Saint Mark the Evangelist

A disciple of Jesus named Mark appears in several places in the New Testament. If all references to Mark are accepted as referring to the same person, we learn that he was the son of a woman who owned a house in Jerusalem, perhaps the same house in which Jesus ate the Last Supper with his disciples. Mark may have been the young man who fled naked when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. In his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul refers to “Mark the cousin of Barnabas”, who was with him in his imprisonment. Mark set out with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, but he turned back for reasons which failed to satisfy Paul (Acts 15:36-40). When another journey was planned, Paul refused to have Mark with him. Instead, Mark went with Barnabas to Cyprus. The breach between Paul and Mark was later healed, and Mark became one of Paul’s companions in Rome, as well as a close friend of the Apostle Peter.

An early tradition recorded by Papias, Bishop of Hieropolis in Asia Minor at the beginning of the second century, names Mark as the author of the Gospel bearing his name. This tradition, which holds that Mark drew his information from the teaching of Peter, is generally accepted. In his First Letter, Peter refers to “my son Mark”, which shows a close relationship between the two men (1 Peter 5:13).

The Church of Alexandria in Egypt claimed Mark as their founder, first bishop and most illustrious martyr, and the great Church of San Marco in Venice commemorates the disciple who progressed from turning back while on a missionary journey with Paul and Barnabas to proclaiming in his Gospel Jesus of Nazareth as Son of God, and bearing witness to that faith as friend and companion to the apostles Peter and Paul.

adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

The Collect

Almighty God, by the hand of Mark the evangelist you have given to your Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ: We thank you for his witness, and pray that you will give us grace to know the truth, and not to be carried about by every wind of false doctrine, that we may know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

The Lesson
Isaiah 52:7-10

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice;
together they sing for joy;
for eye to eye they see
the return of the Lord to Zion.
Break forth together into singing,
you waste places of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people;
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.

Psalm 2
Quare fremuerunt gentes

Why do the nations so furiously rage together? * And why do the peoples devise a vain thing?

The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together, * against the Lord and against his Anointed:

“Let us break their bonds asunder * and cast away their cords from us.”

He who dwells in heaven shall laugh them to scorn; * the Lord shall hold them in derision.

Then shall he speak to them in his wrath * and terrify them in his great anger:

“I myself have set my King * upon my holy hill of Zion.”

I will proclaim the decree of the Lord; * he said to me, “You are my Son; this day have I begotten you.

Ask of me, and I shall give you the nations for your inheritance * and the ends of the earth for your possession.

You shall bruise them with a rod of iron * and break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Be wise now, O you kings; * be warned, you judges of the earth.

Serve the Lord in fear, * and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way; for his wrath is quickly kindled. * Blessed are all those who put their trust in him.

The Epistle
Ephesians 4:7-8,11-16

But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says,

“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.”

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

The Gospel
Mark 16:15-20

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

The scripture texts for the Lesson, the Epistle, and Gospel are taken from the English Standard Version Bible. The Collect and Psalm are taken from the Book of Common Prayer (2019).

George, Martyr, c. 304

George (Georgios) was probably a Roman soldier of Greek-speaking origin living in Palestine at the beginning of the fourth century. He is held to have been martyred at Lydda around the year 304, at the beginning of the great persecution of Christians under the emperor Diocletian. He became known throughout the East as Megalomartyr, the “Great Martyr.” Devotion to him was widespread in both western and eastern reaches of the Roman Empire by the fifth century, and he occurs in the Martyrology of Jerome, a pseudepigraphal text attributed to Jerome of Jerusalem that originated in the mid-fifth century; and in the Gregorian Sacramentary, a tenth-century text.

The famous story of his slaying the dragon is possibly due to his being mistaken in iconography for the Archangel Michael, both of them usually being depicted as wearing armor. There may also have been a conflation of George with the pagan Greek hero Perseus, who slew a sea monster that menaced Andromeda, a myth associated with the region of Lydda. According to the story of Saint George and the Dragon in the Golden Legend (a mid-thirteenth century text), George defeated a dragon that had been terrorizing the countryside, poisoning with its breath all who approached it. He then led the captive dragon before the people, telling them that if that would believe in Jesus Christ and be baptized, he would rid them of the monster. The king and people agreed, George slew the dragon, and 15,000 persons were baptized. George took no reward but asked instead the king’s surety that he would maintain churches, honor presbyters, and show compassion to the poor. The Legend continues with an account of the sufferings and death of George, this being the only historical element in the text.

