In recent sermons, I’ve spoken on a number of occasions about the problems that can be caused in the Church, and in parish congregations and for parish churches, when people have unrealistic expectations of others in the Church and the congregation. I’ve spoken about the Donatist Controversy which raged in the Church in the 4^th Century.  That was focussed on whether or not the personal qualities of a minister affected the validity of the sacraments they administered, but in more general terms, it was about the holiness and perfection, or otherwise, of Church members. And I’ve also spoken about the problems churches and parishes can have when people leave the Church because of what they see as the un-Christian and hypocritical behaviour of other members of the Church.

In many ways, those people who today, leave the Church because of the behaviour of other people in the Church, are modern day Donatists. They’re people who expect the Church and all members of the Church to be perfect and  holy. They also, it must be said, see themselves as, if not perfect, then at least much better and much more Christian than other people in the Church and especially than those they criticise. Well, I think those people, before they say another word or take another step away from the Church or their parish church should take some time for honest self-reflection. And they’d do a lot worse than start by reading this morning’s Gospel.

In the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Jesus makes it quite clear that, in the world, good people and bad people, saints and sinners if you like, although by our own admission we’re all sinners, live side by side. And that’s just how the world is. Jesus also makes it clear that it’s not up to us to sort this situation out. We might be called to proclaim the Gospel, to teach other people the things that Jesus said and did, and encourage them to do the same, but it’s not our job to weed out the sinners from amongst us, nor to condemn them, nor to throw them out or away. How could we anyway? As sinners ourselves we’d have to condemn ourselves along with them. No. To weed out the good from the bad, the saints from the sinners is his job, and it’s something he won’t do until he comes again in glory.

In the parable, Jesus is speaking about the world, but this parable applies to the Church too. Perhaps it shouldn’t because if the kingdom exists anywhere on earth, it should exist in the Church. But because the Church is in the world, it’s made up of saints and sinners too. How could be any other way? There’s something of the saint and the sinner mixed up in each and every one of us, and we make up the Church. So the Church simply mirrors it’s members, and it mirrors the world. And it’s this understanding of the Church that St Augustine of Hippo used to counter the ‘holier than thou’ pretentions of the Donatists.

Augustine said that the Church, as it exists in the world, mirrors the world. He said the Church is a ‘Corpus permixtum’, a ‘mixed body’, something that’s made up of both wheat and weeds, saints and sinners, and that is just how it is and how it will be until Christ himself separates the two at the end of time. He said that whilst the Church is called to be holy, the holiness of the Church is something that can only ever be partial in the world and that the Church’s holiness will only be, and can only be, fully realised in heaven.

As well as using the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds to counter the Donatists, Augustine also made great use of the fact that the Donatists themselves didn’t live up to their own high expectations of others. Among the Donatists, for example, there was a group known as the ‘Circumcellions’ The name comes from the Latin for ‘to go around’ because these people did go around, in gangs, causing trouble. To be fair, in part they were social reformers who condemned poverty and slavery, but they were also thugs who used to beat people up with clubs which were known as ‘Israelites’ because they were used for smiting the foe, which they did to cries of “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”). And their motive for this seems to have had less to do with their desire to see an end to poverty and slavery than with provoking their victims into killing them so that they could die a martyr’s death and be taken straight to heaven. For the same reason, they’d also interrupt courts of law and provoke judges into condemning them to death, which was a common punishment for contempt of court at that time. So despite their expectation, and demand, of holiness and perfection in others, the Donatists were far from perfect and holy themselves.

