I was very pleased to find this particular list of things to “give up” in Lent, and I think that they are as true for us today as they were when they were first published 65 years ago.

Many of the suggestions are about having a more positive attitude and a trust in God. That’s not an easy thing though. The news these days, whether from the Middle East, from Europe, or from America, is nothing short of horrifying. It makes the suggestion to “GIVE UP your worries—instead trust God with them,” a very difficult thing to ask. And while trust in God we must, we must also take action. Trusting does not mean a lack of action. We can give up looking at people’s worst points, speaking unkindly, our hatred and dislike of anyone, and the fear which prevents Christian witness. Pray for the world and for peace.

This Lent, take up your cross and follow Christ, for it is through him that we go forward to change the world with love, never with violence. Make your voice heard, and stand for the things that Jesus asks of us when he says, “Follow me.”

The post Lenten Wisdom from 1961 appeared first on Anglican Life.

While “Valentine” was a common name in the early Church, two figures are specifically remembered on February 14: Valentine of Rome (martyred in 269) and Valentine of Terni (martyred in 273). Numerous legends surround them, including stories of secret marriages performed for soldiers forbidden to wed, and the healing of a blind girl (a miracle that reportedly led her entire family to convert to Christianity). Though we know little about the true historical figures, we continue to celebrate the day in remembrance of the early martyrs who bore the name.

Personally, I miss the simplicity of exchanging good wishes with classmates. We can choose to see these simple gestures as spiritual acts today. A card can bring warmth to someone who is alone, while sharing a tray of cookies becomes a way of sharing food with a neighbour. This is, after all, what we do as Christians: we gather for the Eucharist to share the bread of life. By extending that same spirit, we can warm the coldest month of the year with generosity, reaching beyond our immediate families to the wider community around us.

Perhaps this year, we can take a page out of our childhood books and ignore the pressure of grand romantic displays. Instead, try sending a friend a card just to let them know that you’re thinking of them. It’s a nice way to bring cheer and warmth to what can be a very cold, frosty month here in Atlantic Canada.

The post Valentine’s Day: Bringing Warmth and Generosity in A Cold Month appeared first on Anglican Life.

Hosted by Bishop Samuel Rose and Archdeacon Charlene Taylor, the clergy retreat took place at The Wilds, following a day of travels that included meeting with an “iconic member of Newfoundland’s canine family” when she encountered a Newfoundland dog!

Beyond the retreat, Archbishop Anne spent time enjoying the Newfoundland’s rich culture of hospitality, including attending the 133rd Anniversary Dinner and Auction for the Church Lads’ Brigade (CLB). A highlight of the evening was her winning bid on a silent auction item: twenty pounds of shrimp!

Archbishop Anne’s talks at the retreat focused on calling and vocation, and as she heard stories from the members of the clergy, she found them to be a group serving with extraordinary dedication. She reflected, “There is such a down-to-earth sense of this is where I’m meant to be… They just keep giving and serving God. No complaints. It was very moving.” In her final sermon, drawing on Luke 5, she reminded them that when Jesus calls, “he sees something in each of us that we don’t always see in ourselves.”

Leaving the province with deep thanks for Bishop Sam and Archdeacon Charlene, Archbishop Anne reflected in her blog that “a little bit of Newfoundland has rubbed off on me and I will be carrying it all in my heart as I head home.” Her visit has strengthened the bonds of affection that knit the Anglican Church of Canada together across great distances.

The post Archbishop Anne Germond’s Visit to The Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador appeared first on Anglican Life.

In today’s world that is often saturated with information—our phones ding with notifications so much that I prefer to have mine on silent a good deal of the time—we can become overwhelmed. We can hear an inspiring sermon, or read a good book, or hear an interesting podcast, but we rarely feel the need to act on them immediately. We think about them for a minute, then something else comes along, and we get distracted by whatever the new obsession is.

