Anglicans host ecumenical gathering
By James Buchok
WINNIPEG — Bishop Donald Phillips and the staff of the Anglican Diocese
of Rupert’s Land hosted the annual gathering of Winnipeg’s
church leaders and their diocesan staffs Jan. 18 to mark the Week of
Prayer for Christian Unity.
The event was held at St.
John’s Anglican Cathedral on the banks
of the Red River in Winnipeg’s North End.
Phillips explained that by
virtue of the bishop’s “throne,” or
cathedra (Latin for chair), being at St. John’s, it is the cathedral, “but
it’s nowhere near the largest church in the diocese. In fact it’s
really quite small, but it remains as that primary place,” he said.
A worship service was held with a reading from Matthew 16:13-19, chosen,
said Phillips, because Jan. 18 marks the confession of Peter that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Bishop Donald Phillips and Dean Paul N. Johnson (Buchok photo)
“Jesus
replies to Peter, ‘Upon
this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.’ We hear statistics
that say things like, ‘By 2052 there will be no Anglicans left
in Canada.’ Not that we shouldn’t pay attention, but that
is God’s
problem. We need to be engaged to do our work but the church is not ours,
it’s God’s creation and we are its stewards,” Phillips
said.
Phillips said the keys of
the kingdom given by Jesus to Peter are not keys that lock but keys
that open. “The keys open a treasure and we have
been gifted with it. We can say to our brothers and sisters, ‘Look
at the treasure that there is,’ and we use the keys to invite them
in.”
Rev. Paul N. Johnson, in just
his second day as the new Dean of Rupert’s
Land and the cathedral’s senior pastor, provided some history of
the cathedral which is regarded as the birthplace of the Anglican Church
in Western Canada.
In 1812, the first group of
Selkirk settlers established a burying ground just south of the present
cathedral. Today the cemetery surrounds the cathedral with approximately
8,000 graves, with another 1,000 reserved and about a dozen still available.
Many of the founding families of Winnipeg are buried in the cemetery
and it is the final resting place of many of Manitoba’s
prominent historical figures.
The site is about a kilometre
from the site of the 1820 Battle of Seven Oaks, also known as the Seven
Oaks Massacre, fought over the fur trade between contingents representing
the Hudson’s Bay Co., backed by
the settlers, and the rival North West Company. Twenty-one settlers were
killed while their opposition suffered one fatality. These days corporate
warfare is fought in a courtroom, but back then, Johnson said, “corporate
warfare cost them their lives.”
Also in 1820, Rev. John West,
the first Anglican priest in Western Canada, arrived from England.
Two years later he constructed a mission house near the southeast
corner of the present cemetery. In 1833 it was replaced by a second
church built on the site of the present cathedral. This second church
became the first Anglican cathedral in Western Canada soon after the
first Bishop of Rupert’s Land was consecrated in 1849. The
third church on this site was built in 1862. In 1926, under the guidance
of Archbishop Samuel P. Matheson, the present building (the fourth church)
was reconstructed in 1926, using most of the stone from the previous
building.
A different church hosts the annual ecumenical gathering each year. In 2013 the local offices of the Presbyterian Church will host the 12th annual gathering.
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