Organized by the Rev. Dr Alison Falby, priest-in-charge, and assisted by lay pastoral assistant Louise Simos, the event honoured the Stations of the Cross at 14 sites in the church’s inner-city neighbourhood. Each site commemorated not only Christ’s final journey but also the death of a Torontonian who had succumbed to an opioid overdose at that location.

All Saints is located at Dundas and Sherbourne streets, an area that is home to many people living on the streets and struggling with drug dependency.

After saying prayers in the church, participants set out on a rainy two-mile walk that took them south to Queen Street, west to Victoria Street, north to Gerrard Street, south on George Street, then back east to All Saints.

The group stopped first outside a looming concrete apartment building, then at a local park. From there it was on to the nearby Moss Park Apartments, where shootings and overdoses are frequently reported.

The walk included stops at a drop-in centre for homeless people, a parking lot and St. Michael’s hospital. After that, the group stopped in a bleak alleyway that displayed a crude commemorative R.I.P. for a life that had recently ended there.

At each site, there were three readings. First came the opening of the traditional verse said at each Station of the Cross: “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,” to which the group offered the response, “Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Then a member of the group was asked to deliver a second reading. This was a passage from one of the Gospels recalling Jesus’ final ordeal – from his flogging and multiple collapses under the weight of the cross to his crucifixion and entombment.

A third reading had a double focus, linking an aspect of Christ’s final agonies two millennia ago to the suffering of his contemporary flock. These readings urged participants, as they walked these last steps with Jesus, to show compassion to all who carry the cross of addiction, and to take action on their behalf.

Before departing each station, the group recited the Trisagion: “Holy God, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy on us.”

The 10th station was in front of Toronto’s largest homeless shelter, Seaton House. There, from behind a forbidding iron fence, psychologically wounded men shouted out their desperation at the little group. Here the third reading underscored how homelessness and drug abuse stripped people of their dignity and raised their risk of early death. It exhorted members of the group to pray for more dignified housing for all.

Participants in the walk were visibly affected on several levels – by the commemoration of Jesus’ suffering, the noble cadences of the ancient words, and the confrontation of the current tragedy of drug addiction.

For me, the experience was especially powerful. On Good Friday last year, my 35-year-old nephew was found dead of an opioid overdose in a run-down motel in Cincinnati, Ohio. I can’t imagine a more compelling way to spend Good Friday than recalling Jesus’ sufferings then and recognizing the pain of our addicted brothers and sisters now.

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Dozens of people braved Toronto’s icy February streets to offer support to the bereaved families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and transgender and two-spirit persons (MMIWGT2S) at the opening of Shades of Our Sisters, held at St. James Cathedral from Feb. 15 to March 1.

The interactive multimedia exhibit honours lives lost to the violence Indigenous women are especially prey to. It reveals the victims as vibrant young women with strong hopes and bright futures through stories, writings, photos, personal artifacts, film and the voices of their surviving relatives.

The project began to take shape in 2015-2016 with the bereaved families of Sonya Cywink and Patricia Carpenter. Patricia, 14 years old and a new mother, was found murdered at a downtown Toronto construction site in 1992. “She went to a birthday party and never came back,” said her mother, Joyce Carpenter of Alderville First Nation, near Cobourg.

Like other bereaved mothers, Ms. Carpenter is committed to perpetuating the memory and spirit of her daughter. The exhibit makes the point that far from being rejected runaways or street dwellers, these girls had families, were well loved and are still greatly missed.

The multimedia aspect of project, created in 2017 by Ryerson University production students, features two short documentary films exploring the two victims’ lives and personalities. Among the touching personal items on display are Patricia’s collection of Cabbage Patch Kids and her Brownie uniform. Most touching of all is a tiny hooded yellow baby suit. “That’s what I brought her home in from Women’s College Hospital,” said Ms. Carpenter.

The exhibit’s interactive features include a ceremonial red dress on which attendees can pin messages penned on gold or silver paper. Pinches of natural tobacco and lengths of red wool symbolizing connectedness and empathy are on offer. Most striking of all is a dazzling memorial mobile, with coloured paper feathers bearing messages and prayers from visitors at other exhibit sites.

Speakers memorializing the deceased were preceded by traditional chanting and drumming led by Sue Croweagle, a Blackfoot from Piikani First Nation in Alberta, who identifies as a two-spirit person. Ms. Carpenter’s niece, Shauna Kechego-Nichols, offered to the gathering the powerful medicine of the healing jingle dance, wearing a ceremonial dress covered in rows of delicately tinkling metal cones.

