good morning and welcome to the deanery garden at canterbury cathedral on this morning of thursday the 23rd of december very near to christmas now as we join to say our morning prayers together wherever you are across the world please feel welcome and bring your own intentions and concerns if we look across the world there's a mixture of uh news stories some of them bright for the planet and some of them where people are in great danger uh if we look to uh kangaroo island that we were talking about which was devastated by fire in australia and now that island's wildlife is reviving in a great way because of the care being taken there so we give thanks for that and then next in the other direction the in tonga the volcano hungatanga hangahar volcano in tonga has erupted and is threatening to send acid rain down onto the islands themselves and that will be dangerous for the people and also for drinking water so we remember the people of tonga this morning then we go to uh something fine historically that israeli archaeologists have discovered in an old an old roman vessel a christian good shepherd ring and it comes from the years before the roman empire was was uh christian and it's in really wonderful condition and so uh showing that as part of the treasure trove they've got from that archaeological find is is a lovely hopeful thing from all those years ago then we think of the quietness of the pandemic because of lockdowns causing pakistani beaches to be very quiet and an inrush of hordes of green turtles who are coming to breed on those beaches to lay their eggs because the beaches are quiet again so an increase in the natural life there because of the lockdown uh another discovery of a 66 million year old dinosaur embryo still in its egg in china and that too is a wonder from so so far back in the life of our planet and then finally and this uh a happy story from kentucky after the awful tornadoes and and uh terrible things that have happened there uh an an office manager going back to the rubble of the office suddenly heard a faint meow and with some help and some moving of of stones and rubble maddox the office cat who looks just like my black cat monkey used to look was found in good condition after nine days just a bit thirsty and is looking just his old self so stories of hope stories of the fragility of human life and stories of people in in huge trouble as we remember malaysia and all that has happened there in terms of of threats in in floods and people's homes being destroyed you will have lots more stories to think of in your prayers but let's begin our prayers together today and uh remember that this is a just two days now before christmas we're still in the season of advent o lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise reveal among us the light of your presence that we may behold your power and glory blessed are you sovereign god of all to you be praise and glory forever in your tender compassion the dawn from on high is breaking upon us to dispel the lingering shadows of night as we look for your coming among us this day open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will that the whole world may rejoice and give you praise 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 as 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 amen our psalm on this 23rd morning of the month is psalm 111 alleluia i will give thanks to the lord with my whole heart in the company of the faithful and in the congregation the works of the lord are great sought out by all who delight in them his work is full of majesty and honor and his righteousness endures forever he appointed a memorial for his marvelous deeds the lord is gracious and full of compassion he gave food to those who feared him he is ever mindful of his covenant he showed his people the power of his works in giving them the heritage of the nations the works of his hands are truth and justice all his commandments are sure they stand fast forever and ever they are done in truth and equity he sent redemption to his people he commanded his covenant forever holy and awesome is his name the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom a good understanding have those who live by it his praise endures forever we came here this morning to sit on the steps beside the trickling water into the pool below because we've come back to the hill country the house of zechariah and elizabeth mary has now left them and gone back to nazareth and the old couple are left by themselves with their own community and we think of the lovely green countryside of that hill country and the fresh springs that are there as we read our lesson this morning remember zechariah is still unable to speak following the angels message and we go back now to their home as we turn to the gospel of saint luke and we're in chapter 1 and verse 57. now the time came for elizabeth to give birth and she bore a son and her neighbors and relatives heard that the lord had shown great mercy to her and they rejoiced with her and on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child and they would have called him zechariah after his father but his mother answered no he shall be called john and they said to have none of your relatives is called by this name and they made signs to his father inquiring what he wanted him to be called and zechariah asked for a writing tablet and on it he wrote his name is john and they all wondered but immediately zechariah's mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he spoke out blessing god and fear came on all their neighbors and all these things were talked about through all the hill country of judea and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts saying what then will this child be for the hand of the lord was with him but zechariah his father was filled with the holy spirit and prophesied saying blessed be the lord god of israel for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of his servant david as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hands of all who hate us to show the mercy promised to our forefathers and to remember his holy covenant the oath that he swore