good morning and welcome to the dinery garden in canterbury cathedral on this sunday the 1st of august wherever you are in the world feel welcome as we say our morning prayers this is a day when we continue to pray for areas of the world affected by flood and by fire and especially let's concentrate our minds this morning on turkey which is involved in enormous numbers of fires which the the wind is fanning in the hot temperatures and people are being uh evacuated from beaches and resorts by boats and so we we think of all those who are involved in that attempt to put out the fire and rescue work there many other things will be in your head this morning as you bring your prayers other concerns and pictures of different parts of the world including your own so bring bring all those prayers to our worship as we gather on this 1st of august now in the old prayer book calendar it's very much a rural economy in those days and still in our minds this is lama's day which comes from the words loaf mass and on this day the very first fruits of the wheat harvest were gathered and baked into a loaf which was then presented at the altar the third of the rural festivals in the church's calendar plow sunday rogation sunday prayers for the growing crops and now the first fruits of the harvest and we think of that in terms of the offering of first fruits in our reading this morning and part of our reflection as we go through i've actually clipped some ears of wheat which were growing amongst the flowers of the garden congregation's flower garden which we will visit i expect if it's a nice day tomorrow but i think the wheat has come from corn thrown down for the chickens but they're lovely ears of corn and uh they're absolutely right for this day of the first fruits of the wheat harvest which our lord would have known well we shall read our lesson from the old testament this morning but let's begin our act of thanksgiving in morning prayer oh lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise may christ the day star dawn in our hearts and triumph over the shades of night blessed are you sovereign god creator of all to you be glory and praise forever you founded the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of your hands in the fullness of time you made us in your image and in these last days you have spoken to us in your son jesus christ the word made flesh as we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us let the light of your love always shine in our hearts your spirit ever renew our lives and your praises ever be on our lips blessed be god father son and holy spirit blessed be god forever the night has passed and the day lies open before us let us pray with one heart and mind does we rejoice in the gift of this new day so may the light of your presence o god set our hearts on fire with love for you now and forever are men so the first morning of the month and leo and i are here together to say psalm 1 as the psalter begins again on the 1st of august blessed are they who have not walked in the council of the wicked nor lingered in the way of sinners nor sat in the assembly of the scornful their delight is in the law of the lord and they meditate on his law day and night like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in due season with leaves that do not wither whatever they do it shall prosper as for the wicked it is not so with them they are like chaff which the wind blows away therefore the wicked shall not be able to stand in the judgment nor the sinner in the congregation of the righteous for the lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked shall perish as i said our lesson this morning comes from the old testament and from the book of the law the book deuteronomy i'm reading from chapter 26 of the book deuteronomy here we are at verse 1. this is a lesson our lord would have known well and it sets out a practice of his own people at that time an offering of thanksgiving when you come into the land that the lord your god is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from your land that the lord your god is giving you and you shall put it in a basket and you shall go to the place that the lord your god will choose to make his name to dwell there and you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him i declare today to the lord your god that i have come into the land that the lord swore to our fathers to give us then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the lord your god and you shall make response before the lord your god saying a wandering aramaian was my father and he went down into egypt and sojourned there few in number but there he became a great nation great mighty and populous and the egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor then we cried to the lord the god of our fathers and the lord heard our voice and saw our affliction our toil and our oppression and the lord brought us out of egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with great deeds of terror with signs and wonders and he brought us into this place and gave us this land a land flowing with milk and honey and behold now i bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you o lord have given me and you shall set the basket down before the lord your god and worship before the lord your god and you shall rejoice in all the goods that the lord your god has given to you and to your house you and the levite and the stranger who is among you a lesson that as i say jesus would have known well and a practice that continued a sacrifice of thanksgiving not of the full harvest that's later in the year in these cultures but the first fruits of the harvest and it was a lovely thing on the first sunday of august to present as a rural parish priest in the parish church of saint john the baptist tisbrian wiltshire year by year the offering of a fresh baked loaf from the first years of the wheat harvest and to give thanks for the fruitfulness not only of the land of course but of all creation all created life and particularly our own creative gifts wheat harvest because of course wheat was a staple crop in the part of the world that our lord was living in and the serra as he tells in the parable scattering the seed is no doubt sowing corn wheat but in other parts of the world the staple crop mostly from a grassy root and it's lovely to sit amongst the grass field which is seeded and sent its seeds into the ground again but here we're talking about the staple diet the bread and here are the ears of wheat which have grown accidentally from the corn thrown down for the hens in the walled garden and they've come up beautifully amongst the wildflowers for wheat is refreshed by the rain and we've had plentiful rain this morning but now the sky is blue and the sun also is needful for the growth of the crops the bread and the ears of corn a sign of the possibility of new beginnings and the first fruits of all that i've put on the table here a bottle of apple juice as a sign of the fruitfulness of the orchard on this day the apples and the pears are nowhere near ready but they're there on the tree swelling out now with the rain and the sun of this part of early summer