gospel would teach us. How?

Because we are recalled to the world as God’s world. We are recalled to the truth of the Creator and to the idea of creation itself. It is God’s world and it exists for his will and purpose and not simply for ours. Creation is not only spoken into being which signifies that it exists for and by the uttered thought of God; it is also said to be good; indeed very good. Winter, too, is part of the created order. Somehow it is good. Our challenge with respect to winter is the same as our challenge about every other aspect of the world. To take delight in what God creates and redeems. To take delight in what ultimately exists, as we do, for no other purpose than for the praise of God. One of the canticles drawn from the apocryphal text, The Song of the Three Young Men, better known in our Prayer Book as the Benedicite, Omnia Opera, reminds us of this important aspect of our relation to the world as God’s creation.

Ananias, Azarias and Misael, also known as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, to use their Persian names, are thrown into a burning fiery furnace because they refused to repudiate the worship of God and worship King Nebuchadnezzar. Yet, instead of being consumed in the flames, they are seen with one who looks “like the Son of Man” and they are heard singing the great litany of nature’s praise of God. All the works of the Lord “bless the Lord” and “praise him and magnify him for ever”, including the winter and the summer, the frost and the cold, the ice and the snow. It is a wonderful perspective and one that we do well to remember in the winter of our lives, whether individually or collectively.

It is also concentrated here for us in this Gospel story. Jesus is awakened in the ship to join the company of the fearful. But instead, he arises to rebuke the wind and says to the sea, “peace, be still.” “The wind ceased and there was a great calm.” “Why are ye so fearful?” Jesus asks, “Have ye no faith?” The story is, of course, an epiphany, a making known of the essential divinity of Christ revealed through his humanity and his presence with us. It is not that there are no storms but knowing the love of God for us and his presence with us in Jesus Christ is the counter to the storms of the winter as well as to the winter storms of our hearts. The Master cares. Ironically, as it may seem, his words awaken a greater fear in the sailors; the fear that is awe and wonder, awe and wonder at the one who is in our midst. “What manner of man is this”, they ask, “that even the wind and the sea obey him.” The fear that is delight.

The winter is part of God’s creation. God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ reminds us that the world and so the winter, too, exists for God’s will and purpose. Therein we find our good and the truth of our humanity. Our challenge is to learn to take delight in all that God has made and redeemed. Winter, too, belongs to our delight in the Lord God of all creation who seeks the peace and calm of our hearts even in the midst of the winter storms of our fearful and bitter hearts. This is what Epiphany would teach us not just in spite of winter storms but by means of them. To be awakened to awe and wonder at the God of Creation redeemed counters our fears and brings us delight, a delight in God.

“What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Fr. David Curry
Epiphany IV, 2012

Wednesday, February 1st
6:00-7:30pm Sparks’ Mtg. – Parish Hall

Thursday, February 2nd, Candlemas
11:00am ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Dykeland Lodge
3:00pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Brownies’ Mtg. – Parish Hall
7:30pm Holy Communion

Sunday, February 5th, Septuagesima
8:00am Holy Communion – Parish Hall
9:30am Holy Communion – KES
10:30am Holy Communion, followed by Pot-Luck Luncheon and Annual Parish Meeting

Upcoming Events:

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. 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, & March 5th. Please contact Fr. Curry, 798-2454.

O GOD, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: Grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13:1-7
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:35-41

Artwork: Jan Breugel the Elder, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, 1596. Oil on copper, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

O God of truth and love,
who gavest to thy servant John Chrysostom
eloquence to declare thy righteousness in the great congregation
and courage to bear reproach for the honour of thy name:
mercifully grant to the ministers of thy word
such excellence in preaching
that all people may share with them
in the glory that shall be revealed;
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 Lesson: Jeremiah 1:4-10
The Gospel: St. Luke 21:12-15

Artwork: Andrey Rubylov and Daniil Chorny, Saint John Chrysostom, 1408. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Almighty God,
who gavest to thy servant Polycarp
boldness to confess the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ
before the rulers of this world
and courage to suffer death for his faith:
grant that we too may be ready
to give an answer for the faith that is in us
and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Revelation 2:8-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-23

Click here to read more about Saint Polycarp.

