Propers
Each Sunday there are Propers:
special prayers and readings from the Bible. There is a Collect for the Day; that is a single thought
prayer, most written either before the re-founding of the Church of England in
the 1540s or written by Bishop Thomas Cranmer, the first Archbishop of
Canterbury after the re-founding.
The Collect for the Day is to be
read on Sunday and during Morning and Evening Prayer until the next Sunday. The
Epistle is normally a reading from one of the various Epistles, or letters, in
the New Testament. The Gospel is a
reading from one of the Holy Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Collect is said by the minister as
a prayer, the Epistle can be read by either a designated reader (as we do in
our church) or by one of the ministers and the Holy Gospel, which during the
service in our church is read by an ordained minister or our Deacon Striker.
The propers are the same each
year, except if a Red Letter Feast, that is one with propers in the prayerbook,
falls on a Sunday, then those propers are to be read instead, except in a White
Season, where it is put off. Red
Letter Feasts, so called because in the Altar Prayerbooks the titles are in
red, are special days. Most of the
Red Letter Feasts are dedicated to early saints instrumental in the development
of the church, others to special events.
Some days are particularly special and the Collect for that day is to be
used for an octave (eight days) or an entire season, like Advent or Lent.
Today is one of those Red Letter
Days, The Feast of the Circumcision of Christ.
"And when eight days were
accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS,
which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb." Luke 2:21 (AV)
The propers for today are found
on Pages 105-106, with the Collect first:
The Circumcision of Christ.
[January 1.]
The Collect.
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LMIGHTY God, who madest thy blessed Son to be circumcised, and obedient to the
law for man; Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit; that, our hearts,
and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may
in all things obey thy blessed will; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.
The First Sunday
after Christmas Day.
The Collect.
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LMIGHTY
God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and
as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regener- ate,
and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy
Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with
thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
Dru Arnold read the Epistle for today, which came from
Paul’s letter to the people of Philippia, starting at the Ninth Verse of the Second
Chapter. The portion of the letter used as today’s Epistle is relatively
short. God has sent His Son to
earth and given him a name above all others, Jesus[1]. Paul exhorts his fellow followers to
continue to follow the Lord, not only while he is watching them, but at all
times. God will give them the will
and ability to do good, but only if they do their best to follow Him.
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OD also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name
which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father. Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence
only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his
good pleasure.
The Gospel for today came from the Gospel according
to Saint Luke, the Second Chapter,
beginning at the Fifteenth Verse. Today’s Gospel recounts the angels visit to
the shepherds who came into Bethlehem to pay homage to Jesus in the
manger. It also documents the
circumcision of Jesus, bringing Him under the Law. He who: Is, Was and always Will be, put Himself under the
Law, that He might fulfill the Law and be our salvation.
Our salvation from the Law came from the perfect
sacrifice one time for the sins of all mankind for all time. The sacrifice had to be a perfect
human, one who did not exist until Jesus came. That perfect human had to enter in to the Law, had to
be subject to the Law. Thus, Jesus
submitted Himself unto the Law that he might in the end have dominion over the
Law.
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nd it came to pass, as the angels
were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us
now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the
Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and
Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made
known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they
that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the
shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they
had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. And when eight days were
accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS,
which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
Sermon – Reverend Deacon Jack Arnold - Time
and Action
Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and
Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above.
Today we recall the circumcision of our Lord and
Savior. He is God, yet He is under
The Law. Not all those 613 laws
were those called Moral, that is to say the Ten Commandments, but there are
those which are moral and there are also laws of God or physics. God, the Ultimate Being, is subject to
the laws He made. While He can,
and does on the very special occasion, disregard them such as when the shadow
went backwards, for the most part He, too, is subject to The Laws[2]. Why? Because they were made for the general good of this
world. We see what happens when
people do not follow the Laws that God set out for us to live by. If we stop
living by The Laws, then we are no better than the animals of this world, who
live by no such Laws whatsoever. Then there is no incentive for us to follow
Christ if we do not live by the laws which he has set before us. If we do not
need to follow these laws, then why would we follow Him? We follow Him Bcause
He is the embodiment of all that is good and pleasing, unlike the world, which
seems to be the embodiment of pure evil and sickness. Evil and sin are diseases
that must be cured through being regenerated through the Holy Spirit. God does
not break His own Laws, or at least if He did, He would have a good reason to
do so. Without a system of order, there is chaos. God is not chaos.
God never brings confusion.
Chaos and Confusion are the Devil’s Modus Opreandi, not God’s. God never
tests, but when we are tested by this world, He monitors the results. He brought the new covenant or new
agreement to us through His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Knowing we cannot ever be perfect, He
gave us a way to be accounted as perfect at the Judgment Day – One Sacrifice,
Made One time, by One Man who was God, for All Mankind for All Time. Jesus is our light and our life. Through Him all things are
possible.
All salvation takes is the simple understanding of a
child or a shepherd. The simple
truth that is Christ. He was not
complex. His message was not
sophisticated. He is the way. The One Way!
This is the first day of the New Calendar Year. Remember also, it is the first day of
the remainder of your life here on earth, let it count for something. We live
in the present, the past will never come again and tomorrow never comes. Take
the right path starting right now.
Be of God - Live of God - Act of God
[1]
The name Jesus,
savior, is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, which was originally
Hoshea (Num. 13:8, 16), but changed by Moses into Jehoshua (Num. 13:16; 1 Chr.
7:27), or Joshua. After the Exile it assumed the form Jeshua, whence the Greek
form Jesus. It was given to our
Lord to denote the object of his mission, to save.
[2]
Yet, do not
misapprehend, we know but little of His Laws and the laws of the universe as He
made them. Our grasp of the space
time continuum is little beyond that possessed by those at Moses time. He is, was and always will be. We live in the present, remember the past and prepare for
what will be, the best we can.
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