The shepherds from the nativity narrative remind us that faith often requires a radical “Go!”—a willingness to move quickly from passive reception to active investigation. They “hurried off” and found the scene just as the angels had described. The message of the angels was confirmed by the reality of finding Jesus. This experience validates the divine message and roots their faith in reality. When we actively seek out and engage with the central reality of our faith—whether through worship, prayer, or serving others—we often find the reality confirming what we were told, transforming knowledge into conviction. Finding Jesus in the manger caused any doubts to dissolve.

For us, seeking this means moving past intellectual understanding of the Gospel to demanding genuine experience: seeing God’s love enacted at the food bank, finding peace in prayer during a crisis, or witnessing the power of reconciliation in a broken relationship.

The shepherds then go out into the world again, because you cannot stay there in that moment. When we look at our nativity scenes, it’s all frozen in time, and the shepherds just lounge around for weeks. In reality, we read that they “returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.” They are the first witnesses, and were able to go back to their lives to share what they had seen and now believed.

The shepherds didn’t over-complicate the experience that they’d had, but simply glorified God. For modern Christians, this means that our professional and home lives—the equivalent of the shepherd’s fields—become the stage for continued worship. We must take the message that we receive at Christmas from the Church and take it out into the world. The world is watching to see if our faith makes a discernible, joyful difference in how we handle stress, loss, and success. In Luke’s Gospel, we are given a powerful example of how to be witnesses to the coming of Jesus into our broken world.

The shepherds show us that an encounter with the divine needs to be an active thing, and not a static moment, frozen in time. We cannot just look at the calm of the manger in Bethlehem: we need to take the message of Jesus Christ back to our daily lives. If we can learn to turn off the background noise of today’s messy world, we can follow in their humble footsteps and show that the presence of the Messiah has truly changed everything, and continues to influence the world today, and how we live in it.

The post The Shepherds: A Blueprint For Us Today appeared first on Anglican Life.

For us as Christians, this act of remembrance is a theological one—a moment to face the costs of our human failure to maintain peace, and work to end violence in our world. And yet we still live in a world of conflicts, and they can escalate with alarming speed. Friends are divided by the current political realities, and we all see horrible wars that continue to drag on with no end in sight. Modern conflict is brutal, and often erases the lines between those who are actually fighting and civilians. When we honour those who have died in world conflicts, we must also remember those countless civilians whose lives were also destroyed, the vulnerable, the displaced, and the silenced victims of war. Of course, we must honour the fallen soldiers, but also these others, casualties in our worldwide inability to be peaceful.

We must pray for peace, and ask ourselves how we can bring that about. We may not be able to change the world, but we can most certainly make a dent.

Striving for peace is not a passive activity; it demands our participation. We can work to build just and equitable systems, always keeping in mind Christ’s words “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). This is not an option for followers of Jesus: we are called to come together in this ongoing work, and shared vocation, of conflict prevention, seeking justice and peace for all.

None of this is easy, and I certainly cannot hope to solve it in this simple editorial. But as we gather together this year on November 11th, and we stand around the Cenotaph, we must be careful not to glorify past empires, but seek the Kingdom of God. We must work to dismantle any system, whether old or new, that perpetuates injustice and pours fuel on any kind of violence and inhumanity. We can best honour those who have given their lives by working to ensure that such a sacrifice need never be made again. They did not fight to be celebrated, but they did fight for peace, for justice, and for freedom from oppression and cruelty.

As followers of the Prince of Peace, we are called to let our remembrances become more than a simple yearly ritual. We have a responsibility to be peacemakers, here and now.

Almighty God, we hold in memory those you have sheltered, drawing them from war’s great tempest to the stillness of your peace. Let that profound peace soothe the anxious spirit, awaken the cause of justice for every life, and knit together all nations in harmony; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The post Our Christian Vocation of Peace appeared first on Anglican Life.

The Gospel lesson that is appointed for this commemoration is John 4:32-38, a passage in which Jesus tells his disciples that his “food” is to do the will of God and finish his work, explaining that the spiritual harvest of people coming to faith is ready—both those who sow and those who reap will rejoice together in eternal life. Jesus emphasizes that they are entering into a harvest for which others have already laboured, which naturally fits well with the idea of an Anglican Church in Canada built on the work done in the Church since its beginnings (especially within our “mother,” the Church of England). The Church needs this “firm foundation,” to quote the familiar hymn. A strong root makes for a strong tree. But while roots anchor and nourish, for the plant to thrive a gardener needs to look beyond them to the whole plant. Neglecting leaves, stems, or flowers can lead to unseen diseases, pest infestations, or structural weaknesses that hinder growth and fruitfulness.