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

Saul, the Persecutor of the Way – it wasn’t even known as Christianity at this point – becomes Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. As with the idea of the Epiphany itself, the Gospel goes viral through Paul’s conversion; it becomes for all peoples everywhere. The Conversion of St. Paul is a signal moment in the break-out of the Gospel to the whole world.

With the Conversion of St. Paul, the Gospel of Jesus Christ first captures the world’s attention, for he will take it to Caesar, as it were; second, it captures the world’s imagination, for his writings form not only such a large part of what we call the New Testament but also provide much of the impetus towards the possibility of a Canon of Sacred Texts; and third, it captures the hearts of the world’s people for all times and in all places. Something of the Conversion of St. Paul moves in the conversion of the nations, in the conversion of souls in every age, and even more, in that re-consecration of heart and soul to the things of Christ at times of reform and renewal.

Paul tells us about his conversion, not just once, not even twice, but actually three times. But before we complain that seems somewhat excessive, let us remember that we find these accounts, not in his hand, but in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, from the hand of another, probably Luke. The poet/preacher John Donne reminds us of the observation of Chrysostom and Jerome that “the Book is called the Acts of the Apostles; but…it might be called the Acts of St. Paul, so much more is it conversant about him, then [sic] all the rest”.

Therein lies the difficulty. That “much more” is,  perhaps, too much. Paul, it seems, is too much. The nature of strong personalities is that they repel as much as they attract. They challenge our understanding and that is just too much. We have to struggle to grasp what they are really all about and we don’t always like to have to work at such things. But this is all part of our conversion.

For without struggle there can be no conversion. The conversion of St. Paul is, above all else, a struggle. It is, as I like to say, the breakthrough of the understanding.

The struggle concerns the integrity of the images of salvation. How to reconcile the glory of the Messiah with the sufferings of the crucified Christ? The entire personality of Paul is taken up with this question. His relentless persecution of this tiny little sect is driven by a much larger question, namely, the sense of the opposition between conflicting images of Scripture about the glory of the Messiah and the sufferings of Israel. He is an intellectual, after all, someone who has sat at the feet of the learned teacher, Gamaliel, in Jerusalem. Intellectual and spiritual questions are for him the questions of life. So there is a struggle. Something new has come into the world which challenges the understanding. That something new is the Way of Christ.

Certainly, Saul who becomes Paul looked for a Messiah, but not one who would die for our sins. Rather, Israel herself was the Suffering Servant, the true Israel who would be faithful to God by doing the law, who would bear the iniquities of others, who would be herself the acceptable sacrifice for the redemption of the world and who would be raised up and exalted by the coming of the Messiah in whose glory Israel hoped to share. But the sufferings of the Servant are the sufferings of Israel, not the sufferings of the Messiah. To the Messiah belongs only the glory.

Saul persecutes the Way because the glory is held in utter opposition to the suffering.  He persecutes the Way because the will to righteousness – our doing the law – confronts the grace of Christ without which “all our doings are nothing worth”. Jesus unites in himself the sufferings of Israel and the glory of the Messiah; he is both God and man.

His conversion is the breakthrough of the understanding in which he sees that the glory of the Messiah is precisely and most fully realised in the sufferings of the crucified Christ. It is not a question of the glory giving way to the suffering or the suffering being denied in the face of the glory.  No. The glory is in the suffering and the suffering belongs to the glory.

John Donne wisely observes with respect to the Scriptures that “all the actions of the holiest man are not holy”. Paul would undoubtedly agree. It is, after all, not his personality that we celebrate. We are, in the words of the Collect, bidden to “follow the holy doctrine which he taught”.

Paul demands that we honour with our hearts and minds “the things that are written for our learning”. Only so might there be that breakthrough of the understanding which is conversion and which continues in that constant re-consecration of our hearts and minds to the things of Christ.

“I saw a light above the brightness of the sun”

Fr. David Curry
Eve of the Conversion of St. Paul
January 24, 2012

O GOD, who, through the preaching of the blessed Apostle Saint Paul, hast caused the light of the Gospel to shine throughout the world: Grant, we beseech thee, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may show forth our thankfulness unto thee for the same, by following the holy doctrine which he taught; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 21:40-22:16
The Gospel: St. Luke 21:10-19

Artwork: School of Paolo Veronese, Conversion of Saint Paul, 16th century. Basilica di Santa Giustina (Basilica of Saint Justine), Padua.  Photograph taken by admin, 7 May 2010.