Commontide
For Desiring God
O God, grant that we may desire you, and desiring you seek you, and seeking you find you, and finding you be satisfied in you for ever. Amen.
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 4th Sunday in Lent
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Lent
You bid your faithful people cleanse their hearts, and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast; that, fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, and renewed by your Word and Sacraments, they may come to the fullness of grace which you have prepared for those who love you.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
First Primate of Canada
Anglican Commemoration
Robert Machray was an Aberdeen-born Cambridge don who left a Cambridge deanery in 1865 to become second Bishop of Rupert's Land, and stayed nearly thirty-nine years. He divided his vast diocese into four, reopened St John's College, Winnipeg, served as Chancellor of the University of Manitoba, and in 1893 was elected first Primate of All Canada. He died at Winnipeg on 9 March 1904 and lies in his cathedral churchyard.
Robert Machray was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1831 and trained at Oxford University. He was ordained in the Church of England and served as chaplain to the British garrison in Canada before being elected Bishop of Rupert's Land in 1865. His 39-year episcopate fundamentally transformed the religious landscape of British North America. Machray established missionary stations across the prairies, advocated for Indigenous ministry, and built the institutional scaffolding of Canadian Anglicanism: diocesan structures, synodal governance, and theological formation. In 1893, the House of Bishops elected him first Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada in recognition of his leadership and influence. He continued to guide the church through complex questions of disestablishment, liturgical adaptation, and missionary expansion. Machray retired to Montreal in 1902 and died on September 16, 1904. His legacy fundamentally shapes Canadian Anglican identity and practice.
Machray exemplifies the institutional founder of Canadian Anglicanism and the episcopal missionary leader of the 19th-century colonial church. His tenure established canonical structures, clergy formation systems, and Indigenous outreach patterns that persist in Canadian Anglican practice. Venerated in Canadian Anglican memory as the 'father of Canadian Anglicanism.'