When I say that people who leave the Church today because of the behaviour of others, particularly when people’s behaviour doesn’t live up to their own high expectations and demands, are modern day Donatists, I don’t mean that they’re modern day Circumcellions. I don’t know that there any of those. What I do mean is that the Donatists condemned people, they tried to have people thrown out of the Church, especially bishops and priests, who they saw as less than perfect and holy. In fact, they consecrated their own bishops and split the Church because of this. And they did all this because, despite what Jesus says in the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, they wanted the Church to be perfect and holy in the world. But despite their own far from perfect and holy behaviour, they saw themselves as perfect and holy. They saw themselves as the wheat and anyone who didn’t agree with them as the weeds. And because they saw themselves in this way, themselves as saints and everyone else as sinners, they also believed that they were capable of sorting the wheat from the weeds and justified in throwing the weeds away. And there are so many people in the Church today who are like this, that I’m sure we’ve all met at least one of them and probably more than one.

How many times have we come across a situation in which one member of the Church has disagreed and fallen out with another? And when they’ve spoken to us about it, how many times has the one making the complaint claimed that it’s all the other person’s fault? How often have we come across a situation in which someone, or perhaps more than one, has taken a dislike to another Church member and said something like, “We don’t want (or need) their sort here”? Aren’t these examples of people thinking they’re wheat and those who disagree with them are weeds? How many times have people done things like this, not got the support they want and so they’ve left the Church, or at least that congregation, saying something like, “That lot are all the same”? All the same of course meaning wrong whilst they’re right. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have told me that I’m wrong because I’ve said or done something that they don’t agree with, or when I haven’t backed them up in a dispute with another member of the Church. There are very few occasions when I’ve been able to convince that person to consider the fact that it might be them who’s got something wrong, let alone accept that. I’ve lost count too, of the number of times other priests have told me that they’ve had the same experience. Well, I’m sorry, we’re parish priests, not private chaplains, we have to do what’s right and best for the parish even if that does mean that, at times, someone gets upset because they can’t have their own way. But when this happens, it’s not unusual for a person to leave the Church or a congregation and blame the vicar. All these things are Donatistic because they all stem from a belief that if anything happens that ‘I’ don’t like, it must be wrong and it must be someone else’s fault because ‘I’ am a good person and a good Christian so therefore it can’t be my fault.

What this really shows, in most cases, is a lack of real self-awareness, an inability to do something that’s absolutely essential to us as Christians; the ability to see ourselves as we really are, to see ourselves as God sees us. It also shows a great  disconnect between what we say in church and what we actually believe. We all admit, do we not, each and every time we come to church to worship the Lord, that we’re sinners and that we have sinned against both God and our neighbour, in thought and word and deed, in what we’ve done and what we’ve failed to do? So how can we, on the one hand, admit that we are amongst the weeds, and on the other, claim that we’re amongst the wheat? And if we accept that we’re counted among the weeds, how can we possibly claim that we’re better than others or believe that we’re in any position to sort the weeds from the wheat and throw the weeds away? And even when we are right in a dispute with another member of the Church, it’s not for us to stand in judgement on the other person or people involved. We’re neither perfect, nor perfectly holy ourselves so we have no right to judge others nor especially to condemn them. Sorting the weeds from the wheat is Jesus’ job and it’s up to him to decide what to do with them after he has done the sorting.

As St Augustine said, the Church on earth is a mixture of saints and sinners, and because we, in ourselves are a mixture of the saint and the sinner, the Church on earth can’t be anything else. That might not be the ideal, it might not be the way we want it to be, but that’s the reality. So those who expect the Church and parish congregations to be perfect examples of the kingdom of heaven, or who expect individual members of the Church to be perfect examples of holiness, simply have unrealistic expectations of both the Church and its members. They’re making unrealistic demands of the Church and its members. What’s more, these are  unrealistic expectations and demands that those who have and make them are incapable of living up to themselves because they’re no more perfect and holy than anyone else. What people who do this are really looking for is heaven on earth. This is why so many people who do these things are constantly moving around from church to church and denomination to denomination. They’re never happy in any church because they can’t find what they’re looking for, and they never will because what they’re looking for doesn’t exist in the Church on earth. And so in the end, they stop looking and stop going to church completely, full of bitterness quite often, because they blame other people for not being the perfect, holy people that they expect them to be but which no one, including they themselves, ever were, or are, or ever can be until and unless Christ decrees otherwise when he sorts out the weeds from the wheat.

