All Hallows Evening Prayer for Saturday Evening (October 22, 2022)

 

THE BLESSING OF THE LIGHT

A lamp or candle may be lit.

The Lord is my light and my salvation:
my God shall make my darkness to be bright.

The light and peace of Jesus Christ be with you
and also with you.

Blessed are you, Lord God, creator of day and night:
to you be praise and glory for ever.
As darkness falls you renew your promise
to reveal among us the light of your presence.
By the light of Christ, your living Word,
dispel the darkness of our hearts
that we may walk as children of light
and sing your praise throughout the world.
Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
Blessed be God for ever.

Other candles may be lit as the following is sung.

Open this link in a new tab to hear Michael John Trotta’s choral arrangement of “O Gracious Light.”

O gracious Light,
pure brightness of the
everliving Father in heaven.
O Jesus, Christ, holy and blessed!

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the vesper light,
we sing thy praises, O God:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are worthy at all times
to be praised,
You are worthy at all times
to be praise,
You are worthy at all times,
worthy to be praised,
praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, Giver of light,
you are worthy to be glorified
through all the worlds.
O gracious Light,
O gracious Light,
pure brightness
of the everliving Father in heaven.
O Jesus, Christ, holy and blessed!
O gracious Light, gracious Light,
pure brightness
of the everliving Father in heaven.
Jesus, Christ, holy and blessed!
Holy and blessed!
Holy and blessed!

As Psalm 141 — A Song of the Evening Sacrifice, is sung, incense may be burned.

Open this link in a new tab to hear Peter Inwood’s setting of Psalm 141, “O Lord, Let My Prayer Rise Before You Like Incense.”

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

1. Lord, I am calling:
hasten to help me.
Listen to me as I cry to you.
Let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

2. Lord, set a guard at my mouth,
keep watch at the gate of my lips.
Let my heart not turn to things that are wrong,
to sharing the evil deeds done by the sinful.
No, I will never taste their delights.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

3. The good may reprove me,
in kindness chastise me,
but the wicked shall never anoint my head.
Ev’ry day I counter their malice with prayer.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

4 To you, Lord, my God, my eyes are turned:
in you I take refuge;
do not forsake me.
Keep me from the traps they have set for me,
from the snares of those who do evil.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

5 Praise to the Father, praise to the Son,
all praise to the life-giving Spirit.
As it was, is now and shall always be
for ages unending. Amen.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you as incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

This opening prayer is said.

That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful,
let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence is kept.

As our evening prayer rises before you, O God,
so may your mercy come down upon us
to cleanse our hearts
and set us free to sing your praise
now and for ever.
Amen.

THE WORD OF GOD

PSALMODY

Open this link in a new tab to hear Jonathan Asprey’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 84.”How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place.”

How lovely is thy dwelling place
O Lord of Hosts to me
My soul is longing and fainting
The courts of the Lord to see
My heart and flesh they are singing
For joy to the living God
How lovely is thy dwelling place
O Lord of Hosts to me

Even the sparrow finds a home
Where he can settle down
And the swallow she can build a nest
Where she may lay her young
Within the courts of the Lord of Hosts
My King, my Lord and my God
And happy, those, who are dwelling where
The song of praise is sung.

And I’d rather be a door keeper
And only stay a day
Than live the life of a sinner
And have to stay away
For the Lord is shining as the sun
And the Lord is like a shield
And no good thing does God withhold
From those who walk the way.

How lovely is thy dwelling place
O Lord of Hosts to me
My soul is longing and fainting
The courts of the Lord to see
My heart and flesh they are singing
For joy to the living God
How lovely is thy dwelling place
O Lord of Hosts to me

Silence is kept.

Lord God,
sustain us in this vale of tears
with the vision of your grace and glory,
that, strengthened by the bread of life,
we may come to your eternal dwelling place;
in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

CANTICLE

Open this link to hear Carl P. Daw, Jr.’s metrical paraphrase of the Dignus est, “Splendor and Honor.”

1 Splendor and honor, majesty and power,
are yours, O Lord God, fount of every blessing,
for by your bidding was the whole creation
called into being.

2 Praised be the true Lamb, slain for our redemption,
by whose self-offering we are made God's people:
a priestly kingdom, from all tongues and nations,
called to God's service.

3 To the Almighty, throned in heavenly splendor,
and to the Savior, Christ our Lamb and Shepherd,
be adoration, praise, and glory given,
now and for ever.

Silence may be kept.

SCRIPTURE READING

2 Timothy 4:6–8, 16–18 Paul’s Final Words

As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. And now the prize awaits me—the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.

The first time I was brought before the judge, no one came with me. Everyone abandoned me. May it not be counted against them. But the Lord stood with me and gave me strength so that I might preach the Good News in its entirety for all the Gentiles to hear. And he rescued me from certain death. Yes, and the Lord will deliver me from every evil attack and will bring me safely into his heavenly Kingdom. All glory to God for ever and ever! Amen.