Among the speakers was Patricia Carpenter’s brother James, who thanked the audience for sharing the beautiful cathedral space with the victims’ families and for showing their love and support. “It helps bring healing to the families and healing to the spirits. The spirits would be proud of us,” he said.

Mr. Carpenter acknowledged how hard it is for affected families across the land to speak of these losses. “It was 25 years before my mother would talk about what happened,” he said. “And far too often these stories bring hurt, but they also open our hearts to love.” He commended the families and their communities for their resilience.

The exhibit also reminds viewers of the racial disparities that exist in Canadian society and its justice system. Although only about 4.3 per cent of Canada’s female population identified as Indigenous in 2011, a disproportionate 11.3 per cent of missing women in 2013 were Indigenous, according to the RCMP.

The ceremony closed with interfaith prayers from members of Toronto’s Muslim and Jewish communities and from Bishop Mark MacDonald, national Indigenous bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.

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We have all acted charitably out of compassion for another’s need at some point, said André Lyn, a social justice activist who works with Ontario’s Antiracism Directorate and the Ontario Black Youth Action Plan. “An individual act of compassion connects us with the love of God within us by enacting that love.”

But occasions for situational acts of charity sometimes present us with a “compassionate predicament,” in which showing empathy involves a certain struggle – for example, when a needy outstretched hand is asking for money but the donor prefers to give food, believing the recipient will use the money for drugs or alcohol. “Who are we to judge if they want to use the money for drugs?” asked Mr. Lyn. “Food does not address their need or the roots of their addiction.” And what is a vice to us can be their means of connecting with their society and escaping harsh reality.

Compassionate charity is different from compassionate justice, he stressed. “Charity is what we do most often. It’s easier to do than justice.” It may involve volunteering at food or clothing drives, giving money to a social cause or handouts on the street. “It has its place. Charity is a type of compassion that meets someone’s immediate needs and temporarily eases the effects of suffering,” he said. It is necessary and important, but it is temporary and insufficient.

Compassionate justice is much more difficult and slow-moving, as it addresses the root causes of suffering – poverty, homelessness, mental health, addictions and discrimination. It seeks to correct the inequities that are endemic to our religious, educational and legal institutions, and its progress is slow but incremental. “If charity is about transforming hearts, justice is about transforming structures, systems, and institutions. It is the social and political form of compassion,” he said. It is wide-ranging, and it effects lasting change.

Apathy is the enemy of such justice, he said, quoting Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel’s observation that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference. He used an engaging animal parable to show the wide-ranging ill effects of indifference. In the parable, a farm mouse meets total indifference from a chicken, a pig and a cow when he reports the introduction of a mousetrap to the farmhouse. The trap snares a poisonous snake, which bites the farmer’s wife; eventually, the apathetic chicken and pig are sacrificed for the wife’s recuperation and the cow, ultimately, for her funeral banquet.

Mr. Lyn also cited the famous poem of German pastor Martin Niemöller, about how he failed to speak out when the Nazis came for the socialists, the trade unionists and the Jews because he was not one of any of those, until finally they came for him and there was no one left to speak for him.

Occasions to address systemic inequities are all around us, said Mr. Lyn, referring to two recent incidents in which anti-black slurs were written on the same property of a church in the diocese. Compassionate prayers and support at a special service were offered by the area bishop and others, he said, but that did not go far enough. “We had an opportunity to address a structural and systemic injustice in society,” he said, so his group asked the area bishop if there was a diocesan policy to address hate crimes. Not surprisingly, the answer came back no.

“This sort of silence has an unintentional impact,” he said. “It has allowed such atrocities to go unchallenged and unaddressed systemically.” But now he and his colleagues have committed to working actively with the College of Bishops to address this racial issue in a structural way.

Mr. Lyn urged Anglicans not to give up personal charitableness but to move from personal compassion and transformed hearts at the individual level into collective compassion and broader solidarity at the system level, and to commit to active outreach and active advocacy.

This will require people to be audacious and bold, he said, urging the audience to harness their collective compassion and inequity, suffering, and hurt toward transforming structures by serving at any level. “There is no better time to become involved than the present,” he said. “We need to become agents of change.”

The conference also featured 10 workshops on significant outreach and advocacy topics, including housing for vulnerable seniors, grassroots initiatives against poverty, and indigenous identity and water protection.

