Church of the Advent
Église de l’Avent

Information about our Parish

Profile of the Anglican Church

We are an Anglican parish belonging to the Diocese of Montreal in the Anglican Church of Canada. A diocese is a geographical unit containing a number of parishes whose chief pastor is a Bishop. With other Anglican Churches around the world, the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Church of England, for example, we form the Anglican Communion.

There are approximately seventy million Anglicans worldwide. Although the Church has its roots in the British Isles, most contemporary Anglicans do not live in Western Europe or North America. The “average Anglican” is a person of colour, living in a hot country, whose mother tongue is a language other than English.

Parishes differ in their composition and in the history they share. In North America and Great Britain, our parishes are, typically, stable groups of people who were born and raised in the Anglican tradition. The familiarity of the Anglican liturgy as found in the Book of Common Prayer or the Book of Alternative Services would lead an Anglican newcomer to Montreal to search out an Anglican parish. Even though Anglican parishes differ greatly in their style of worship and in the sort of ambiance they cultivate, the language of the liturgy (either the traditional service or the contemporary revision) and the emphasis on a ministry of both Word and Sacrament are common to all of them.

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Our Community

Its Origins

Our particular parish was founded in the 1890s as an annex of the parish of St. James the Apostle (the term at the time was “a chapel of ease”) for the use of those members of St. James who lived in the west end of that parish. It soon became a parish on its own, bounded on the west by Greene Avenue, in the east by Fort Street, in the north by Sherbrooke Street, and in the south by Dorchester Boulevard (now René Lévesque Blvd.). It’s ‘Catholic’ practises (weekly eucharists, candles on the altar, a vested choir, incense, etc.) were looked upon with a certain amount disdain by many in the Diocese who would have identified themselves as part of the protestant establishment.

Today: a Modern Parish

As the city of Montreal has changed over the years, so the Advent, too, has changed the face of its congregation and the sort of ministry which it provides to its immediate environs and to the city of Montreal as a whole.

We are not a stable congregation of white, Canadian born, anglophones. Many of our congregation are not cradle Anglicans. Our members come from Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Peru, Ghana, Togo, Cameroun, the Seychelles, Barbados, Trinidad and other countries. And they live in various areas of the island of Montreal — our central location near the Atwater metro helps many people. While most of them use English as their mother tongue, we also have a fair number of people whose main language is French or Spanish. Our usual service book is printed in both English and French.

For a number of years, the parish of the Advent has maintained an interest in welcoming refugees and immigrants, and incorporating them into our community. Our Refugee Centre is open on most weekdays from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.

We try, as much as is possible, to cater to the needs of the newcomers in our midst, not simply in order that we might feel like good citizens, but because we believe that a newcomer is somebody that God already knows and in whom God has already been at work. Our role is not to “make a Christian of them” or to create one more Anglican in the world but, rather, to be fertile ground in which the seed, which God has planted, can grow and flourish. The solitary Christian is a starving Christian.

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Our Building

You will note that there are three primary furnishings in our church.

A rather large baptismal font is placed near the front door. Baptism is the rite of entry into the family of Christ’s Church, not only in the Anglican tradition but in all Christian bodies. Infant baptism is the norm in the Anglican Church. As Christian baptism becomes less and less an habitual rite of passage for children in our society, however, our congregations become more used to seeing adults make a commitment of faith and being baptised.

At the front of the church nave, set to the left of the centre aisle is the pulpit, from which the sermon is traditionally preached on Sunday. There also is the altar, set in the centre of the sanctuary.

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Liturgies and Sacraments

Like in the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox and many of the Lutheran churches, the Holy Eucharist (Lord’s Supper, Mass) is celebrated in our church every Sunday. The Holy Eucharist is the central act of the whole people of God. The liturgy is responsive — a dialogue between the people and the priest — and not a magical act performed by the priest for the people. Sections of the liturgy are sung: some parts by the priest, and some by the choir and congregation. At the centre of the Eucharist is the prayer of consecration — a retelling of the creative acts of God, the sacred history of Israel, leading up to the story of what Jesus did at his last supper with his disciples, when he took bread and a cup of wine, broke the bread and said “This is my body, given for you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, given for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

The Holy Eucharist is celebrated each Sunday at 10:00 a.m. and each Wednesday at 12:10 p.m. There is always a sermon. On Sundays during the school year, a church school is available for school-aged children and we welcome children and todlers at the service. We invite you to visit and, if you like what you find, to join the congregation.

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© 1998 ; 2002-08-10