The Sisterhood of St. John the Divine is a religious community of nuns in the Anglican Church of Canada.
Anglican religious orders are communities of men or women in the Anglican Communion who live under a common rule of life. The members of religious orders take vows which often include the traditional monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, or the ancient vow of stability, or sometimes a modern interpretation of some or all of these vows. Members may be laity or clergy, but most commonly include a mixture of both. They lead a common life of work and prayer, sometimes on a single site, sometimes spread over multiple locations.
The Anglican Church of Canada is the province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is l'Église anglicane du Canada. In 2007, the Anglican Church counted 545,957 members on parish rolls in 2792 congregations, organised into 1676 parishes. The 2011 Canadian Census counted 1,631,845 self-identified Anglicans, making the Anglican Church the third-largest Canadian church after the Roman Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada. The Queen of Canada's Canadian Royal Style continues to include the title of Defender of the Faith, and the Canadian Monarch continues her countenance of three Chapels Royal in the Realm.
Founded in Toronto in 1884 by Mother Hannah Grier Coome, the order ministers at St. John's Rehab Hospital and is known for its members' distinctive blue habits, retreat leadership, and spiritual direction services. The sisters make altar linens to order, and founded the Altar Guild at St. Thomas Anglican Church. The Sisterhood has been active in liturgical renewal and unequivocal in its acceptance of the Book of Alternative Services .
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
Hannah Grier Coome founded the Anglican Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, and was its first mother superior.
Spiritual direction is the practice of being with people as they attempt to deepen their relationship with the divine, or to learn and grow in their own personal spirituality. The person seeking direction shares stories of his or her encounters of the divine, or how he or she is cultivating a life attuned to spiritual things. The director listens and asks questions to assist the directee in his or her process of reflection and spiritual growth. Spiritual direction advocates claim that it develops a deeper awareness with the spiritual aspect of being human, and that it is not psychotherapy, counseling, or financial planning.
The order has houses in Toronto (St. John's Convent and Guest House) and Victoria (St. John's House, BC).
Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 85,792, while the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria has a population of 367,770, making it the 15th most populous Canadian metropolitan area. Victoria is the 7th most densely populated city in Canada with 4,405.8 people per square kilometre, which is a greater population density than Toronto.
The Anglican Use is an officially approved form of liturgy used by former members of the Anglican Communion who joined the Catholic Church while wishing to maintain the treasures of the Anglican tradition.
A cathedra or bishop's throne is the seat of a bishop. It is a symbol of the bishop's teaching authority in the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion churches. Cathedra is the Latin word for a chair with armrests, and it appears in early Christian literature in the phrase "cathedrae apostolorum", indicating authority derived directly from the apostles; its Roman connotations of authority reserved for the Emperor were later adopted by bishops after the 4th century. A church into which a bishop's official cathedra is installed is called a cathedral.
Tenebrae is a religious service of Western Christianity held during the three days preceding Easter, and characterized by gradual extinguishing of candles, and by a "strepitus" or "loud noise" taking place in total darkness near the end of the service.
Evening Prayer is a liturgy in use in the Anglican tradition celebrated in the late afternoon or evening. It is also commonly known as Evensong, especially when the office is rendered chorally, that is, when most of the service is sung.
Christian liturgy is a pattern for worship used by a Christian congregation or denomination on a regular basis. Although the term liturgy is used to mean public worship in general, the Byzantine Rite uses the term "Divine Liturgy" to denote the Eucharistic service.
Dedication is the act of consecrating an altar, temple, church, or other sacred building. It also refers to the inscription of books or other artifacts when these are specifically addressed or presented to a particular person. This practice, which once was used to gain the patronage and support of the person so addressed, is now only a mark of affection or regard. In law, the word is used of the setting apart by a private owner of a road to public use.
Wycliffe College is a graduate theological school of the University of Toronto. It is affiliated with the Anglican Church of Canada and is evangelical and low church in orientation. On the other hand, the University of Toronto's other Anglican college, the University of Trinity College, is Anglo-Catholic in outlook. While being an Anglican seminary, Wycliffe College attracts students from many Christian denominations. As a founding member of the Toronto School of Theology, students are free to participate in the wide range of courses from Canada's largest ecumenical consortium. It trains those pursuing ordination as well as those preparing for academic careers of scholarship and teaching.
There are a number of Benedictine Anglican religious orders, some of them using the name Order of St. Benedict (OSB). Just like their Roman Catholic counterparts, each abbey / priory / convent is independent of each other. The vows are not made to an order, but to a local incarnation of the order, hence each individual order is free to develop its own character and charism, yet each under a common rule of life after the precepts of St. Benedict. Most of the communities include a confraternity of oblates. The order consists of a number of independent communities:
The Community of St. Mary (CSM) is an Anglican religious order of nuns with independent houses located in Greenwich, New York, Sewanee, Tennessee, Mukwonago, Wisconsin, and also in Malawi and the Philippines.
The Community of the Transfiguration is an Anglican (Episcopalian) religious community of nuns, founded by Mother Eva Mary and Beatrice Henderson in the winter of 1898.
Colin Robert Johnson is the current Anglican archbishop of Toronto, and the former Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario. He is an alumnus of Trinity College in the University of Toronto and the 11th bishop of the diocese, the largest in the Anglican Church of Canada.
St Thomas the Martyr's is a Church of England parish church of the Anglo-Catholic tradition, in Oxford, England, near Oxford railway station in Osney. It is located between Becket Street to the west and Hollybush Row to the east, with St Thomas Street opposite.
St John the Divine, Kennington, is an Anglican church in London. The parish of Kennington is within the Anglican Diocese of Southwark. The church was designed by the architect George Edmund Street in the Decorated Gothic style, and was built between 1871 and 1874. Today it is a grade I listed building.
Arthur Sweatman was a Canadian Anglican bishop and the third Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.
St. John’s Rehab, part of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, is solely dedicated to specialized rehabilitation. As the site of Canada’s only dedicated organ transplant rehabilitation program and Ontario's only dedicated burn rehabilitation program, the hospital develops individually customized inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services.
John the Divine or Saint/St John the Divine refers to the man whom Christian tradition variously calls:
Former religious orders in the churches of the Anglican Communion are those communities of monks, nuns, friars, or sisters, having a common life and rule under vows, whose work has ended and whose community has been disbanded. In a very few cases this is due to the termination of the work for which the community was established, but in most cases it is due to amalgamation or the death of the final remaining member of the community.
Jane Christmas is a Canadian travel writer, who was a shortlisted nominee for the Stephen Leacock Award and the Word Awards in 2014 for her memoir And Then There Were Nuns. The book chronicles a year she spent in various convents while discerning whether to marry for a third time or to take up a vocation as an Anglican nun. In 2011, she was accepted as an associate with the Canadian Anglican religious community, the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine.