as the month of august begins and the offering of that is an offering of our own lives as well as we rejoice in the gifts of creation as jesus taught us to do pointing to the signs of the creator's bounty all around and also causing us to care for the life of creation the whole life of our earth in its growing things and in its creatures and in the way that we ourselves look after our own lives and offer them as a sacrifice of thanksgiving day by day there is a hymn and it's lovely always to turn to hymns but there's a hymn that we sing we tend to sing it at harvest time but it's really a llama stay hymn i'll read a bit of it to you it's a hymn by chatterton dicks and it goes to a lovely tune by sarasa sullivan but it begins to the o lord our hearts we raise with hymns of adoration to thee bring sacrifice of praise with shouts of exaltation bright robes of gold the fields are dawn the hills with joy are ringing the valleys stand so thick with corn that even they are singing and now on this our festival day by bountious hand confessing upon thine altar lord we lay the first fruits of thy blessing first fruits lamas is the first of the month of august and it's in this hemisphere uh a time of fruitfulness but this year we have the special pleasure that lama's day is a sunday and so that activity becomes blessed by it being a sunday morning as we sit here with the sign of the first fruits and remember the beauty of that hymn of the first fruits but remember that i i said yesterday when the baby hedgehogs were here and so they were taking up some of our time and i wanted to give more time to the saint who was given us as a year's mind on this day who died in 1556 on the 31st of july it's ignatius loyola and so many have profited from the ignatian form of spirituality based on his spiritual exercises that i wanted to give more time to him and we'll do that now today because it's a story that it's good to tell ignatius was born of a noble family in the basque country in spain and was brought up in his father's castle to begin with in loyola and his mother died very early in his life but he himself was an energetic though were told short of height little boy and uh he longed to be a soldier his great hero was el sid the great champion and uh in in following all of that he learned sword play and was excellent at everything he did physically he was someone who could go and join the armies of those that he would give his loyalty to he became a knight and a soldier but sadly at the siege of pamplona in 1521 when he was only 30 years old his leg was shattered by a cannonball his right leg shattered and at first they gave up hope of his life but they managed to save him and patch the leg up and send him back to his father's castle at loyola and there his sister-in-law magdalena a beloved sister-in-law the wife of one of his brothers looked after him but terrible treatments by his own will were given in the sense that his leg had been badly set and in those days without anaesthetic he caused it to be broken again and mended again and at the time it must have been an agony but he was reading different stories there were no stories of el cid in magdalena's books but he was given the stories of the gospels and given also a latin book de vita christi about the life of christ by ludolph of saxony here we are in western europe where latin was a common language amongst those who read and he read de vita christi about the life of christ and began in his imagination to picture himself in those scenes and those scenes he held on to during the agony of the leg being reset but in the end in 1522 he managed to get to montserrat the benedictine monastery if any of you have been to montserrat there it's it's high up on the mountain and uh there also is a chapel of the virgin which is very famous it also has a wonderful musical tradition and ignatius himself was intensely musical and loved the singing of hymns and songs but what davita christie had inspired in him was imaginative meditation and he imagined now that he would give his life in a different way he thought first of giving his life to the benedictine community at montserrat and reflected on his past life and in the chapel of the virgin hung up his sword and his dagger the arms of military nights at the altar of the virgin during an all-night vigil that he kept and realized that his vocation was quite different he would be a soldier in a different army but his imagination quarried into the depths of scripture and particularly the gospels he went from monserrat realizing his life was not in the stability of the benedictine order and he walked to manresa nearby now if you've been to manresa the cave in which he spent most of his next few years as a beggar and begging his food but praying for hours and hours beside the river there that cave is covered with a beautiful chapel but i found going along the river you could find caves which gave you the imagination to know what it was like for him and then going into the streets of manresa and begging and doing humble chores but looking immensely shall we say in civilized terms disreputable his hair not being cut his nails growing long and his clothes ragged he had given away all his fine clothes from the castle of loyola to the poor in montserrat and now he here he was and in the in that cave as he prayed he formed the spiritual exercises in his mind which were for him it was going to be for him i know many of you would have had a a a taste of or much more than that of ignatian spirituality and he began to work out in his mind those phases of how it would be and he focused first and foremost on god's unconditional love for him despite his past and we've no idea what that past was like in his ten years as a soldier but we were told that he lived a a fairly rare and daring life and then to come to terms with our failings to respond to that unconditional love with generosity not only in gratitude a sacrifice of thanksgiving towards god but also the sacrifice the offering of our human life to one another with the qualities that god asked from us as a generous and all-giving creator he set himself to reform that which was deformed he couldn't do that with his leg but he could do it with his life and then he began to go into the next stage of and those of you who know it will know that the spiritual exercises are a four-week activity but they can take as as long as you like and and it's a way of of doing things in in whatever time scale you have so the next was to conform that which was reformed into the life and image of christ himself and here his imagination and meditation came into play and in ignatian spirituality you are asked to see yourself as part of the picture you're meditating on and even to to to to feel the the the the quality of the life around you like the wheat here beside me in a very physical way and at the same time not only that but to smell the smells and imagine the people and ignatius did that by imagining the people who were around him in monresa when he went as a beggar and a person willing to do lowly chores there in the streets of manresa imaginative reflection and having done that having conformed that which was