Amen.

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Propers for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 7) 23rd July 2023

Entrance Antiphon
God himself is my help.
The Lord upholds my life.
I will offer you a willing sacrifice;
I will praise your name, O Lord, for its goodness.

The Collect
Lord of all power and might,
the author and giver of all good things:
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and of your great mercy keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16
Romans 8:26-27
Matthew 13:24-43

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Whenever I baptise someone into the Christian faith, I always make a point of clearing up what seems to me to be a great misunderstanding about baptism. Most people seem to think that being baptised makes someone a Christian and that is simply not true. I’m sure that, in part, comes from the fact that these days everyone, including the Church itself, calls the sacrament of baptism, ‘Christening’, a word that, I think, implies that we are making Christians of people when we baptise them. But what we’re actually doing when we baptise someone is making them a member of the Church, and that does not automatically make them Christians. To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Christ. It’s to try each and every day of our lives to follow the teaching and example of Christ. But to do that we need to know what that teaching and example is, obviously. And so we baptise people into the Christian faith by making them a member of the Church where they can learn what Jesus said and did and by that, learn what it means to be a Christian and, hopefully, progress along the road towards becoming one.

Being a Christian then, is about discipleship, it’s about following Christ. Coming to church is a very important part of being a Christian but that isn’t all there is to it, and that alone isn’t enough to make us Christians. Being a Christian is about taking what we do and learn in church, out into the world, and putting those things into practice in our daily lives. And a very big part of doing that is sharing our faith with other people; letting them know that we are Christians. It’s important that we do that for a number of reasons. For one thing, Christians don’t have a monopoly on doing good works so that alone doesn’t mark us out as Christians, and if we do good works and people don’t know that we’re Christians, who gets the glory, God or us? And we also need to let people know that we’re Christians for the very simple reason that Jesus told us to in that Great Commission to,

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

We’d find it very hard indeed to teach people about Jesus and bring them into membership of the Church without sharing our faith with them wouldn’t we? Impossible in fact. So as Christians, as disciples of Christ, we are called to share our faith with others. 

Anyone then, who takes their Christian discipleship seriously does, and will have tried to share their faith with people outside the Church. And so anyone who takes their Christian discipleship seriously will find a great deal of personal experience being borne out in the Parable of the Sower that we read in this morning’s Gospel.

If we’ve taken this aspect of our Christian discipleship seriously, and shared our faith with those outside the Church, we’ll all have met and spoken about our faith to people who are just like those whom Jesus spoke about in the parable. We’ll have tried to share our faith with people who aren’t really interested. This is the seed we’ve sown that’s fallen on the path. We’ll have shared our faith with people who have seemed genuinely interested in what we’ve said, but the seed we’ve sown hasn’t really taken root. Some of those people might have even come to church for a while, but they haven’t done that for long. Very often these are the people who come to church for a short time and then stop because they say they weren’t getting anything out of it. This is the seed we’ve sown on rocky ground. Almost certainly some of the people we’ve tried to share our faith with will have said they’ll think about coming to church, but never have. Quite often these are the people who always have something else to do, they have too many other commitments  and so they’re too busy to come to church. This is the seed we’ve sown among thorns. And, hopefully, we’ll have shared our faith with people who’ve started coming to church and become good and faithful members of the Church and disciples of Christ who’ve then gone on to share their faith with others. This is the seed we’ve sown on good soil and that’s borne fruit.

