PART 45 GOSPEL OF JOHN

In this video Dr. Kevin Hart discusses John 17:1-13. Click on the picture below.

AN APOLOGY to whom it may concern

I realize that I have been indulging a very real fault. Over the years I have allowed myself the luxury of giving in to a curmudgeonly nature, and of wasting time arguing and debating to no purpose, unnecessarily offending people because the tone of my comments was too short. I have felt justified, even self-righteous because, I told myself, these are not merely political matters: They are matters of justice. Therefore, crying out must be in the spirit of the prophets. In fact, I believe that I was right about current events and the importance of justice, but wrong in my manner of communication. I was surprised recently by posts on my own Facebook page, some that were posted there by others, yes (and I warned one of my Facebook "friends" that I would block him if he did it again unless to say Happy Birthday), but too many of my own posts had the potential to cause unnecessary offense. It was as if I had not seen them before.

My brother, Addison, also a priest who lives in Norway and has recently converted to Orthodoxy at the age of sixty-nine, spoke very wisely to me, and pointed out that one of the dangers of social media is that it gives us the illusion that what we say will matter, that we have power to effect real change. But, among millions of voices, we do not. In many ways it can impair our judgment, and all too often it has impaired mine, I ask forgiveness from any and all who have ever been offended.

Fr. Hart

PART 44 GOSPEL OF JOHN

Dr. Kevin Hart goes over John 16:23-33. Click on the picture below.

REVISED.

Fr. Harrelson sent me this a little while ago.

"Fr Hart, it has been pointed out to me that I gave you the wrong sermon. I wrote two this week. With everything going on, I did not like the first one I wrote and used a different one. Can you please change the post on the continuum blog to the version I used today?"

I must concur that what he asked me to replace the first one with is better. 

PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN: TRINITY 13 2025

We were not able to make a video this morning, but here is the sermon preached at Saint Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church on Sunday, September 14, 2025: The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity.

The Epistle : Galatians 3:16-

The Gospel : Luke 10:23-37 (The Parable of the Good Samaritan)

Fr. Nicholas Harrelson 

In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. Amen. 

When a student of the Law of God asked Christ what he should do to inherit eternal life, our Lord turned the question back to him. What is written in the scriptures? He asked him. What do you read there? The man replied by quoting the two great commandments from God's Word, to love God with one's whole being, and one's neighbor as oneself. We also hear these two injunctions when we have the Communion service, in the words that begin with the introduction, "Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith." This use of these two commandments comes from the Twenty-second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. A lawyer asked Jesus, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" His reply was the same as the lawyer's reported in today's New Testament lesson, and is a part of the Gospel for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity.

 

These two commandments are, to say the least, of considerable importance. For Jesus praised this lawyer's answer, and said, "This do, and thou shall live." Obey these commandments, and you will inherit eternal life.

 

The first one comes from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, and then is repeated several times in that book. The second comes from Leviticus 19, verse 18. In this verse, it's possible to interpret the commandment as applying only to one's own people, in this case, fellow Jews. However, verses 33 and 34 of this chapter include non-Israelites dwelling among God's chosen people. The first verse says, "If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him." In a generous outreach of the divine love, verse 34 adds, "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself."

 

Two reasons are given as a basis for their charity. They are to remember their own unhappy experience as inhabitants of Egypt, and treat the foreigners among them better than they were treated: "Ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." The second reason was the special relationship which they had with God, and that He was the source of the commandment: "I am the Lord your God."

 

After Jesus' praise of the lawyer for his answer, he, "willing to justify himself," asked, "And who is my neighbour?" The lawyer seems to have been asking if there were limits on the commandment, if there were some to whom it didn't apply. Leviticus seems to restrict its application to other Jews and to foreigners living among them.

 

But Jesus, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, teaches that there are no limits to neighborly love. Anyone in need whom a person can help is his neighbor. Everyone should follow the example of the Samaritan, who "was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves;" everyone should "Go, and do . . . likewise."

 

A priest and a Levite came to the beaten man before the Samaritan did. They were official representatives of a religion which emphasized alms-giving and deeds of mercy. Of all men, they would have been the most expected to help, but they both "passed by on the other side." They might have thought that the man was dead, and wanted to avoid the ritual defilement which contact with a dead person caused, because this defilement might have inhibited them from carrying out their religious duties.

 

The needs of the beaten man in the ditch should have been far more important to them . In this respect, someone has given a clear statement of what one should do in similar circumstances: "The truly devout man studies to fulfill perfectly all the duties of his state (his place) in life, and all his really necessary duties of kindness and courtesy to society. He is faithful to his devotional exercises, but is not a slave to them; he interrupts them, he suspends them, he even gives them up for a time, when any reason of necessity or of simple charity requires it." The needs of the man lying in the ditch were far more important than any need for a priest or Levite to avoid ritual defilement.

 

Perhaps these two men feared for their own safety. But the Samaritan didn't let such a concern keep him from helping the victim of the robbers. There had been a long history of hostility between Jews and Samaritans. Christ and His disciples had recently experienced it, when a village in Samaria had refused to let them stay there because they were on their way to Jerusalem.