reformed into the pattern of christ then the next stage was to confirm that which was reformed and how did you do that then having been conformed to the life of christ you began to meditate on his passion not only his human life in scenes in galilee and in jerusalem but now the way in which that human life was given through suffering and crucifixion his passion and death and in week four that transformation was confirmed by focusing on the joy of the resurrection the four stages of ignatian spirituality which can be enacted in so many different ways but this was just for him and with it his imagination and his examination of himself took pride of place as he lived and prayed in the cave beside the river there think of the psalmist in terms of a tree planted by the waterside which bears its fruit in due season and this life would bear much fruit he now offered himself to god and made a journey to the holy land there he was the guest of spirituality having tried benedictine spirituality at monserrat he now tried franciscan spirituality for he loved the image of the saint francis of of the saint francis of assisi but the franciscans sensing that this was not what he was called to sent him back and now began his mental exercises and training for 10 years and he had a very good mind he studied theology and latin and he then became able to teach himself having gone not just to spanish universities but to paris and there he met a band of others who became his companions amongst them francis xavier of course who was a delightful saint to know and who later became one of the society of jesus that ignatius was to form and after that after the ten years then he felt himself ready to be ordained as a priest and to found his society of jesus with its motto which you see written amdg to the greater glory of god so sometimes it's quoted with the um with the message he said he gave to francis xavier when francis xavier set out for india go and set the world on fire it's another one of the mottos of of ignatius but essentially we give thanks to him for the way in which he gave us that ignatian type of spirituality reflection and meditation and the order that he created an order of total obedience to the will of god that order which became the society of jesus throughout the world gave itself body mind and spirit to that work and the quality of scholarship which the society of jesus has always shown has benefited us all um a year or two ago i had staying here father nick king of the society of jesus and he has translated the whole of the scriptures in his own way old testament and new testament from the greek of the new testament and the greek of the septuagint which was the old testament that the early church used in its early life when so many people spoke greek in that way later of course jerome translated that into latin but father nick went back and his imaginative translation of the whole scriptures is very much a work which fits so well with the life of the society of jesus of course jared manny hopkins whom i quote so many times was a member of that company the society of jesus and gave himself to that discipline of ignatian spirituality and in it flowered much fruitfulness in poetry for uh the ten years of my life i mentioned the parish church of saint john the baptist in tisbury and ministering beside me in the village were jesuit clergy and one particular jesuit priest all the time i was there his name was called john tranma and he taught me many things about the ignatian way and also about the society of jesus and was a tremendous supporter to me i loved his company and we had many discussions together in his pres presbytery or my rectory or ministering together to different families uh some of of mixed anglican and catholic heritage i remember in the beautiful chapel at water sharing in a baptism with him with a family again of both catholic and and church of england uh derivation and and faithfulness all of that i remember with thanksgiving so many dimensions of life and every day is a time when all those things come together and we can offer the fruits of our own life as a new beginning the gift of this new day we always say as we have spiritual imaginings and tomorrow having finished the uh gospel of saint matthew we shall go on to a different set of spiritual imaginings which i'll give you as we probably sit amongst the flowers of the the walled garden tomorrow on a monday morning but today lama's day is all about new beginnings upon thine altar lord we lay the first fruits of thy blessings well i think that ignatius amongst so many others gives us a way of doing that but essentially it's uh us with our unique gifts individually that god is calling to unique tasks and every day can be an examination and a feeling of god's forgiveness a wiping clean and a new beginning with our spiritual imaginations to conform ourselves to christ and rejoice in the gift of his new life of resurrection but above all the gift of his spirit to be the hands and body and mind and words of christ to others in encouragement thank god for this day of first fruits the first ears of wheat and corn here in the garden as we say our prayers together let's uh look at the places that we are to pray for today and we're praying for the church of the province of southeast asia and all the christians and people who live within that province and here in this diocese as we pray for archbishop justin bishop rose of dover bishop tim at lambeth we pray for the parish church of saint michael and all angels maidstone and neil bryson in his ministry there pray for all who belong to the society of jesus and remember all our friends and monsignor philip whitmore at the english college in rome on this particular morning so bring your own prayers and intentions and as i say we're praying for areas of the world which at the moment know really serious dangers both of fire and flood and pandemic and so that you can create in your minds an image of the areas threatened by turkey some of the worst fires are around the historic site and biblical site of ephesus so let's say the prayer for today a new collect on this day the ninth sunday after trinity almighty god who sent your holy spirit to be the life and light of your church open our hearts to the riches of your grace that we may bring forth the fruit of the spirit in love and joy and peace through jesus christ our lord amen probably opportune also to say again the prayer of saint ignatius lorelai teach us good lord to serve the as i deserve this to give and not to count the cost to fight and not to heed the wounds to toil and not to seek for rest to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do thy will in the words our savior taught us we say the prayer in whichever language that we like to use 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 forever and ever amen moment of silence now on this lamas sunday morning for our own prayers the peace of god which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of god and of his son jesus christ our lord the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be upon you upon those whom you love and those whom you would pray for today and always amen