to our father abraham to grant us that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days and you child will be called the prophet of the most high for you will go before the lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins because of the tender mercy of our god whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace and the child grew and became strong in spirit and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to israel taking up that story and being there in the home of zechariah and elizabeth the old couple puzzled by the angel's message to them and zechariah himself when he was given that message in the temple doubtful about how such a thing could be to those so old also he might have said with elizabeth too and so unimportant in their own culture and landscape and because of that he was made as a sign silent while all this began to happen during the visit of mary and yesterday we had her own song magnificat my soul doth magnify the lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my savior and we saw how that has been sung at vespers or even song said or sung day by day in the worship of the church and still here today one of the high points of worship in the day as magnificat is sung but today we get a different song and a different prophecy it comes from the voice now restored of the formerly silent zechariah a priest of the old covenant whom we first met about his duties as a priest in the temple and faithfulness and righteousness is the hallmark of the life of zechariah and elizabeth and now they've been given this message about a new covenant good news not only for their own culture but for people who sit in darkness the world over and here is the song which we tend to call again after its first latin name as with magnificat for mary benedictus and the benedictus is a canticle a psalm a song which is always every day in morning prayer so that earlier at matins in the cathedral early that was part of our worship the saying in the mornings not the singing the saying of the benedictus blessed be the lord god of israel for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of his servant david see how zechariah roots it in the law and the prophets the old covenant and then goes to the ministry of this particular baby one likes to think of zechariah holding the child in his arms as he speaks a new child will be called prophet of the most high for you will go before the lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins because of the tender mercy of our god whereby the day spring traditionally sunrise in this translation shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace notice how peace is a great sign and gift of all that is happening in these first two chapters of saint luke part of the angels song to the shepherds which we'll come to tomorrow but here guiding our feet into the way of peace we're called to be people who proclaim peace by action and in our message so we think of that vocation of zechariah and let's just try to imagine what it's going to be like for him and for elizabeth for this child john the baptist is certainly not going to be conforming to the old ways he's going to be a puzzle we don't know how long zechariah lives but she's going to be a puzzle and maybe a heartache to his father with his chastising of those in authority and those whom zechariah and elizabeth have respected and the old ways but they've been given this faithful message to give and so they have and now there are going to be hidden years before john is revealed but he comes as a a a blast of preparation for those who are slack in the old covenant and the laws and as he baptizes people he is preparing them for the coming of the the one who will be born in our calendar tomorrow so we now look at what kind of dates we have for today and it's for me only one date i'm going to deal with and it's because the 23rd of december in 1896 was the birthday of giuseppe tomasi di lampedusa who was the last prince of lampedusa in born into the sicilian aristocracy on the isle of sicily and was a duke of palmer and his uh his father had been a grandi of spain and so he was brought up in an old regime there in sicily and he himself was caught up in his life in two world wars but at the same time he was a reflective and um a person who who loved to see signs and symbols and was in his way prophetic but quarrying in the past and one thinks of him almost like a zechariah type figure but much more so his great-grandfather whom he wrote about in a novel that he wrote and he spoke about himself as a boy as i was a boy who liked solitude who preferred the company of things to that of people he became a literary student and he wrote but he also looked after his estates the lampedusas had a grand house near palermo which in the second world war was bombed and pillaged by the allied landings in sicily and it caused him great sadness and it was in the context of that sadness that he began to write a book he'd been thinking about probably through the whole of his life and the book was not finished until 1956 and when he had written it and finished it he was himself becoming ill and it was taken to publishers who pronounced it unpublishable and uh tomasi d lampardus had died in 1957 and then a publisher was found who would publish the book and it has become one of the most famous pieces of modern italian literature it's called in the italian ilgatopardo and in our language normally simply the leopard and eogatopado is not really a leopard in the italian language it talks about either a sort of ocelot or a cat leopard but i think we're talking about servals because there were severals in sicily you'll find ocelots a lot in africa some people keep them as pets they're very cat-like and sinewy um and uh as they as they walk they have a sort of elegance to them but the the servals had been part of sicilian wildlife and they were becoming endangered and they were part of the escutcheons of uh thomas's family and so he used it as a kind of sign of what he was going to write about ilgatobado and that book when it was published first caused a certain amount of hostility because of what