 

But the people of Samaria had the two great commandments in their scriptures, and Jesus knew that some of them had learned their meaning. The man in the parable demonstrated by the practical help which he gave the robbery victim that he had learned to love God and his neighbor. As the story says, he treated the man's injuries, took him to an inn, and provided for his future care before he left the next morning.

 

"Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself." Someone has given an illuminating paraphrase of this commandment in these words: "You should be beneficial or helpful to your neighbor as you would be to yourself . . . The Bible is not commanding us to feel something – love – but to do something – to be useful or beneficial to help your neighbor." The Samaritan clearly showed he knew what the commandment meant.

 

He and all who do likewise are responding to what God in His love has done for the forgiveness of the sins of all people and for their redemption. God's love for mankind was demonstrated supremely in what He did through Christ. By His love for us. He inspires and sustains our love for Him and for others, As Saint John wrote in his first epistle, "We love him, because he first loved us." (1st John 4:19) In considering the second great commandment, we can hardly do better than to conclude with some additional verses from Saint John: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." This, of course, means that we love the victim of violent crimes but it also means we love the perpetrator. Christ died for the sins of all. Christ seeks the repentance of all. 

PART 43 GOSPEL OF JOHN

In this video Dr. Kevin Hart continues the study of the Gospel of John and discusses John 16:16-22. Click on the image below.

Why I am a (Critical) Zionist

by Fr. Matthew Kirby

Introduction

First, some definitions. Anti-Semitism is animosity towards Jews because they are Jews, and normally includes beliefs that Jews are generally untrustworthy, avaricious, manipulative, malicious towards Gentiles and too powerful. These purported characteristics may be ascribed to racial and cultural factors or to religious ones. Anti-Zionism is the belief that the modern state of Israel is morally and legally illegitimate and that Jews should not have been given their own nation-state within their ancient homeland, the region renamed as Palestine by the Roman Empire. The reason given for this opposition to the return of Jews to (part of) their old national territory is that it occurred through the (partial) displacement of Palestinian Arabs who had been there for centuries. The question of whether anti-Zionism is by definition anti-Semitic is contested, including by Jews, and I will not automatically assume an identity between them.

There is increasing animosity around the Western world towards Israel (and Jews outside it) that has surged since the terrorist attack on it of October 7 2023 and its aftermath, the war in Gaza. Is this anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism? Or is it both? The fact that, in Australia and elsewhere outside Israel, it has involved numerous attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses plus the targeting of Jewish people and communities per se, answers the question. Whether enacted by leftists, Islamists or neo-Nazis, clearly this phenomenon is often a thoroughly anti-Semitic brand of anti-Zionism. Russian Australians are not being targeted for Putin’s acts, nor is anybody seeking out immigrants from China, Iran or Pakistan to persecute, whenever those nations commit or sponsor some outrage.

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 2025

Click on the picture below for the video: Collect, Epistle, Gospel, and Sermon.

To send an offering to Saint Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church you may use the link below.

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PART 42 GOSPEL OF JOHN In this video Dr. Kevin Hart opens for us John 16:1-15. Click on the picture below.

SACRAMENTS AND GRACE : A STUDY PART 1

This is Part One of a study on the sacraments and grace. Click on the image below. 

PART 41 GOSPEL OF JOHN

IN this video Dr. Kevin Hart leads us into a better understanding of John 15:12-27. Click on the picture below for the embedded link.

THE LAST SONG OF CHRISTENDOM

From the devolution of the Roman Empire, as time progressed into the early medieval period, the religion of Christianity, specifically of Catholic Christianity as opposed to the Arianism of the “barbarians,” was the era in which Europe became officially Christian in a nominal sense. The institutions of civilization that went back to the days of the Greek Empire were preserved mostly under the control of the Church. The art of music continued to develop from the ancient Greek modes, including the evolution of written notation. We see the development of music over many centuries going from the Greek modes, and going from simplistic notation for Gregorian chants, into the highly developed system of Tonality. This would reach its peak because of tempered tuning. It belonged both to the Church and to the secular world, both to the Catholic Church of Rome and to Protestants after the Reformation, and it became the property of the Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and Russia also.

The culture of Europe was unified in many ways heading into the Modern era, everything from fashions to the arts belonged to a very recognizable European culture. In time there was really only one royal family for all of Europe, nobility marrying only their own kind, in fact their own cousins. It is to this culture that the word “Christendom” rightly belongs. It is a word every bit as secular in meaning as any word can be, despite its association with the formal religion of Christianity. Christendom applied not only to this unified international culture, but also to the manifold division that was a constant source of wars throughout the entire history of the continent, and the British Isles. We must never, therefore, use the words, “Christendom” and “Christianity” as synonyms, for they are most certainly not synonyms.