Prison ministry often rewarding, workshop hears

One of the most challenging but rewarding forms of Christian service is prison ministry, as was evident in a workshop led by the Rev. Mark Stephen and Jerome Friday of The Bridge Prison Ministry, which is supported by FaithWorks, the diocese’s annual outreach appeal. The Bridge works with offenders at the Ontario Correctional Institute in Brampton, before and after their release back into society.

“The lives of these men are broken,” said Mr. Stephen, a community outreach worker and deacon at St. Joseph of Nazareth, Bramalea. “Often they can’t go home or have no home to go to. They can’t return to the community where they committed their crimes.”

Mr. Friday outlined The Bridge’s 16-week pre-release, volunteer-run in-prison program of group discussions. These are designed to help inmates confront their personal responsibility and rebuild their self-esteem by addressing 22 core issues, including acceptance, despair, love, respect, guilt, shame, and hope. “These discussions help them change the negative thought patterns that landed them where they are,” he said.

“These men are scarred and are often from dysfunctional homes, and have experienced childhood events that were never addressed,” he said. “They’ve been told they’re worthless, but we try to get them to see that, yes, they’ve made mistakes but they themselves are not mistakes.”

At first mistrustful and unwilling to share their stories, the men gradually open up and become friendly and mutually supportive.

But even with four months of psychological preparation, re-entering the community is difficult. They have a criminal record, inadequate ID for today’s security-obsessed society, and no fixed address. Getting an OHIP card, obtaining employment or renewing their medications for ADHD or depression is difficult. They are released from prison with one day’s pay and can’t even cash the government cheque they receive.

At the time of release, Mr. Stephen meets the ex-offender at the gates and The Bridge provides seasonal clothing, a backpack and transportation to shelter. “Some of the men don’t even know how they’ll survive the first day out of prison,” he said. Later, The Bridge provides a re-conditioned cellphone with a month’s service and helps with finding stable shelter, getting essential ID and obtaining work, which is greatly facilitated by working through the buffer of employment agencies. “Within three months, 74 per cent of our ex-offenders – some in their 60s and 70s – are employed and living in stable housing, and their addictions are under control,” Mr. Stephen said.

But the first stop after release is Tim Horton’s for coffee after years of the undrinkable prison brew. “Sometimes they can’t even order their own coffee, so I always order everyone a double- double,” he said.

Churches support migrant workers

Each year, almost 40,000 migrant agricultural workers from Mexico, the Caribbean and other countries spend six to eight months in Canada planting and harvesting the crops that put an abundance of food on our tables.

Churches in the diocese are working on pastoral and practical fronts to make the newcomers’ experience in Ontario a better one. This was made clear at a workshop led by the Rev. Canon Ted McCollum, incumbent St. Paul, Beaverton, and the Rev. Augusto Nunez, incumbent of St. Saviour, Orono.

Both these parishes and others offer migrant-worker programs with special services in Spanish, liturgical and musical participation by the Spanish-speaking workers. “Our first focus is spiritual, to help them to know Christ and provide a house of worship with services in Spanish,” said the Peruvian-born Mr. Nunez.

This spiritual care provides a buffer for the workers, who are often dealing with the mental and emotional stress of extended separation from family. Recently St. Paul’s (“San Pablo,” as the workers call it) provided pastoral support for a young father whose two-week-old son had died in Mexico before he had the chance to see him.

St. Paul’s program, which began in 2009 and collaborates with other migrant-worker groups in the region, addresses worldlier needs as well, such as car transportation to and from town. It helps with reconditioned bicycles, road and equipment safety, athletics and social life. In addition to weekly soccer games and barbecues, workers are brought together at health fairs with barbers, dentists, doctors, nurses and, very importantly, physiotherapists.

“These men work 10 hours a day on their knees and this takes a huge physical toll,” said Canon McCollum “It’s touching to see how happy some are to get the physiotherapy help they never had before.”

The churches also work tactfully with farm owners to determine how best they can help, and they connect the workers with local communities. “We’ve even had local people attend our Wednesday evening Spanish services,’” he said.

Not least, the program increases awareness of the large contribution the workers make to local life. “They spend  $300,000 locally on food and other purchases,” he said. As their numbers swell the local population, services improve. “Thanks to them, our area met the threshold to qualify for a nurse practitioner, which benefits everyone.”