Silence is kept.

May your word live in us
and bear much fruit to your glory

HOMILY

A Mark of a True Disciple—A Readiness to Forgive

It is believed that the apostle Paul was executed not long after he compiled his second and last letter to his protégé Timothy. As the words of today’s reading, 2 Timothy 4:6–8, 16–18 tell us, he was prepared for his impending death.

As we can tell from what he wrote Timothy, Paul believed that he had faithfully served the Lord Jesus who had called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles.

In all likelihood Paul was decapitated. A number of the bodies of executed prisoners which were buried near the site of a Roman military camp on the outskirts of what was London when the south of Great Britain was a Roman province had their skulls lying beside them showing that they had been decapitated. As a Roman citizen, he would have been spared crucifixion. In any event Paul died a martyr for his faith.

To learn more about Paul’s conversion and the trials and tribulations that he faced as an apostle to the non-Jewish world, I recommend reading Luke’s Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s own letters. Paul was nearly killed on a number of occasions and had several narrow escapes. Paul also faced his share of temptations.

Beside Paul’ s faith, his confidence and trust in the Lord Jesus, one thing stand out to me in today’s reading—Paul’s readiness to forgive others. His companions deserted him, but he asks that their abandonment of him not be counted against them. I am reminded of Jesus’ prayer that God forgive those who crucified him.

Jesus set a very high standard for his disciples when it came to forgiving the failings of others. He practiced what he taught. Paul sough to emulate him and taught others to do the same.

Forgiving the failings of others is not always easy. One reason it can be difficult is that what we perceive to be a failing on their part may not be an accurate perception of who they are or of what they may have done. We may have let our feelings do our thinking for us. We may have let someone else’s misperceptions of the situation influence our judgment and may have judged the situation wrongly. If we let go of our mistaken perceptions, we will have to reappraise a particular situation and we are not happy with what might be the possible outcome of that reappraisal. Our anxiety about what that might entail and our reluctance to admit that we made mistakes and drew the wrong conclusions in our initial appraisal of the situation may form a significant barrier to forgiveness.

We may have difficulty in forgiving the failings of others because we have made up our mind about the matter and we are not willing to change it. Being right at least in our own mind is more important to us than following the standard of forgiveness that Jesus established for his disciples.

On the other hand, the reason we say that we are upset with them may not be the actual reason we are angry at them. We may not fully recognize why we are feeling angry toward them. We may not be in touch with our feelings but they are calling the shots!

These are just three of the many ways that we keep ourselves from forgiving others’ failings as our Lord taught us to do and giving them a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance, and more. Our Lord did not set a limit on the number of times that we are to forgive someone and give them another chance. He taught us to make allowances for them and to give them the benefit of the doubt—to believe something good about them, rather than something bad, when we have the possibility of doing either.

We may be tempted to think, “I am not Jesus. I am not Paul. I am an ordinary Christian. I cannot be expected to forgive others’ failings the way they did.” However, Jesus does expect us to forgive them the same way he and Paul did. He has clearly told us what he expects from his disciples. He has not left us to guess what he expected—to read his mind.

Learning to forgive others’ failings again and again and again means breaking ourselves of the habit of looking for wrongdoing where there is no wrongdoing and imagining it when we cannot find it; of catastrophizing situations—treating them as if they are far worse than they are; of choosing to think the worst of someone on the flimsiest of evidence; of giving more weight to the bad things we hear about someone rather than the good things we hear; of not taking the time or making the effort to verify the truth of what we hear; of having a pet theory of what happened or is happening, trying to make what we hear or observe fit that theory and ignoring the things we hear or observe that don’t fit it; of needing to pin the blame for something that we perceive as bad or wrong on one individual or group; and a number of other habits of thinking to which human beings are prone and which keep us from showing forgiveness towards others.

Among the reasons that we are hearing and seeing so much ill feeling between people in the world in our time is that the internet has made these tendencies in us worse. When we give free rein to these tendencies, forgiveness goes out the window.

I do not believe that I would be wrong in saying that self-awareness, being aware of how we think, feel, and behave, is critical to forgiving the failings of others. Jesus appears to have understood the need for self-awareness when he told his disciples to first examine themselves and attend to their own faults before pointing someone else’s faults out to them and offering to help them correct them.

Sometimes what we perceive to be a weakness in someone else’s character is really a weakness in our own character that we are projecting onto them. We may think that someone is angry or annoyed with us when it is actually we who are angry or annoyed with them. We are projecting our feelings onto them. Rather than relating to someone else as a unique person and getting to know them, we relate to them as someone from our past. We do not interact with them as a real person, but as a product of our own imagination. Consequently, we may misread them, misunderstanding their words and actions. We may experience anxiety when we are around them, not because they have done something to trigger our anxiety but because we experienced anxiety when we were around that person from our past. Being self-aware enables us to recognize how we ourselves may be contributing to a situation and to take responsibility for that contribution.