As I think back on my time as an adult member of the Church, I can think of times when I’ve experienced all these things. As both a lay person and member of the clergy, I’ve shared my faith with people outside the Church and, without wanting to sound boastful, I have sown seed in some good soil. I’ve spoken to people about my faith, and they’ve come to church and become good, faithful, confirmed members of the Church themselves. And I know that they’ve gone on to share their faith with others. I know that because people have told me that they’ve spoken to them about the Church and the Christian faith. I’ve sown that seed in different ways. Sometimes it’s been through chance conversations with people. Sometimes it’s happened when I’ve planned to speak to people about the Church and the faith, and that’s often been successful in bringing people back to the Church who’ve lapsed, whether that’s because of an argument and fall-out with someone in the Church, or the un-Christian, hypocritical behaviour of Church members, or perhaps even the Church itself. Sometimes I’ve sown that seed through a ministry I’ve performed, a baptism, a wedding, a funeral, through teaching courses, even through civic ceremonies I’ve carried out. I’ve sown seed in good soil in all these ways but, I said I don’t want to sound boastful, and I’m not being because I’ve sown more seed on the rocks and among thorns than I have on good soil, and the vast majority of the seed I’ve sown has fallen on the path. Or has it?

When we share our faith with people outside the Church, it can often seem as though we’re wasting our time. People, on the whole, don’t seem to be in the least bit interested in what we’re saying and even if they do show some interest, that wanes very quickly. Those who do come to church don’t come for long, and those who say they’ll think about it, hardly ever do come to church. In fact, despite what they say, they probably hardly give it another thought, if they think about it at all. So are we wasting our time trying to share our faith? Or perhaps I should say, have wasted our time trying to share our faith when what we’ve said falls on deaf ears, on the path, the rocks and among the thorns? It might seem that way but actually, no, we’re not and we haven’t.

In the Gospel, we read about Jesus sending his disciples on ahead of him into the towns and villages to proclaim the kingdom. And he says this;

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you.” 

The prophet Isaiah tells us that peace and the good news of salvation, is God’s message to his people. This is what Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim, and it’s what he calls us to do as his disciples today. But he says that if the message is rejected, that peace, that good news of salvation, returns to rest on the messenger. So when we share our faith with others, if they reject what we’re saying to them, any blessing that would have come to them by accepting the message, comes back to us. So in a spiritual sense, we can’t lose whatever happens when we share our faith. If people listen and come to faith themselves, that’s great. But if they don’t listen, we’re blessed simply for trying. So we haven’t wasted our time, whatever happens.

But also, we can never be sure what might happen in the future on account of us sharing our faith with another person. We might not see any immediate result from what we’ve said, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have an effect and a good result at sometime in the future. We might have sown a seed that will lie dormant until some more favourable soil conditions arise in the future.

And again, this is something I’ve experienced, and perhaps you have too? At times, people have told me that something’s happened in their lives, and they suddenly remembered something I’d said, perhaps in a conversation or in a sermon, something that they didn’t really think much about at the time but suddenly made sense to them and helped them to understand the Christian faith a little better and more clearly. And when that happened, when they gained that better and clearer understanding, the seed that I’d sowed some time before, sometimes so long ago that I’ve had trouble actually recalling when I’d said it, and even just what I’d said exactly, had taken a firmer root in that person. And these are people whom I still see to speak to. How often has that happened with people I don’t have contact with anymore? How many of those thousands, and it will be thousands, of people whom I’ve shared my faith with over the years could say the same thing? How many of the people you’ve shared your faith with could say it?

We never know just what will happen to the seed we sow when we share our faith with others. The seed may seem to have fallen on the path, on the rocks or amongst the thorns. But the seed we’ve sown my still be there, lying dormant, until some more favourable conditions arise later that will allow it to spring to life. So we should never think that we’re wasting our time or have wasted our time sharing our faith. We should share our faith because it’s what we’re called to do as Christians. We should share our faith because it’s what Jesus told his disciples to do and, as his disciples, we should do what he tells us to do. And we should share our faith because, whatever happens to the seed we sow, we can’t lose. If the seed we sow falls on good soil, we’ve gained a new member of the Church, or perhaps regained and older member, and goodness knows, we need to do that. And if the seed we sow falls anywhere other than on good soil, regardless of what may happen in the future, we gain God’s blessing simply for sowing the seed.

As long as we do share our faith, we can’t lose. We don’t come across many win-win situations, anywhere in life, so let’s share our faith and make sure that we don’t miss out on this one.

