Becoming the Story We Tell small groups meet throughout the week.
If you are still interested in joining, email bst@stjamescathedral.ca
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BECOMING THE STORY WE TELL
Making an Intentional Lenten Journey 2024
The Season of Lent is a gift intended especially for those who are turning to the way of Christ in some new way. Maybe your Christian faith has been a private affair – until now.
If this is the moment for you to become intentional about following the way of Jesus, to find out how, talk to Canon John Hill, or email bst@stjamescathedral.ca
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Seminar on the Gospel in Lent:
Thank you to all who joined us for this seminar to explore Jesus’ determination to take his Gospel of the Kingdom of God up to Jerusalem, as the context for the Sunday Gospels.
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Join a Small Group for reflection through Lent and Eastertide
Lent and Eastertide will be an opportunity for us to enter more deeply into the mystery of our salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
*Registration forms are available here. Please fill out the form and send it to Canon John Hill at bst@stjamescathedral.ca or for online registration, please send an email to bst@stjamescathedral.ca with your name and contact number and indicate your preferences: Daytime or evening group; Zoom or in-person meeting; and indicate if you want to participate as a household (children are also welcome to participate).
For more information talk to Canon John Hill or email to bst@stjamescathedral.ca
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The Season of Lent arrives early this year.
Lent is a gift intended especially for those who are turning to the way of Christ in some new way. Maybe your Christian faith has only been a family tradition – until now. If this is the moment for you or your household to become more intentional about following the way of Jesus, Lent is for you!
To find out more about this opportunity, talk to Canon John Hill. You can contact him at bst@stjamescathedral.ca
At the heart of our experience in Lent is our encounter with the gospel stories we hear on Sundays. But these stories need to be heard in the context of the bigger story: Jesus’ determination to take his Gospel of the Kingdom of God up to Jerusalem. Before Lent begins, everyone is invited to explore the Lenten gospel stories in relation to this context.
We are offering choices in time as well as in-person and on-line gatherings.
Join us in person or online for three Wednesday sessions on January 24, 31, and February 7 at 11:00am and 7:00pm. Each session will conclude within one hour.
RSVP for this engaging seminar series indicating your preferred time and means of participation (in-person or online).
Send an email to bst@stjamescathedral.ca to register and receive the Zoom link or speak to one of the clergy.
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BECOMING THE STORY WE TELL
Becoming the Story we Tell is a process of spiritual formation that allows participants to engage more deeply in the very heart and soul of our story, reflecting on Scripture and Sacraments together in small groups. There will be in-person and online groups, with meetings on weekdays and evenings.
Families with children of any age are also invited to participate in Becoming the Story we Tell; this is an opportunity to share the great stories of our faith and talk about them together, and to share your experiences of being part of the drama of our worship — a good way to grow in understanding and deepen your relationship with Jesus. Use the Registration Form to participate in this important dimension of life at St James. Please feel free to talk to any member of the Coordinating Team for further details: Mary Hopperton, Christoph Pike, or Canon John Hill at: bst@stjamescathedral.ca. If you are interested in hosting a group, please speak to Canon John Hill.
The season of Lent is above all a gift for those who are turning to the way of Christ in some new way. Maybe your Christian faith has only been a family tradition – until now. If this is the moment for you or your household to become intentional about following the way of Jesus, Lent is for you. Maybe your faith journey has been a private affair – until now. If you are ready to accept the friendship of companions on the way, Lent is for you. Maybe Jesus has always seemed a distant figure to you – until now. If this is the moment for you to deepen your relationship with Jesus, Lent is for you. If you would like to take advantage of this opportunity, please talk to a member of the Coordinating Team: Bill Benson or Canon John Hill, who will help you in plotting your course through Lent; email bst@stjamescathedral.ca
For more information about BST, or if you would like to host a small group, email bst@stjamescathedral.ca
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Epiphany Proclamation 2023
Dear friends in Christ,
the glory of the Lord has shone upon us
and shall ever be manifest among us,
until his coming in glory.
As we have rejoiced in the birth of Christ,
so by God’s mercy we proclaim
the day of our Saviour’s resurrection:
on the ninth day of April
we will celebrate with joy the Passover of the Lord.
Thus begins the season of Easter,
springtime of a new creation
where sin and death shall reign no more.
And, that we may open our hearts
to the healing and forgiveness
won for us through the Passion of our Lord,
let us observe a holy Lent,
beginning on Ash Wednesday,
the twenty-second day of February.
By the grace of his Spirit within us,
may we become the story we tell.
To Jesus Christ,
Lord of time and history,
be endless praise, forever and ever. Amen.
Lent: Is this your opportunity?