The workers send 80-90 per cent of their earnings home. “They’re phenomenally dedicated. Many of their kids have been able to become doctors, lawyers and engineers.” They pay all relevant Canadian taxes and deductions, even premiums for unemployment insurance, which they will never collect.

Church outreach programs need not be confined to rural areas. In the urban setting, they can also help visiting workers employed in restaurants and hotels.

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Those were the primary talking points for a panel convened Sept. 25 at the Church of the Redeemer, Bloor Street in Toronto. The discussion was part of the church’s “Season of Creation,” a time to celebrate and give thanks to the Creator for the earth and to look at ways to safeguard it.

The three principal speakers were Bishop Mark Macdonald, national Indigenous bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Rev. Dr. Cheri DiNovo, minister of Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church and a former MPP, and the Very Rev. Dr. Bill Phipps, co-founder of Faith & the Common Good and a former moderator of the United Church of Canada.

Explaining the ancient beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (North America), Bishop Macdonald stressed the fundamental principal of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all creation. “In the great Walk of Life, all life is responsible to the rest of life. We are all relatives,” he said.

In Indigenous culture, he said, that creational kinship lies at the very heart of life, whereas in Western society humanity has become increasingly alienated from the rest of creation, with the adverse consequences to the planet. “This fundamental kinship, sometimes known as Walking the Good Life, does exist in Christianity but it is not taught strongly enough in Christian teaching,” he said.

Dr. DiNovo agreed that the Western cult of individualism has increased humankind’s separateness from the planet, resulting in an existence that is not spiritual but rather cut off from spirit. She took the notion of kinship beyond earth to the galaxy, quoting Carl Sagan’s famous apothegm: “We are made of star stuff,” in that everything on earth was made in the interiors of collapsing stars.

“If we are not to be separate from earth, then our orders are to save the planet,” she said. “There is a prophetic call to do so.”

Dr. Phipps noted that the United Church has changed its creed to include a core commitment to “living with respect in creation.” And rather than being “given” that creation, he said, humankind is actually embedded in it along with all other forms of life and is not, as we arrogantly assume, its pinnacle. “The assault we see on Mother Earth is an assault on ourselves.” He called on society to celebrate and grieve publicly for the planet.

On a political level, Dr. DiNovo reminded the audience that people of faith must speak truth to power. “We have to remind government that we are the true owners of Parliament Hill and Queen’s Park and City Hall and the public servants there work for us. We must make sure they understand their responsibilities.”

Bishop Macdonald said urbanites must first abandon the urban-versus-rural mentality and humbly acknowledge the sacred land on which their cities are built. “This sacred location calls us to the highest moral standards in our relationships to the land and to each other,” he said.

A new truth and reconciliation initiative was suggested by Dr. Phipps, one that would unite people in the healing of the earth by listening to the autochthonous wisdom of Indigenous peoples, “a wisdom that has nurtured the human spirit on this land for thousands of years.”

In a question to the panel from the floor, one audience member expressed frustration with the bewildering number of organizations focused on climate change. She asked how we can consolidate the leadership to galvanize the thousands of voices needed to effect change.

In response, Dr. Phipps pointed to faith communities as the perfect organizing tools. “I want to see our local churches active in this,” he said. “If every church installed solar panels on its roof, that would send a huge message. Why don’t we in every faith community join up with congregations down the road and go down to Queen’s Park and demand action? And if we did that across Canada, things would change just like that.”

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To be awarded for the first time this fall, the annual $5,000 bursary is a tribute to Mr. Cowling’s bold experimentation and commitment to breathing new life into worship in the diocese. Known as an intergenerational connector of people, Mr. Cowling died in January 2017.

“He was someone who had an absolute passion for liturgical reform that would involve the entire congregation in song and music,” says the Rev. Canon David Harrison, incumbent of St. Mary Magdelene, Toronto, where Mr. Cowling was a parishioner.

While he championed unorthodox reform and renewed congregational engagement, Mr. Cowling was at the same time an erudite and precise scholar of music and musical history.

A founding member of Toronto’s Renaissance-focused Tallis Choir, he served as a music director and organist at several parishes in the diocese. He was also a scholar of medieval English. “Douglas was very interested in the York Mystery Plays and he was working on his PhD in that area,” says his widow, Elizabeth. He was once a member of Poculi Ludique Societas, the University of Toronto’s medieval drama troupe.