Amen.  

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Propers for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 6) 16th July 2023

Entrance Antiphon
In my justice I shall see your face, O Lord; when your glory appears, my joy will be full.

The Collect
Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you,
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you,
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Isaiah 55:10-11
Psalm 65:9-13
Romans 8:18-23
Matthew 13:1-23

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65:8-13
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

One of the most well-known and popular pieces of music ever written, is Handel’s Messiah. And perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces in Messiah is the aria, He shall feed his flock. The words of the alto part of the aria are taken from the prophet Isaiah and the words of the soprano part, whilst they’re changed from the first to the third person, him instead of me and he instead of I, are taken from the Gospel reading we heard this morning:

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

The beauty of the music that Handel set these words to, mirrors the beauty of the words themselves because, I think, these are some of the most beautiful words we find in the Gospels. But having said that, I think these words, and in particular the last sentence (which Handel actually sets to a different tune as a chorus), can cause us something of a problem.

Jesus says that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, and yet we know that being a Christian can be far from easy and it can, at times be quite a heavy burden to bear, partly because of the way we can be treated on account of our faith, and partly because of the pain it can cause us to see the world ignoring the teaching and example of Jesus and carrying on in its own, often very far from sweet way.  We can be ridiculed for our faith. We can be abused for our faith. Our beliefs and values can be ignored and trampled on by people who don’t share them. And despite the fact that these days anyone and everyone seems to be able to stop anything being said or done that they find offensive, it seems that we Christians, have to simply put up with being offended repeatedly, without being able to do anything about it. We can, and do, suffer all these things for taking on Christ’s yoke. And in some places still, those who take on Christ’s yoke are violently persecuted, sometimes to the extent of taking their lives in their hands simply by going to church. So where is the ease and the rest that Jesus promises to those who come to him?

Just before the words we read this morning, Jesus had been speaking about those who rejected both John the Baptist and were now rejecting him. He also warned the unrepentant about what was in store for them;

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgement for Tyre and Sidon than for you.”

We know that Jesus used similar language when he spoke about the hypocrisy and spiritual blindness of the scribes and Pharisees because we read it later in St Matthew’s Gospel. There Jesus begins by telling the people to do what the scribes and Pharisees teach, but not to do what they do. And he uses these words:

“For they preach, but do not practise. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”

So in this morning’s Gospel, when Jesus thanked God that he had,

“…hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children…”

the ‘wise and understanding’ he’s speaking about are almost certainly the scribes and Pharisees. And so, if we take Jesus’ words in the context of his overall teaching, what he appears to be doing here is contrasting his way with the way of the scribes and Pharisees. What Jesus appears to be saying is that  his way is easier than that of the scribes and Pharisees because he won’t place impossible demands on people. He won’t impose heavy burdens on others by compelling them to obey the minutiae of religious regulations. He’ll teach them to understand the spirit of the law and keep that, as he himself did. And how much easier is that than the way that some in the Church have tried to make people follow over the years? How many people over the years have been put off the Church, or have even turned away from the Church because  of the rigid rules and regulations some people in the Church have tried to impose on them? ‘You can’t do this; you must do that.’ How many people have come to see the Church as an organisation whose purpose is to stop people enjoying themselves, because of this kind of rigid authoritarian teaching, not to mention the often quite obvious hypocrisy of those who teach it? But if that’s what Jesus meant by easy and light, what about finding rest?

We know that Jesus didn’t promise his disciples an easy life, quite the contrary in fact, Jesus’ tells us that we will make enemies because of our faithfulness to him. He tells us we’ll have trouble and be persecuted on his account. So what does Jesus mean when he says that those who come to him will find rest?

In his famous work, Confessions, St Augustine of Hippo says this to God:

‘You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.’

