Clergy Notes & Reflection — Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2020
CLERGY NOTES
For the Love of Creation – An Ecumenical Initiative for Climate Justice
As churches in full communion, we share a deep concern for the care of creation and for addressing the climate crisis. We are now delighted to partner with other churches and faith-based organizations to mobilize Canada-wide education, reflection, action and advocacy for climate justice, under the banner For the Love of Creation. Over the years of our full communion relationship we have learned so much about the value of working together and how it maximizes our ability to make an impact in our churches and the world. We look forward to working with partners, both existing and new, in this broader coalition to proclaim God’s love of the whole world.
Find out more about the national initiative, For the Love of Creation, from this statement [ 2020.04.22-For-the-Love-of-Creation-Statement ] by the coordinating committee. [or go to the ACC website ]
The Most Reverend Linda Nicholls, Archbishop and Primate, Anglican Church of Canada
The Rev. Susan Johnson, National Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
The Most Rev. Mark MacDonald, National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop, Anglican Church of Canada
[Download the Liturgy at Home Sunday booklet for May 3, 2020 here Liturgy at Home Easter 4 – Sunday May 3 2020 ]
REFLECTION
Father Kevin writes: Reflecting on our current situation, where the vast majority of us are not able to share together in the Eucharist, there came to mind a compelling radio broadcast I listened to some thirty or more years ago. The speaker, Fr. Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, some time Dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Johannesburg, South Africa, was recounting his experience when in prison for his opposition to apartheid. (I can still hear his gravelly voice in my mind’s ear!) He did not have the wherewithal, of course, to celebrate the Mass, but he decided to pray the service from memory as far as he could. This is what he had to say:
“I took nothing in my hands and I said, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And again I took nothing in my hands and I said, ‘This is the blood of the new testament which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins. Do this as often as you shall drink it in remembrance of me.’ And I’ll tell you this, against all my whole teaching – as a bigoted Anglo-Catholic I suppose – it is my honest knowledge that the communions that I received in that prison cell, without the means of bread and wine, were as real and as glorious and as triumphant and as magnificent as any communion I’ve ever received in my own cathedral, with the organ going and incense and the bells and all the glory. Just as real and wholly as healing and as complete. That is my witness and my evidence.”
From Tree of Glory, Gonville ffrench-Beytagh Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd (1988)