Starting this fall, the annual Douglas C. Cowling Bursary in Liturgical Music will go to a musician working part-time in a parish in the diocese. Its aim is two-fold: to encourage creative musical and liturgical expression that fosters full participation by the people of God of all ages, and to further the recipient’s own training to enrich the musician’s ecclesiastical setting.

The Cowling family has committed to giving at least $5,000 a year for five years to a fund managed by the Anglican Diocese of Toronto Foundation. The bursary fund currently stands at $20,000, and donations are being accepted by the Foundation at https://goo.gl/xcu7Ss.

Applicants for the bursary should send full proposals by May 30 to: cowlingbursary@gmail.com. The date for announcing the 2018 award has not yet been decided.

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Born in 1880 in Balham, England, Dr. Willan moved to Canada in 1913 and bequeathed a prolific multi-genre legacy of some 850 musical works. In addition to appointments at the University of Toronto, the then Toronto Conservatory of Music, and St. Paul, Bloor Street, the virtuoso organist served for 47 years as music director of St. Mary Magdalene, for which he composed a large body of liturgical music.

“Willan was a humble genius and is considered the dean of Canadian composers,” said Canon Giles Bryant, a former organist and music director at the church and the master of ceremonies at the packed Feb. 16 concert. Drawing on a biography by Frederick Clarke, Canon Bryant included lively observations on Dr. Willan’s life as an artist and interspersed them with his own expert commentary.

Over his artistic life, Dr. Willan turned his versatile hand to opera, orchestral and band music, tone poems, string quartets and at least 66 songs. “Tonight, though, on this anniversary we celebrate his achievement as a preeminent composer of music created for the beautification and enhancement of church services,” said Canon Bryant.

The program featured three genres: choral music, organ compositions, and Gregorian plainchant. According to Canon Bryant, Dr. Willan loved plainchant and led the way in its return to Anglican liturgy in Canada.

The concert opened with Dr. Willan’s choral piece for the Feast of Dedication, “Behold, the Tabernacle of God Is with Men,” and closed with the vocal prelude and fugue “Gloria Deo Per Immensa Saecula,” sung by choristers from St. Mary Magdalene and St. Thomas, Huron Street and conducted by the latter church’s music director, Matthew Larkin.

The program also featured Dr. Willan’s beautiful setting of Isaac Watts’s 18^th century hymn “Christ Hath a Garden.”

Mr. Larkin performed the first organ work on the program, Dr. Willan’s “Prelude and Fugue in C Minor,” published in 1909 in Novello’s series of virtuoso organ works. Thanks to a large video screen, the audience was able to follow the complex keyboarding of the double-fugue composition, described by Canon Bryant as “a grand, sweeping piece with huge drama borne along with very, very confident harmony and daring chromatic inflections.”

From the organ loft, the gallery and ritual choirs of St. Mary Magdalene chanted Gregorian plainsong, including the Candlemas introit, “We Have Waited, O God.”

After the choir sang Dr. Willan’s melodic rendition of the mystical Revelations-based anthem “I looked, and Behold a White cloud,” the second featured organist, Simon Walker, played the composer’s “Introduction, Passacaglia, and Fugue in E flat minor,” which has been called the most significant example of the genre since Bach.

According to Canon Bryant’s biographical account, Dr. Willan was challenged to write this work after a companion at a recital featuring a German passacaglia said that only a Teutonic mind was capable of a composition of this type, which consists of a set of variations above a fixed-pedal bass line. “His reaction was apoplectic,” said Canon Bryant, and the result was this Bach-like “staggeringly marvellous work… with 17 variations of incredible ingenuity… and a fugue using the same subjects as the passacaglia,” he said.

Noting that Dr. Willan’s music remains integrally woven into the fabric of worship at St. Mary Magdalene, the Rev. Canon David Harrison, incumbent, read praise for Dr. Willan’s achievements from the Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson, a former governor general of Canada. He also read an affecting account of her father’s last hours by his only daughter, Mary Willan Mason, from her memoir The Well-Tempered Listener, and introduced Dr. Willan’s eldest grandson and his great-grandson.

Andrew Adair, the music director at St. Mary Magdalene, played the third organ composition, Dr. Willan’s “Passacaglia and Fugue in E Minor,” written in 1959 and reminiscent in technique to the C minor composition of 1909.

