Welcome!
Spiritual formation is a lifelong process that begins when we take our very first breath. Christ Church Cathedral is committed to supporting children and their grown-ups as they journey to Christian maturity together. Our community welcomes families of all descriptions at our services, in our Sunday School, and at our special events. We’d love to meet yours!
Click through to learn more about:
Sunday School (every Sunday during the 10 a.m. Eucharist)
Family Saturdays
Children in Church
We Will!
Between the beginning of May and the middle of July, I am presiding at two baptisms and three weddings as well as attending a fourth wedding and an inter-faith family covenanting ceremony (and missing two others!). It would be a small miracle if I didn’t have pastoral liturgies on the brain these days.
Calling these services “pastoral liturgies” recognizes that they are public, shared works of worship (liturgy) which have particular meaning and consequences for some of the participants (pastoral). This is, of course, true. No one cares quite as much about the wedding as the couple being married. No one else has to do any preparation for the baptism except the family or individual concerned. These services play a role in the pastoral ministry of the church to its members (and, increasingly, to its non-members). But these services also provide pastoral ministry to the church, a blessing and a gift offered from the couple or individual or family to the gathered community.
In each service, the gathered community is asked if they will do what they can to support the couple or the family or the individual as they seek to uphold the promises they made and live into the fullness of the vocation they have undertaken—whether it is the vocation of Christian or marital maturity.
We are all reminded that maturity is not something we can attain on our own. We are reminded that following Jesus, living a life of integrity and love and self-giving in unity with God, is not something we can do without help. We are reminded that, as members of Christian community, we are bound to one another by bonds of mutual accountability, support, and compassion. We are, perhaps, reminded that it is okay to ask for, and to offer, help.
The first of these many weddings was last Saturday (May 4). It was a beautiful service—full of heartfelt prayer, music, poetry, and dance. But perhaps my favourite part was when the congregation was asked if they were prepared to support the couple in their life together. The “We will” was an enthusiastic, love-filled shout that filled the Cathedral and brought forth delighted laughter from everyone present.
“We will!” – this is indeed a rich blessing, not only for the couple for all the rest of us as well.
originally published in the May issue of the Christ Church Cathedral Family Newsletter
Now the Green Blade Riseth
After the success of last year’s Pennies for Haiti appeal, Christ Church Cathedral Sunday School 
launched its Lent Appeal, Now the Green Blade Riseth. Proceeds from the appeal will go to PWRDF (The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund) for a food security program in Masasi, Tanzania, which features farmers sharing successful seeds with their neighbours. This program is vital in the region as most households only have enough food for four to eight months each year. Find out more about the PWRDF Seeds for Change program.
Sunday School is particularly excited about supporting a project in Masasi, as it will enable us to learn more about the people who live in our companion diocese.
On Palm Sunday (March 24th) the children planted quick-growing seeds such as nasturtiums, marigolds, beetroots and mustard hoping and praying that by Easter morning, some shoots would have appeared. Members o
f the congregation were invited to “nurture” a plant by making a donation to Seeds for Change (contributions continue to be welcome!).
By Maundy Thursday, the first shoots poked up above the soil and were blessed at the beginning of the Easter morning service by the Dean. The children placed the flowerpots in the Easter Garden for visitors to the cathedral to enjoy. If you are in Montreal, be sure to stop by and make your way up to the high altar to see how the plants are doing!
This coming Sunday, we will continue to think about the promise of seeds and the potential of partnerships as we celebrate a transferred 5th Sunday service. Look for an update next week!
Easter Sunday!
Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday is always a special celebration and is a great service for children. The energy is high, the music is fun, everyone is in a good mood. At Christ Church Cathedral, as in many places, we bring in brass instruments and timpani and go a little wild with bells. We are also fortunate to have a talented liturgical dance choreographer in our parish who always adds beauty and depth to our Easter worship. All of this engages kids and makes a service where a little extra kid-noise is just part of the fun. This year, however, we wanted to go further in finding ways to involve kids in the drama and the joy of Easter morning.