Recognizing how we contributed to a situation does not mean taking the full blame for what happened, thereby freeing others from accepting responsibility for their own contribution to a situation, something that they may desire since it would exonerate them from any responsibility for what happened. In reality situations are never that simple and they are rarely one person’s fault. Other people play a part.

Too often people will keep themselves in a state of anxiety, imagining that the worst is going to happen, when if they are more open and direct in communicating with others, they would discover that they had little or no reason to be anxious.

Anxiety can be contagious. We can pick up on other people’s feelings. When we are around an anxious person, we ourselves may become anxious. Out of our own anxiety we may reinforce someone else’s anxiety, leading them to believe a particular situation is far worse than what it really is. That sort of thing does happen.

The anxiety-related behavior of one person can trigger anxiety in another person and that person’s anxiety-related behavior can in turn trigger more anxiety in the first person. People who do not understand what is happening can exacerbate the situation by accommodating the anxiety of one or both individuals. In this kind of situation no one person is at fault.

Open, direct communication is the key to preventing and resolving this kind of situation. Regrettably people who are prone to anxiety have difficulty in communicating in this manner, fearing confrontation or some other negative outcome. They let their imaginations get the best of them. They may come from a family in which their expressions of thoughts and feelings met with a negative reaction from a parent or parental figure, so they expect a negative reaction from other people too.

Forgiveness also plays an important part. In forgiving others, we recognize that people make mistakes. They may exercise poor judgment and make the wrong decisions. We also recognize that we make mistakes ourselves in the way that we understand someone or something. We too can exercise poor judgment and make the wrong decisions. When difficulties arise between us and someone else, it is not entirely one person’s fault. We may have failed to communicate personal boundaries. We may not have been completely honest with them. We may have failed to communicate expectations. We may unrealistically believe that others should know what our expectations are without communicating our expectations to them. Or we may not have been clear in communicating our expectations and we may have failed to make sure that they understood us.

When we forgive someone, we do not hold their mistakes, their poor judgment, and their wrong decisions against them. We let go of any anger and resentment that we feel. We also let go of any hurt or disappointment. We may not believe what they said or did was right, but we do not hold it against them. Like Paul, we do not allow the circumstances in which we find ourselves keep us from forgiving them. We let bygones be bygones. We do not hang on to any ill feelings toward them. We show them what our Lord told us we should show others. We show them mercy. In doing so, we show that we are indeed the children of the Most High who in in the words of the prophet Jonah is “a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.”

Silence is kept.

GOSPEL CANTICLE

Open this link in a new tab to hear the choral setting of the Magnificat, “My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord,” from Don Locklair’s Montréal Service.

My soul doth magnify the Lord,
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
For he hath regarded
the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold from henceforth
all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me,
and holy, holy is his Name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him
throughout all generations.
He hath showed strength with his arm;
he hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel,
as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed
for ever, for ever, seed for ever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost:
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end, world without end. Amen.

Silence may be kept.

PRAYERS

(Let us offer our prayers to the source of all love and all life, saying, “Lord, hear our prayer.”)

Merciful Lord, we pray for all who call themselves Christians: that we may be faithful disciples of your Son Jesus Christ.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for N our pastor, for all pastors, elders, and local preachers and for all who serve Christ in his Church: that they may remain faithful to their calling and rightly proclaim the word of truth. 

Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for the leaders of the nations, and all in authority: that your people may lead quiet and peaceable lives.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for our community and those who live here, the poor and the rich, the elderly and the young, men and women: that you will show your loving kindness to all.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for those who are sick or injured or in trouble or need that you will deliver them from their distress.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for _______________________.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We give you thanks for ___________________.

Lord, hear our prayer.

We give thanks for all the saints who have found favor in your sight from earliest times, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and those whose names are known to you alone: and we pray that we too may be counted among your faithful witnesses.
Lord, hear our prayer.

Free Prayer

In silent or spontaneous prayer all bring before God the concerns of the day.

THE COLLECT

Merciful God,
teach us to be faithful in change and uncertainty,
that trusting in your word
and obeying your will
we may enter the unfailing joy of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

The Lord be with you.
The Lord bless you.

As our Savior taught his disciples,
we pray:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen.

CLOSING SONG

Open this link in a new tab to hear John Michael Talbot’s “Father Make Me Holy.”

1 Father make me holy,
Jesus make me holy,
Spirit make me holy,
Holy One.

2 The Father will cherish me.
Jesus will cherish me.
The Spirit will cherish me,
Kindly One

3 The Three aid my hope,
The Three aid my love
The Three aid my eyes
and my knee from stumbling

4 In the name of the Father,
In the name of the Son,
In the name of the Spirit,
Three in One.

THE CONCLUSION

Let us bless the Lord
Thanks be to God

The almighty and merciful God bless us
and keep us now and for ever. Amen.