it was saying to certain groups but at the same time if you know the book you will know that is full of images and great depths and you never quite finish quarrying in to what this rather uh pensive old man was putting together from the story of his life where he'd seen his his roots gradually changed and if you like torn up in a completely different world opening out sometimes those proclaiming the news find the news the hardest to accept when it begins to be enacted and made actually real so he tells a story and forgive me if you know this book well but i'll i'll sketch it and it's so full of detail that uh it might be pub puzzling but the leopard is has been in print ever since and is in all bookshops in the sort of classics translations uh that we have it's the story of don fabrizio corbeira and he is the the image of thomas's great grandfather and it's set in sicily now let's get out of our minds it's set in 1860 get out of our minds the sense of italy being one nation because at the beginning of the 19th century the word italy the the chancellor of austria prince metonyk when they were talking about italy in the congress of vienna said but italy is nothing but a geographical expression because it was a whole collection of different kingdoms and the image and attempt to create one nation became a campaign which went on through the 19th century if you went down from the top after 1815 you would find that venetia and lombardy were controlled by the austrian habsburg empire and then the kingdom uh of of piedmont on the other side with its capital there in turin was under a completely different monarchy and then you came down to various grand dutches like tuscany and palmer and places of that sort and then to the papal states which uh took the central area of italy with rome as the capital and then down below that what was called the kingdom of the two sicilies and that was the kingdom of a branch of the bourbon family which were most related to the spanish bourbons rather than the french war ones at that time and the capital of that was naples so sicily and the aristocracy of sicily were part of that kingdom and it was that that was now under threat and don fabrizio corbeira who is a highly respected aristocrat in sicily is seeing uh an army led by garibaldi of red shirts as they were called revolutionaries the thousands landing in sicily and going up towards naples to unseat the bourbon family ruling naples and to make italy one and so there is a tension going on here because many of the sicilians agree that italy should be won and uh the the loyalty of don fabrizio corbeira is then called into question but at the same time he is deeply and highly respected and is watching grow around him a completely new type and class of people newly monied peasants and revolutionaries and people who then begin to take authority in the local governments of of the townships there and the prince is forced to choose between upholding the old values and breaking tradition the traditions of catholic christendom and the sicilian aristocracy which his family had upheld for centuries to secure it to break that tradition to secure the continuity of the family's influence and really that's what the book is all about and in the end the prince realizes that his nephew rather than his son his nephew prince tam crady is the one who has that sense of we must use this as a new opportunity and that gives ten credit the the chance to say the most famous sentence in the whole of the book things must change in order that they may stay the same and that might have been a sentence that zechariah and elizabeth were having to learn and certainly that when the the coming one announcing the good news in the person of the anointed one coming then it's something which the disciples and the culture there have to begin to think things must change in order that should we say the heart of them must stay the same the faithfulness to what is being given must stay the same the characters in this book are almost symbolic and the writer jamasi said in a letter to one of his friends just notice bendico the prince's dog because he is the key to so many things and one of the most important characters and as he the dog walks beside the prince through the various places that they go bendico represents the the footsteps of the old way and one senses the duke's hand resting on his on the dog's head very often as he goes about but at the same time he the the prince and duke of palmer uh don fabrizio is is able to see that things are changing and that he probably in old age needs to bow his head and think it's tan crady who's got this right but he lots of things that he found precious would be lost some of the characters actually sit beside him in that same sort father perroni the jesuit chaplain of the household who is always with the the prince the prince was a keen astronomer looking at the stars and the stars and the faces of the moon are to the prince symbols of changelessness and when they go on their tower the the jesuit and he having gathered the family earlier to say the daily rosary and then going up to the tower to watch the stars there is that sense of comfort rather like him putting his hand on bendico his dog who walks by him and at the same time when the family move to go to their country estate for the summer another huge palace there and the the deference of all the the the the citizens there but a new mayor who is newly monied and under the the prince uh things they've now as as much uh economic power as as our family and in the end it's the mayor's daughter new money in the the prince's eyes who marries tan crady and tan cradi and the prince's daughter become the sorry new daughter-in-law the the mayor's daughter uh become the symbol of a new italy which the prince is knowing that he has to accept but at the same time when he's in the countryside he walks with the parish organist don chitchio and they go out um just uh through the woods shooting rabbits with the dog bendico and the two of them the prince and the old organist who has come from a family of uh of grooms and game keepers who've served the bourbon monarchy there