And we find a similar understanding in the Psalms too, the idea that our hearts, our souls, all that we are in the very depth of our being is constantly searching for God. The idea that, in the very depth our being, we know that we’re in need of something to bring us peace and fulfilment. And we can’t rest from this searching until we find what it is we’re looking for. St Augustine understood that what we’re looking for is God because only God can give us what it is that we really need. And this is what the Scriptures are saying too.

The Psalms are amongst the books of the Bible that are known as wisdom literature. Another is the Book of Ecclesiasticus, and the words Jesus used in this morning’s Gospel are very similar to something we read in Ecclesiasticus;

‘Draw near to me, you who lack education, and stay in my school. Why are you still lacking in these things; why does your soul thirst for this?
I opened my mouth and said,
“Acquire Wisdom for yourselves without money. Place your neck under her yoke, and let your soul receive instruction. It is found close at hand.”

See for yourselves that I have laboured a little, and I have found much rest for myself.’

As we know, Wisdom is a deep knowledge and understanding of God’s ways. To have Wisdom is to know what the righteous thing to do in any situation is. Once we have Wisdom, we shouldn’t really need the written law to instruct us about what to do. The law will be part of who and what we are and so we’ll know what to do without having to consult and follow rules and regulations.

Wisdom is equated with the Holy Spirit but ultimately Wisdom, like all things, comes from God the Father.

But in this morning’s Gospel Jesus says,

“My Father has handed all things over to me. No one knows the Son except the Father. And nobody knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wants to reveal him.”

So Wisdom also comes through Jesus, the Son of God. And Jesus will give Wisdom to whoever he chooses. What Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel then is ‘Come to me and I will give you what your hearts and souls are searching for. I’ll teach you how to obey God’s law but not by imposing rules and regulations on you, like other teachers have done, I’ll teach you how to obey God’s law by teaching you and giving you Wisdom, the Wisdom that comes from God . I’ll give you Wisdom so that you’ll know how to do the righteous thing without having to make sure that you’ve crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’ of every one of the hundreds of written rules and regulations in the law. I’ll show you how to find rest because what I teach you and give you will mean that you don’t have to keep searching and striving to find God and to know what to do to be in a right relationship with God. I’ll give you all this if you come to me and follow me. And I can give you all of this because what I will teach and give you isn’t mediated through a human teacher who may put their own interpretation on God’s law, what I will give you comes directly from God the Father himself.

I said towards the beginning of my sermon that I think these words of Jesus are among the most beautiful in the Gospels. I didn’t say that because they offer us the kind of things we normally associate with something easy and light and restful, because they don’t do that. They don’t offer us the kind of ‘I’m alright Jack’, ‘eat drink and be merry’, ‘put your feet up and relax’ kind of life we usually think of when we talk about things being easy and restful, because Christian discipleship isn’t like that. We still have to take up our cross each and every day and follow Jesus; we have to take his yoke upon us, and sometimes that’s hard to do and it isn’t restful in the normal sense of that word. But these words of Jesus are beautiful nevertheless, because the ease and rest for heart and soul that he promises to those who do come to him and follow him, is a promise to free us from the ‘can’t do this’, ‘must do that’,  merchants and hypocrites who can make our lives so much more difficult than they need to be. Who can make our lives so restless because we’re constantly having to think about what to do and wonder whether what we do is the right or the wrong thing to do. And these words are beautiful too because this promise of Jesus isn’t just a promise for the next life when the  difficulty and restlessness of this life is over, it’s something that we can have now, despite the difficulty and restlessness of this life. And given how hard and restless life can be, who doesn’t want to have that kind of ease and rest in their lives? And isn’t the promise of this kind of ease and rest a beautiful thing?  

Amen. 

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Propers for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 5) 9th July 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Within your temple, we ponder your loving kindness, O God.
As your name, so also your praise reaches to the end of the earth;
your right hand is filled with justice.

The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified:
hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people,
that in their vocation and ministry,
they may serve you in holiness and truth,
to the glory of your name;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Zechariah 9:9-10
Psalm 145:1-2, 8-11, 13-14
Romans 8:9, 11-13
Matthew 11:25-30

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30