The Church, though strongly rooted in its foundations, must continually evolve to remain vibrant and relevant. While we aren’t called to follow every trend, which would be impossible, we cannot afford to be out of touch with a changing world. A lack of transparency and a history of intolerance have, to our shame, often led the Church to cover up its faults. Too often, those in authority have mistakenly believed that their actions were above question or correction.

Today, we need to be better than that. The wider world can see everything, and will no longer indulge the Church as it once did—nor should it! Discrimination, intolerance, and prejudice were never acceptable, and there can be no excuse for them. We are called instead to embody Christ’s love through justice, compassion, and integrity in all that we do.

As we mark September 18th we are called to honour our heritage while boldly moving forward, ensuring that we remain connected to a world that demands authenticity. We must be rooted, but also growing and changing. It’s only through acceptance, humility, and a willingness to change for the better that we can continue the spiritual harvest and fulfil God’s work in Canada today.

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I’ve always known about John: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” We had the Godspell soundtrack when I was a kid, and I used to listen to it a lot. That’s the title of the opening track, and I loved it from the moment I first heard it. It’s uplifting! It’s hopeful!

Isn’t hope what we all need? What we’re all searching for? Hope is the light at the end of the tunnel that we all fight towards, even if it’s a faint glimmer. For Christians, that light is Jesus. The light of Christ is never dull or dimmed. But we are all human, and the things of this world get in the way and can cloud our sight-lines. But the light is never far, and John the Baptist is there, shouting, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:29).

And when John sees Jesus and proclaims him to be the Lamb of God, he does what he’s been doing all along: he baptizes his cousin. Sure, he initially says that he should be the one being baptized by Jesus (Matthew 3:14), but Jesus disagrees, and so begins Jesus’ public ministry. This connection to Jesus through our baptisms allows the author of Romans (6:4) to write: “We are therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that … we may too live a new life.”

John is not a comfortable kind of figure. Matthew describes him as wearing clothes made of camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey. Something about John makes me think of an off-the-grid life of today—calling us all to change our consumerist ways, abandon oil and gas, and “get ourselves back to the garden,” to quote the amazing Joni Mitchell. John was never afraid to be who he was called to be—unapologetic in his decision to speak out for what he believed in, and for the laws of God. In fact, the choice to speak up for his beliefs eventually cost him his life.

John the Baptist never stopped pointing to Jesus. His own fame and followers never distracted him from that mission. At university, I was introduced to This is the Record of John, an anthem written by the English composer Orlando Gibbons. The text is taken from John’s Gospel, 1:19–23, in which priests and Levites are sent to question John the Baptist about who he is. John outright denies being the Messiah, never wavering and never tempted to take all the fame for himself. John describes himself simply, saying, “I am the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.”

John the Baptist reminds us that our calling isn’t always to be comfortable, but to be faithful—to prepare the way, even when the path is unclear. We are all encouraged to lift our eyes to the light, to listen for the voice in the wilderness leading to Jesus.

The post A Voice In The Wilderness appeared first on Anglican Life.

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In my world of editing, we are particularly concerned about the seventh of the “Seven Hypotheses” that were published last summer in the article Commission asks: Time to axe General Synod, Journal? in the Anglican Journal (https://anglicanjournal.com/commission-asks-time-to-axe-general-synod-journal/). Hypothesis Seven states: “It is time to end independent editorial journalism funded by General Synod.” I’ve sat with this for a while now—for months—it nags at the back of my mind.