“Gloria Deo,” the closing vocal piece, was written in 1950 and, inexplicably, commissioned by the Village of Forest Hill’s community centre. “I have absolutely no idea what provoked them but, by God, they got a wonderful piece out it!” said Canon Bryant. Dr. Willan apparently composed the fugue after a comment by a fellow organist that no one could write in five parts any more. “Well, poppycock,” the supreme contrapuntalist allegedly replied, and the result was this transporting polyphonic fugue.

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The bard’s words stretched across the centuries as three seasoned actors took to the chilly public square beside the downtown church and raised a call to action for the homeless. They performed “Too Little Care,” a short dramatic piece based on the passage where, turned out in a raging storm, the mentally deteriorating old king has a sudden epiphany. He acknowledges the pitiful circumstances of the dispossessed and calls complacency to account.

“Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this!”

Venerable actor and lifelong social activist Walter Borden played Lear, with Michael Bennett Leroux and Peyton LeBarr in supporting roles. Encouraged to become a chorus, onlookers chanted, “Oh I have ta’en too little care of this!”

“Any thinking, empathetic, sympathetic person could make that same statement about the homeless today,” said Mr. Borden, who recently played Lear in a production that portrayed him as having a hallucinatory dementia. “Society as a whole, and the individuals who make it up, have definitely taken too little care of this.”

The performance at the Toronto Homeless Memorial, located outside the church, was deliberately planned for the winter, explained Kate Werneburg, an actor who wrote and directed Too Little Care and designed it to speak to a deaf-eared and complacent society.

“It became clear the city was not prepared to respond appropriately to the needs underhoused people would have in the extreme cold,” said Ms. Werneburg, the church’s volunteer co-ordinator. “We wanted people who are also experiencing dispossession to feel seen and recognized.”

When Ms. Werneburg herself played Lear back in theatre school, her director told her no acting was required to perform this passage, saying “All you need to do is think about everyone who at this very moment is sleeping on a subway grate on Yonge Street. What have you done about that today?”

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Organizers convened the Service of Solidarity in aid of the hurricane-ravaged islanders of the Diocese of North Eastern Caribbean & Aruba, led by Bishop Errol Brooks in St. John’s, Antigua. In addition to Aruba, this West Indian diocese, established in 1842, comprises the hard-hit islands of Antigua, Barbuda, Dominica, Monserrat, Anguilla, Nevis, Saba, St. Bart’s, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts and St. Martin/Maarten.

Clergy urged the congregation to step forward in an act of intentional giving to assist the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund’s efforts to aid those devastated by this summer’s back-to-back Category 5 storms, Rita and Irma. The service raised more than $5,000.

After the immediate relief efforts, the need for restructuring is urgent. “It was just two months ago that one of the world’s most beautiful islands was left in tatters and totally demolished,” said Fran Delsol, the trade and investment commissioner for the Commonwealth of Dominica. About 90 per cent of homes and almost every school and church on the island was left in ruins; patients died after the hospital was destroyed.

Famous for its lush green vegetation, the island is now a near-lunar landscape. “You look around today and it’s all brown because every tree was uprooted,” said Ms. Delsol, adding that for the first time, you can see both surrounding oceans, the Caribbean and the Atlantic, from any vantage point. The good news is the extraordinary support from others in the Caribbean and around the world, including the Palestine Liberation Army, she said.

In his words of welcome and purpose, the Rev. Leonard Leader of St. George on Yonge, Toronto, urged people to pray for the affected areas while reminding congregants “as Christians, we know that prayer is our first response but it is not our last result.” Although their presence shows they stand with others engaged in relief efforts, words alone are not enough, he said. “We are also going to be providing for those in need by sharing the gifts with which we’ve been blessed.” He noted that the York-Scarborough Area Council recently voted to contribute $3,000 to hurricane relief in Aruba.

After outlining some of the PWRDF’s many international relief and development efforts, Will Postma, the fund’s executive director, said, “I’ve consulted with the diocese and I know its needs are really intense.”

He stressed that the PWRDF strategy is not to duplicate efforts of government and other agencies but to ensure that its funds are put to optimal use. Beyond food, clean water, and clothing, the PWRDF will provide personal-care items and “dignity kits” to help residents maintain their self-esteem in the face of so much loss.

Delivering the homily, the Rt. Rev. Peter Fenty recognized that people have difficulty accepting or understanding the reasons for great disasters and why God “permits” them.

