O Almighty God, who in thy wrath didst send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest: Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and grievous sickness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
-Prayer in the time of any common plague of sickness, Book of Common Prayer (1662)
While Sunday services haven’t been cancelled in Nova Scotia yet because of the COVID-19 pandemic (at the time of writing, Nova Scotia is the only Canadian province not to have any confirmed cases of COVID-19), I made the difficult decision that it would be more prudent for all that I celebrated a solemn Morning Prayer on this Third Sunday in Lent at home rather than potentially exposing more vulnerable people at church.
I used recordings of Tallis and generous use of incense to compensate for the less than formal setting (some would argue that I would use any excuse to burn incense, but I digress). God is within all of us, and the church is not a physical place, but a place of mind.
Please pray for all our health service workers, the sick, the dying, the vulnerable, the scared, and those who need our prayers during these uncertain times.
High Anglican Haligonian 