At the beginning of the service, during the singing of the Gloria, children and adults processed to the front of the church carrying plants that were just beginning to sprout. These plants, part of a fundraising appeal to support our partner diocese in Tanzania, were added to the 
Easter garden and blessed as signs of new life and the promise of the resurrection. (more about this project in a future post)…
Including their plants and their liturgical participation in the symbolic act of blessing the garden didn’t just catch their attention. It told the children that their contribution to our worship was important because it enhanced the experience of the whole community. It made them full members and partners in the work of the people – the liturgy.
The other point in the service when children were specifically addressed was at the end of the sermon, when we released the Alleluias in the form of helium balloons. 
This was more than a gimmick, more than a tacked-on children’s talk but rather a relevant (if admittedly gimmicky) illustration of the sermon which was about how the empty tomb shows us that God cannot be contained in an box – not heaven, not death, not religion, nothing. God is too big and too free and will always get out of the box in order to be with us and lead us to freedom, too. Alleluia! The sermon repeated the refrain “God refuses to be boxed up” in the hopes that children would catch that message, even if the rest of the sermon was too complicated or wordy to be of interest. The balloons drove the point home.
And were a lot of fun. A lot. (Click here to read the sermon on the Cathedral website)
Releasing the Alleluias!
Good Friday
The first service of Good Friday at Christ Church Cathedral is designed to tell the story of Christ’s passion to children, engaging their imaginations, their empathy, and their senses as we move around the Cathedral. This year, Dean Paul Kennington led us from the supper table to the garden to the cross, where everyone wrote (or drew) their concerns or hopes on cards and attached them to the cross in prayer. The choir walked with us, leading us in quiet song as we moved from place to place and as we prayed.
Paul talked about friends – about loving them and helping them and being let down by them. He talked about Jesus, the friend who can always be relied on. He acknowledged the sadness of the day in a way that children could understand but not in a way that would scare them or weigh them down. This is a tricky balance to achieve, especially on Good Friday when we do not want to move to proclaiming the resurrection quite yet. Instead, Paul helped the children enter the story in a safe place with a trusted guide and pointed to the promise of Jesus’ resurrection by making the cross a place of prayer rather than of desolation.
carrying the cross with Jesus
preparing our prayers
praying with the cross
Whole Family Ministry for the Whole Body of Christ
This article originally appeared in the March edition of the Montreal Anglican.
Making Advent Candles – together
“We need more children!” How often have we heard that cry from our parishes – perhaps even from our own lips – as people remember the joys of a full Sunday School and look with anxiety towards a future of empty churches. Needing children doesn’t seem to make them come, though. In fact, needing young families so desperately may be one of the things that prevents those who do come from staying for long. People come to church because they need something and our anxieties about our future can cause us to forget that we are called to be the caregiver, at least in the early days of their relationship with the church.
Fortunately for all of us, young families need something that we are well equipped to provide. They need a safe, loving, nurturing community for both children and grown-ups. They need support in facing the uncertainties and challenges of caring for precious, vulnerable, exhausting children. They need guidance as they confront the mysteries of life and death, growth and change, fear and hope. Our rich practices of liturgy, theological education, and fellowship offer these families all of this and more, when we set aside our need in order to minister to them in the name of Christ.
How do we actually do it? What does this ministry look like? In many ways, it doesn’t look much different from what you are already familiar with. Ministry to children is ministry to parents. Nothing tells parents more clearly that they are welcome than welcoming their children. Sunday School is not only formation for children; it frees parents for their own formation in worship. The reverse is also true. Ministry to parents is ministry to children. Caring for parents, praying for parents, exploring questions with parents – all of this gives them resources for caring, praying and questioning with their children. Of course. we do all of these things in the regular course of our ministries of pastoral care, teaching, and worship. Ensuring that these ministries reach parents, however, may require some thinking about timing/childcare, as well as paying attention to the concerns that may be particular to people in their stage of life.
There is, however, a third element to this ministry. Sometimes, families need to be ministered to as families, parents and children together. Children and parents are separated for most of the week and church shouldn’t always be another place of separation. What’s more, the family, not the church, is the most important place for faith formation. We can help facilitate that crucial role by providing opportunities for parents and children to learn together, to worship together, to experience God together so that those experiences can enter into the very fabric of their homes and their relationships.
Specially designed all-ages services, family programming, and parish events that are explicitly child-friendly can all be elements of this ministry to whole families, a ministry that truly builds up the body of Christ. And that is the only thing we really need to do.