In the world of music, specifically, we see grand and glorious expressions of nationalism, expressed in the works of composers whose names we know. Well into the nineteenth century composers created sounds that were meant to stir the national spirit of every country and of every empire or aspiring empire. More than any other composers, the music of Joseph Rheinberger and Camille Saint-Saens expressed an exciting, dramatic, and celebratory self-congratulation by western culture in the height of its power, colonialization, and wealth.

Contrasted against this was a very simple song that was the last dying gasp of any association between Christianity and Christendom. It was not the triumphant and glorious, indeed majestic, music of Rheinberger or Saint-Saens, music that involved full orchestra often with an organ, the famous Organ Symphony of Saint-Saens requiring full orchestra, two pianos and organ, that closes out the era of Christendom in history. It was, rather, a humble and pious song initially accompanied by nothing more than a guitar.

The words to Stille Nacht, Heilege Nacht (Silent Night, Holy Night) had been written by a Catholic priest named Joseph Mohr in the year 1818, and when flooding damaged the organ at the Nikolauskirche (Saint Nicholas Church), in the Obernforf village in Austria, Fr. Mohr called on the organist Franz Xaver Gruber, to set it to music so that something could be sung at the Christmas Eve mass. It became very popular all over Christendom, and was translated into several of the languages of Europe.

Almost a century later, in 1914, this most musically humble and simple of modern Christmas carols would be the last song of Christendom. It had been a chaotic year, one that demonstrated that the religious and cultural unification of Europe was at best a façade, something that had nothing to do with any aspect of what constitutes Christian faith. World War I involved all of the major branches of Christianity, the Orthodox Russians, and the various Protestant and Catholic nations, most of which had, if not national churches, prevailing religious identity country by country. Now they were fighting a war that was devastating all of Europe, and being felt all over the world, a war that to this day has never been explained as to its cause in any coherent manner. Indeed, there is no coherent explanation for what caused World War I, even though we know all of the historical details.

On Christmas Eve 1914, during a time when a shortage of provisions necessarily slowed down the fighting, from the German side of the western front British soldiers saw something to which most of them were not accustomed; they saw a Christmas tree. As far as Christmas trees go it was a humble little piece of pine with a few candles attached to it. It was being carried into full view of all of the soldiers on both sides by German soldiers singing the familiar Carol. Even English soldiers who could not understand the German words could, nonetheless, sing along in their own language Silent Night, knowing the tune from their own church services. This one gesture, the singing of a song about the holy and the good, resulted in a wonderful interruption to the war. The Christmas Truce of 1914, as it has come to be called, spread up and down the western front, though unofficially. The men on both sides ventured out of their trenches into “No Man’s Land” to remember together the birth of Jesus Christ. For a brief moment the sunlight of Christianity broke through the gloomy clouds of the façade called Christendom. All day long on Christmas there was no fighting. The German and English soldiers came to know each other on some level, playing football (soccer) games, having peaceful conversations, and eating together with what rations they had. But to high command on both sides this outbreak of peace could not be tolerated. So, on December 26 to break it up, a major in the British army was dispatched to restore “order.” Having arrived at the front to find only quiet and peace, he took aim at a German soldier with his rifle and killed him. Any one of the millions of actual devil’s advocates could tell you that he saved the day.

What a different world we would be living in if that one last song of Christendom had overpowered politics and war. As a result of World War I, the war to end all pretense, it is an absurdity to refer to Christendom in the present tense. It is a façade we can leave behind, a falsehood, a case of international hypocrisy. Nonetheless, the music of authentic faith goes on. That song cannot be silenced.

SAINT BARTHOLOMEW APOSTLE AUGUST 24

For the video with the Collect, Epistle, Gospel and sermon, click on the picture below.

If you would like to send an offering for the ongoing ministry of Saint Benedict's Anglican Church, we have provided the link below. Thank you.

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PART 40 GOSPEL OF JOHN

In this video Dr. Kevin Hart continues his study by looking at John 15:1-11. Click on the picture for the link.

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 2025

The video contains the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel appointed for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, followed by the SERMON preached at the 10:00 Holy Communion service. Click on the picture for the link.

If you would like to send an offering for the continuing ministry of our parish, you may conveniently use the link below (and thank you). 

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PART 39 GOSPEL OF JOHN

In this video Dr. Kevin Hart continues his study of the Gospel According to Saint John, commenting on John 14:1-12. Click on the picture below.

PART 38 GOSPEL OF JOHN

IN this installment Dr. Kevin Hart discusses John 13:21-38. Click on the picture below.

SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 2025

This video contains the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel appointed for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, and the sermon preached at Saint Benedict's Anglican Catholic Church on August 3, 2025. Click on the picture below; the link is embedded.

If you would like to give for the ongoing ministry of Saint Benedict's Anglican Church, you may use the link below. Thank you.

https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=982V8WUN2N332

PART 37 GOSPEL OF JOHN

In this video Dr. Kevin Hart looks at John 13:1-20. Click on the picture; the link is embedded.

PART 36 GOSPEL OF JOHN

In this installment Dr. Kevin Hart expounds on John 12:44-50. Click the picture below.