I’ll start with the 2019 campaign to get everyone to resubscribe to their diocesan papers. While there were issues with its execution, I understand the goal: to obtain a clean and accurate list of people who subscribe to the Anglican Journal and its diocesan sections. We went through that process, so now, as of January 2025, we know that the Anglican Journal has 29,839 subscribers, and Anglican Life has 3,206. We know that our papers are going to homes where they are wanted, read, and loved.

There are more papers than that, though. In addition to their presence in people’s homes, we must also acknowledge our Church papers’ role in more public spaces. I love our local public library, and I know that in the newspaper section, current copies of both the Anglican Journal and Anglican Life are available to anyone interested in seeing what the Anglican Church is doing—an important witness and ministry. They’re also available at our cathedral and in other parish churches, where tourists and other visitors can gain insight into the Anglican Church. The total circulation for the Anglican Journal is 34,494, and it’s 5,510 for Anglican Life; these numbers include these other, non-household subscriptions.

While talking about cuts to journalism at the national level, it’s worth noting that Anglican Life has an excellent, professional website hosted on Anglican News Canada, a platform managed by General Synod. The web designer, who handles technical aspects for all diocesan papers, is employed by the ACC, and this service is currently provided at no cost to Anglican Life (and other diocesan newspapers too). Would changes that “end independent editorial journalism funded by General Synod” jeopardize this?

Anglican Life’s website, though expressly not a replacement for print, is crucial. It provides instant access to current news and preserves past issues in a searchable archive, catering to those seeking timely updates and those revisiting stories. In modern journalism, a website is essential for relevance and adaptability. Should Hypothesis Seven end General Synod’s support for diocesan websites, it would be another significant loss.

So, I’m asking General Synod to step back from this—the loss is too great for the average Anglican in the pew. We are not just numbers on a spreadsheet—we are your people. People who, quite recently, chose to continue this relationship with their Church and with the good news of the Gospel shared through these publications. This is how we celebrate together, how we mourn together, how we share our faith journeys, and how we unite in these challenging times.

This is not the “something” that has to give. The 29,839 Anglicans who just asked to keep getting their papers aren’t wrong.

The post The “Something” Isn’t Funding For Journalism appeared first on Anglican Life.

I have always been deeply moved by Luke 2:19: “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” After the birth of Jesus, Mary’s quiet reflection becomes a profound moment in scripture. She isn’t swept up by the excitement or the miraculous events surrounding her; instead, she takes it all in, pondering the significance of the child she has just brought into the world.

Of course, even before this moment, during the months leading up to Jesus’ birth, Mary didn’t make a spectacle of the fact that she was carrying the Son of God. She didn’t seek attention or validation—her focus was inward, prayerful, and deeply attuned to the mystery of what God was doing through her.

This shows us something important about our own journey with God. Jesus was born to bring us into deeper union with him, and Mary’s example reminds us that this union requires a lot of reflection and prayer, not distractions or entertainment. In our busy world in which we are bombarded with new ideas every day, it’s easy to look for quick fixes or flashy solutions, even within the Church, hoping that some program or plan will “save us” or revive our faith. But as Mary shows us, a real relationship with God isn’t built on gimmicks. It’s built in the quiet places of our hearts, in moments of prayer, self-examination, and reflection on the mystery of Christ.

C. S. Lewis wrote that the Church’s primary task is to draw us to Christ and to make us “little Christs.” He said that if the Church is not doing this, then all its other works—cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself—are ultimately pointless. The mission of the Church is to lead us into transformation, to help us become more like Christ.

Like Mary, we are called to keep these things in our hearts, never letting them drift far from who we are. Her reflection was an active thing in her life. She prayed, she pondered, and she likely struggled with concerns for her son, wondering if she was doing all she could for him. (Doesn’t every parent?)

In the same way, our prayer lives should not be passive or neglected. We must take responsibility for our own spiritual growth, nurturing our relationship with Christ through personal prayer, reflection, study of the Bible, and daily commitment. The path to becoming more like Jesus is not lined with flashy slogans or shortcuts, but with genuine devotion, much like the quiet yet profound faith that Mary showed us.

Merry Christmas!

The post Quiet Reflection: Following Mary’s Example in Our Journey With Christ appeared first on Anglican Life.