If you are in Montreal, come to the Kidstuff workshop on Whole Family Ministry to hear about the experiments happening right here in our diocese. Share your experience. Ask your questions. Get inspired!
Monday, April 15th, 5:30-8:30. Church of the Epiphany 4322 Wellington, Verdun Dinner provided. Free-will offerings accepted. Register at rwaters@montreal.anglican.caNever an Either/Or
A quote, attributed to C.S. Lewis, has been making the rounds of my social media lately: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body”. I’ve seen it posted by pastors and priests as well as spiritual-but-not-religious friends and I’ve bitten my commenting tongue every time it’s scrolled by, resisting the urge to type, in all-caps, “HERESY!!!” (which is rarely a way to make friends).
But heresy it is—and a quick Google search has assured me that C.S. Lewis never said any such thing. The quote, or versions thereof, is very old and no one knows its origin. Regardless of where it comes from, though, it’s wrong.
We are souls/bodies, essentially flesh and essentially spirit equally, mysteriously, and inseparably. Which is why there is no need for a crisis of faith when spiritual experiences can be described with hormones and neuro-chemicals—it’s not either/or but rather one resounding “Yes!”.
Remember, the Word of God was made flesh. Jesus didn’t just put it on temporarily; he was made of it. And then the Word of God died in the flesh and was resurrected—in the flesh! Notice just how bodily Holy Week and the Easter season are: Jesus is constantly touching and being touched, eating, walking, talking, crying. Just like us.
I know this can be hard news. Many of us have…complicated relationships with our bodies. Many of us have bodies which are broken or sick or limiting. All of us have bodies that are aging and that will die. But we can’t just treat them as prisons or even temporary palaces for our true, spiritual selves. In all their weaknesses and their wonders, they are our true spiritual selves, in unity with our souls and minds and personality.
But this hard news is, ultimately, good news. Our bodies, their needs and desires, are not to be despised. They matter and they speak to us of the holy. Our religious tradition has too often pretended otherwise. Our intellectual tradition has, as well, prioritizing cognitive processes over bodily ones. But, as parents, we have an excellent opportunity to practice listening to bodies for a Word from God because, as Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer points out: “Parenting may be a spiritual journey, but it is never far removed from bodily realities.” Dressing, burping, toileting, tickling, bandaging, cleaning, hauling, chasing, soothing—these are the spiritual disciplines of this particular vocation.
Because it’s never an either/or.
Ashes on a Child’s Forehead
I’ve never had the opportunity to impose ashes on the forehead of a child but I have taken my own child to a few Ash Wednesday services.
The first one was at my college chapel and the priest with a blackened thumb was the same priest who had, just months earlier, led my husband, me, and our little community in prayers of thanksgiving for the birth of our son. I knelt at the railing, waiting to feel the shape of the cross and the weight of the words “Remember you are dust”, and cradled my sleeping son in my arms. I was suddenly filled with anxiety at the idea that his head, too, would bear this mark.
The priest reached us and only my head was marked.
I was so relieved. After the service, the priest confessed that he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. I thanked him.
My son’s second Ash Wednesday service was the next year. This time, we were visiting a cathedral in another city but, once again, he was asleep in his carrier on my chest. The priest reached us and made the sign of the cross on my forehead: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Then he made the sign of the cross on my son’s forehead: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return…but not for a long, long time.” Silently, I thanked him for that promise.
Both of these priests – and I – were wrong. Our error is understandable but we were, nonetheless, in error. Our children are not somehow exempt from humanity, in all its messiness and fragility, just because we wish they were. Avoiding the dust of their being, or pretending that we can know anything of their future or its duration, is to give them less than their due. It is the kind of wishful, willfully blinkered thinking that Ash Wednesday calls us to turn away from in order to present ourselves wholly and honestly to God.
The prayer spoken by the parents in the service of thanksgiving reminds us that our children, like we ourselves, belong finally to God. May you remember this great and terrible truth this Lent.
God, our creator and redeemer, thank you for the gift of this child, entrusted to our care for a time. May we be patient and understanding, ready to guide and forgive,
that in our love this child may know your love, and learn to love your world and the whole family of your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(from the Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada)