Bishop Fenty drew on the story of Lazarus and Martha from the second reading (John 11:11-27), to emphasize that in the midst of horror, God’s presence is an unfailing refuge and strength. Unlike Martha, who blamed Christ’s delayed arrival at her home for her brother Lazarus’s death, we should not consider adverse events to be ordained by God, nor should we believe that God causes disasters as punishment for wrongs committed. “Don’t go down that road. It is dangerous. If that were true, we’d all have to be worried,” Bishop Fenty said.

He pointed to the inexplicable sufferings of Job from the first reading (Job 19:21-29) as an example of the seeming unfathomability of bad things happening to good people. “If we think we are faithful to our God, when adversity strikes, we may believe that God is not listening or God is absent,” he said, but God is with us in the midst of the worst tribulations, as the 23^rd Psalm tells us, “Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I fear no evil; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

Natural or manmade disasters offer an opportunity for us to test our strength and to respond, like God, with love and comfort, he said – “to discover the life that exists even in the face of death.” He urged attendees “in the depths of our hearts be responsive to the needs of others” and to give generously, not for what we might gain in return but wholly for the sake of those who suffer.

Other participating clergy were Bishop Kevin Robertson, Bishop Riscylla Shaw, the Rev. Jacqueline Daley, the Rev. Canon Donald Butler, and the Rev. Canon Jim Garland.

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The Baptist pastor began his address, which ranged from scripture and theology to politics and quantum physics, by asking “What was Jesus’ mission in becoming man?” It was, he argued, not to rescue lost souls or to model what it means to be a self-actualizing human being. “It was to declare that the kingdom of God – the one named in the Lord’s Prayer – is at hand.”

Christ wants to transform people from within so that they can change the world into an equitable kingdom as prophesied in the Book of Isaiah, Mr. Campolo said. “Chapter 65 speaks of a time when there will be no infant mortality, when people will live out their lives in health and well-being.” It speaks of an age when houses are inhabited by those who build them, and instead of labouring for the benefit of others, workers will be justly rewarded. “That relates today to the kid in Thailand earning a dollar a day for long hours so North Americans can buy bargain sneakers at Walmart and Kmart.”

Peppering his sermon with hilarious anecdotes and Pentecostal-style shout-outs to the congregation, the former professor of sociology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania explained how much the Church has done to concretely change the world into God’s kingdom. “Twenty-five years ago, 45,000 people a day died of starvation or malnutrition-related disease. That has diminished to 17,000 today,” he said. Furthermore, the number of those lacking access to clean drinking water has dropped from one in six 25 years ago to one in 12 today. “Who drilled most of the wells in developing countries? It’s been Christian people, and we don’t take enough credit for what we’re doing.”

In other gains, he said the global illiteracy rate has fallen over 25 years from 80 per cent to 20 per cent, and the Christian housing mission Habitat for Humanity has just announced the completion of its one millionth house. “Who did most of the literacy training around the world? Christians. And what government can claim to have built a million homes for the poor?” he asked. To keep those statistics moving in a positive direction, he urged attendees to support the world-changing work of Christian organizations.

But to achieve the kingdom of God in a flawed world, Mr. Campolo argued, people must change from within. “Sometimes mainline denominations forget that people need to be changed individually,” he said. “We get so busy dealing with the social problems of the world that we don’t get the fact that people have to open themselves and let Christ invade them and transform them from within.”

He said he begins every day with 10 or 15 minutes of quiet focusing on Jesus to rid his mind of superfluous agendas while he waits for Christ to reach out from the cross across 2,000 years to connect with him. The paradox that the risen and ascended Christ can still be on the cross in 2017 took his sermon in a fascinating direction, where Christian theology met Einsteinian relativity. Einstein’s theory holds that the faster you travel, the more time is compressed.

“If we could travel at the speed of light, at 186,000 miles per second, all time would be compressed into one instantaneous now,” Mr. Campolo said. That is the way God and Jesus experience time, he said – not, like us, as a series of unfolding events. “For them, time is an eternal now,” he said, pointing out that when the Jews ask Jesus who he is, Jesus replies, “Before Abraham was, I am,” using the present tense for something that happened eons ago. “That’s why he can be hanging on the cross and still be at my side in the morning. He is like a sponge absorbing all the dark and ugly and sinful things in my life.”

Mr. Campolo stressed that people are very much in need of spiritual cleansing. “Jesus wants to cleanse us. The Holy Spirit cannot flow into us unless we cleanse,” he said. He emphasized the sacramental nature of reaching out to the poor and needy, the “least” of the world, and in so doing embracing Jesus. “I feel the presence of Christ in them,” he said.