The season of Lent is a gift intended especially for those who are turning to the way of Christ in some new way:
It may be that your Christian faith has only been a family tradition – until now. If this is the moment for you or your household to become intentional about following the way of Christ, Lent is for you.
It may be that your faith journey has been a private affair – until now. If you are ready to accept the friendship of companions on the way, Lent is for you.
It may be that Christ has always seemed a distant figure to you – until now. If this is the moment for you to deepen your relationship with Christ, Lent is for you.
If you would like to know how to take advantage of this opportunity, please talk to a member of the Coordinating Team (Bill Benson or the Rev’d Canon John Hill) who will help you in plotting your own course through Lent. Or contact us at bst@stjamescathedral.ca
And remember that we will all walk the path with you.
Small Group Reflections on the Stories we Tell
The Bible is a library of books, consisting of many different literary forms; yet the single thread that holds them all together is the story of God’s relationship with humanity. This is a story that not only reveals God to us; it also reveals us to ourselves.
This story has also inspired and shaped our beliefs over the centuries, and yet our beliefs can never do for us what the story does. Christian faith is not just ‘believing what the Church teaches’; it is, first and foremost, a response of heart and mind to the story of God’s ways with humanity, and above all, the story of the humanity of God in Jesus Christ. We hear teaching, but we feel stories. A story engages our hearts first and then our minds, while teaching can only shape our understanding of the story.
Thus, in every Eucharist, we encounter this story in two forms:
- the story is proclaimed, little by little, over the course of a year; and
- the story’s fulfilment is celebrated around the Table every Sunday, and supremely at Easter.
So how then do we become the story we tell?
During Lent, we reflect together on the coming Sunday’s gospel story, responding to the same three questions, week after week:
- What did you hear Jesus offering?
- What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
- What are the social pressures or temptations that you need to resist or renounce in order to accept what Jesus is offering?
During Eastertide, we recall and savour the story we enacted (a) in the Great Three Days, (b) in the celebration of Baptism, and (c) in the celebration of Eucharist, responding to three new questions:
- What did you see that you had not seen before? What affected you most deeply?
- What do these things say about us as the company of Jesus’ disciples? about the new world God is bringing into being?
- What will it mean for us to live the way we pray?
Through that Lenten discipline of shared listening — to the story, and to one another — we grow together as witnesses to this good news, encouraging one another in faith and obedience to our Master.
And through that Eastertide discipline of savouring and pondering the experience of enacting that story’s fulfilment, we become the story we tell.
Hospitality and Passionate Witness
Hospitality is an essential part of our witness as a parish community. We long for others to be drawn into God’s love in Christ and to share with us in God’s mission. When this happens, it is usually because we ourselves embody the good news of the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.
Passionate spirituality is the essential characteristic of this persuasive embodiment of the good news. But what does it mean to embody the passion of Jesus?
Jesus’ passion to do God’s will led to his greater “Passion”— his suffering and death, his life given up for the life of the world. His resurrection was God’s vindication of that passion — a passion which now lives on in the body of his followers.
‘Becoming the Story we Tell’ is a process for re-entering the deep drama of the gospel story, to restore the connection between our baptism and our annual immersion in the story of Christ’s Passion.
The resources for this process are designed to foster reflection on story and sacrament. They aim to strengthen us in communal discernment and spiritual conversation. The resources focus on renewing in us our baptismal identity and calling.
As we become the story we tell, we find courage to live passionately as witnesses to Christ, and invite others to join us in learning the way of Christ. And hospitality will be second nature to us!
Faith Formation: A New Company of Disciples
The Church in its infancy was known as a company of ‘disciples’. That is what Christians are called throughout the Acts of Apostles. And the first responsibility of a disciple was to be a witness to the truth about Jesus: “…you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
In a court of law, the responsibility of witnesses is to tell what they know. They may not know the whole story of what happened, but they must tell the story they know.
We have a story to tell. But we have more than that, for Christ has provided for us a way to enter that story. When St Augustine, a 5th century bishop in north Africa, invited his people to come and share in holy communion, he liked to hold before them the bread and the cup saying, “Behold what you are; become what you receive.”
So how do we get beyond a mere taste of God’s love and mercy, to actually become the story we tell?
We need to recover something that most of St Augustine’s people had experienced, namely, a kind of formation in faith that prepared them to participate in the Church’s worship, and helped them unpack that experience afterward so that they could live the way they prayed.
This was a process of formation provided to everyone seeking baptism. And it sustained the character of the Church as a company of disciples. But over the centuries, the Church of Christendom became more concerned with claiming the adherence of the whole population than with making disciples; infant baptism for every newborn became the norm; and that important tradition of formation died out. What we’ve been left with is the rich tradition of sacramental worship — without the formation to support it.
‘Becoming the Story we Tell’ will launch the recovery of this vital piece of our tradition.