and so when a plebiscite a referendum is held amongst the sicilians to say do you want to to join this new new movement then uh don uh chuccio says when that the prince says to him which way did you vote and he said i have to say i i couldn't lose old loyalties i voted against but when the mayor announces the results it's absolutely nobody had voted voted against whatsoever and uh so the the prince realizes that that this is a lost cause but what time cradi is doing is saying you must jump on board or these revolutionaries who've gone and taken naples will be those who rule the whole of italy so although you don't like the appeared monty's royalty they are sort of upstarts as far as you're concerned you must jump on board otherwise things will change beyond recognition things have to change in order that they may stay the same and then when the new king takes his position knowing of the influence of the prince in sicily he sends a message with an automatic place on the new royal senate and the prince sends a message back saying no i'm too old for that now give that to prince tom crady so those two things going side by side the sadness of him losing the old ways but at the same time the realization that something very new was happening and would be for the italian people a completely different beginning it takes place in 1860 it revisits the scene in 1883 when the prince is ill and dying and at that time uh there's still huge dignity in him and in his little area he's kept the old ways going but a new kingdom has opened up and we give thanks for all the insights that giuseppe tamasi de lampedusa has given us in that book ilgatopado because it's something that we ourselves find hard to do to take a new step forward even though one sees that that's the way things are going to go and that is a good thing to think about with zechariah and elizabeth in their hill country home they would be sitting eating their supper thinking well we'll be too old to see it but the pro the prophecies zechariah has made about john the baptist is that this one is going to grow up and bring a completely new dimension as the profit of the most high preparing the people to be a fit people to receive the coming of the anointed one it's what we've always been waiting for yet at the same time old habits die hard and a priest of the old covenant and his wife who've kept faithful to that all the way through must have had elements of feeling like tomasi de la pazuza as he had clear vision of the way forward as he came to old age there is a most wonderful film of this whole book made in 1963 by visconti and it is full of color and imagery and new beginnings with tankrady but also a degree of sadness with the prince and the prince is played by bert lancaster the tancredi by alan dulong uh and uh then the the one he marries by claudia cardinale so it's an international cast it's a long film it's it's on dvd but it is a magnificent telling of that story with all its complication and with rich imagery and of course with bendico the dog as part of the um story going forward as he walks beside his master so let's on this day as we leave zechariah and elizabeth and go tomorrow to the other uh characters joseph and mary in this story of sin luke let's say our prayers on this particular day for those right across the world it's uh a day when we are praying for turn the page the diocese of elasa in the church of nigeria and the abadan province within the anglican communion and here in this diocese for archbishop justin and for rose bishop of dover for emma bishop at lambeth and today for the parish church of saint mary brenden here in canterbury for barney de berry the parish priest from one of our cannons here a non-residential cannon and uh the associate priest stephen carter and the assistant curist charmaine muir so we pray for the life of that parish as they like all the parishes prepare for christmas here then is the collect for this week and then we shall say the advent college bring your own prayers and intentions because you will have many other images across the world which i haven't mentioned this morning god our redeemer who prepared the blessed virgin mary to be the mother of your son grant that as she looked for his coming as our savior so we may be ready to greet him when he comes again as our judge who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen so the advent connect almighty god give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light now in the time of this mortal knife in which your son jesus christ came to us in great humility that on the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead we may rise to the life immortal through him who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever are men [Applause] so we say each in our own language the prayer our savior taught us 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 lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever are men i realize that i've been sitting beside a living symbol of all that i've been talking about with this beautiful tree fern with all the leaves of the past hanging down and protecting the trunk but then new life now sprouting out in green freshness from the top of the tree like a new beginning so i realized i uh admitted to pray for the people in madagascar caught up in the terrible boat tragedy of an overloaded cargo vessel not really registered to carry passengers which has overturned and then police on their way to rescue many have died but police on their way to rescue also their helicopter crashed and and uh the minister for police the secretary of state for for uh police and another police officer were in the sea swimming for 12 hours back to the shore can one believe that that they had that energy to do that so we're thinking of people still trying to find those who have drowned on that uh that that ship in madagascar another instance of human fragility and those risking their lives to help christ the son of righteousness shine upon you scatter the darkness from before your path and make you ready to meet him when he comes in glory and 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 are men