Mr. Campolo also urged people to challenge governments that support the exploitation of the resources of impoverished countries, citing the example of the tax-free exporting of Nigerian petroleum by oil companies with the blessing of the Nigerian government. “Taxes on those billions of dollars in oil could provide schools and medical centres and food for the people,” he said.

He also noted that government-subsidized wheat and rice exports from Canada and the United States have destroyed the livelihoods of grain farmers in Haiti. “People in developing countries are not poor because they’re lazy,” Mr. Campolo said. “They’re poor because we have created a system that is unjust. God calls for justice. We need not only charity but we need justice.”

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Born into a Christian family in the port city of Lattakia, the London-based advocate for interfaith understanding and religious freedom spoke Oct. 16 in Toronto at a presentation sponsored by the Canadian International Council.

Mr. Nassar is a frequent and passionate commentator in the media on international religious affairs. In that role, he has been an outspoken critic of what he considers Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s “appalling support” for western military intervention in Syria.

Westerners hold many misconceptions about the Middle East, and it is proving a Herculean task to raise awareness among them, although the Arab Spring has helped somewhat to lift the veil and spark discussion on this region, he said.

“The West does not understand that in the Middle East, religion colours everything –  economics, politics, social norms, ethics,” he said. “If you don’t factor in the religious aspect, you have no idea about the issues. But the West has been afraid to talk about religion, it’s taboo.”

Few in the West are aware of Christianity’s deep roots in Syria. “Jesus Christ was born in Palestine and so was legally a Syrian citizen since Palestine was a Roman satellite of Syria,” he told a packed audience at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Many don’t realize that having “a road to Damascus experience” refers to St. Paul’s conversion to Christianity en route to the ancient Syrian capital, he said.

Yet now, according to figures presented at his talk, resident Christians in Syria have dropped from 1.25 million in 2011 to fewer than half a million today, much of it through death and displacement. “Christian and other minority communities are at risk of being wiped off the map in the Middle East,” said Dr. Mark Sedra, president of the Canadian International Council, in his opening remarks.

Mr. Nassar founded the Awareness Foundation in 2003. It is a Christian charity whose mission is peace-building and empowering Christians everywhere to counter intolerance and promote interfaith understanding.

One of its programs is training young people in the Middle East to be ambassadors of peace and preparing them for the democracy they have never experienced. But Mr. Nassar cautioned that western-style democracy cannot be imposed but must be tailored to the norms of the region. “Democracy is like water. It takes the shape of its container, whether that’s a jug or a glass,” he said.

In his native Syria, he faced a very difficult assignment in approaching youth. “Young Syrian Christians were angry, in despair, desperate,” he said. “They were furious with the Church, with God, with the West. They were against everything.” Having lost the lives they had lived in their now-wrecked country, they were simply biding time until visas got them out – to anywhere.

Mr. Nassar related well to their nihilism since he had lived for seven years in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990. He won their confidence by showing them he was not just another expatriate living safely in the West.

He heard them out quietly, and his listening was rewarded. “It was an incredible experience turning a person from despair to embracing the idea, ‘I can be an ambassador for peace in my own broken country,’” he said.

One positive step the West can take for Syria is to use its leverage to encourage negotiations between the country’s warring factions, with the goal of re-establishing peaceful co-existence. “Why are we not pushing toward Syrian-to-Syrian dialogue?” he asked.

Mr. Nassar has long supported talks with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad – in spite of protestations from others that no one should sit at the table with such a murderous dictator. “Assad is not going anywhere,” he said. “His army is still there.” Mr. Nassar believes dialogue is the only recourse in both Syria and Yemen.

Despite few opportunities for political power, Christians will survive in the Middle East, he said. “History has proven that Christians are resilient, but we have to work for survival. This is why the Awareness Foundation was established.” Rather than aid refugees in camps – which are devoid of Christians and other minorities, he said – the foundation has chosen to support people who choose to stay in their ancestral homeland. “The only way to try to make a difference is to be inside. We want to strengthen those who remain in the country. Exporting people is never a solution.”

Asked by The Anglican what Canadian Christians can do to help Syria, he said,  “Support those working inside the country to strengthen those who remain. And support dialogue between the warring parties.” Only by bringing sectarian stakeholders to the negotiating table can the already hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of evacuations be prevented from spiraling even higher, he said.

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