A number of churches in England were dedicated to George prior to the Norman Conquest, and he is found in the Martyrology of Bede and the Old English Martyrology. He is also recorded in the Irish Martyrology of Oengus. English devotion to Saint George grew during the Crusades, in part due to a vision of Saints George and Demetrius at the siege of Antioch that preceded the defeat of the Saracens and the fall of the city to the crusaders in the First Crusade. The author of the Gesta Francorum claimed that George’s body was in a church near Ramleh. King Richard the First (Lionheart) placed himself and his army under George’s protection, a synod at Oxford in 1222 made his feast a lesser holiday, and King Edward the Third founded the Order of the Garter under Saint George’s patronage. The Chapel of Saint George was built at Windsor Castle for the Order by King Edward the Fourth and enlarged by King Henry the Seventh, and it remains the chapel for the royal family of the United Kingdom when they are in residence at Windsor, serving as well as the burial place for many members of English and British royalty. In 1415 the archbishop of Canterbury had George’s feast raised to one of the principal feasts of the year after the battle of Agincourt, when King Henry the Fifth in a speech made famous by Shakespeare invoked Saint George as England’s patron, George eventually displacing both Edward the Confessor and Edmund of East Anglia as England’s patron saint.

George came to be seen as the personification of the ideals of Christian chivalry, and by the late Middle Ages he was the patron not only of England but of Venice, Genoa, Portugal, and Catalonia. The sanctoral calendar in the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America is the first American sanctoral calendar to include George.

prepared from material in The Oxford Dictionary of Saints and Celebrating the Saints

The Collect

Almighty God, you gave your servant George boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to die for this faith: Grant that we may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Teacher of the Faith, 1109

The son of a spendthrift Lombard nobleman with whom he quarrelled as a young man, Anselm was born at Aosta in the Italian Alps around 1033 and took monastic vows in 1060 at the Abbey of Bec in Normandy.  He succeeded his teacher Lanfranc as prior in 1063 and Herluin, the founder of Bec, as abbot in 1078.  As abbot he showed himself a capable spiritual director, his intuitive, sensitive mind well suited to the care of his monks.  He succeeded Lanfranc as archbishop of Canterbury in 1093, four years after Lanfranc’s death, because the English king William Rufus (William the Second) kept the primatial see vacant for that time, despite the wish of the English clergy to have Anselm succeed earlier.

Anselm’s episcopate was stormy, in continual conflict with the crown over the rights and freedom of the English Church, particularly in the matter of the investiture of bishops and clergy.  He suffered exile twice because of his conflicts with King William and his successor, King Henry the First.  Although he was not conspicuous for his political skill, Anselm secured a wider recognition for the primacy of the see of Canterbury, with the Church in Wales, Ireland, and (with some important reservations) Scotland acknowledging the primacy, while York also had to accept a papal decision favorable to Anselm and the see of Canterbury.

Among his other accomplishments as archbishop, he held councils which insisted on stricter observance of clerical celibacy, and he established a new episcopal see at Ely. During 1077-8, Anselm wrote the Monologion and the Proslogion.  The latter work has been famous for centuries for its “ontological argument” for the existence of God.  The work demonstrated the originality of Anselm’s thought and prepared the way for his later theological works.  God, writes Anselm, “is greater than which nothing greater can be thought.”  Even the fool, who in Psalm 14 says in his heart, “There is no God”, must have an idea of God in his mind, the concept of an unconditional being (ontos) that which nothing greater can be conceived, otherwise he would not be able to speak of “God” at all.  And so this something, “God”, must exist outside the mind as well, because if he did not, he would not in fact be that that which nothing greater can be thought.  Since the greatest thing that can be thought must have existence as one of its properties, Anselm asserts, “God” can be said to exist in reality as well as in the intellect, but is not dependent upon the material world for verification.  To some, the ontological argument has seemed mere deductive rationalism; to others it has the merit of showing at least that faith in God need not be contrary to human reason.

Anselm’s important treatise on the Incarnation, Cur Deus Homo? was written after he returned to England from his first exile.  The work is famous for its exposition of the “satisfaction theory” of the atonement, in which Anselm explains the work of Christ in terms of the feudal society of his day.  If a vassal break his bond, he has to atone for this to his lord.  Likewise, sin violates a person’s bond with God, the supreme Lord, and atonement or satisfaction must be made.  We are of ourselves incapable of making this satisfaction, because God is perfect and we are not.  Therefore, God himself has saved us, becoming perfect Man in Christ, so that a perfect life could be offered on the Cross in satisfaction for sin.

Undergirding Anselm’s theology is a profound piety, best summarized as “faith seeking understanding”.  He writes, “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand (credo ut intelligam).  For this, too, I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand.”  This understanding of the relationship of prior faith and subsequent knowledge received new emphasis in the work of several late twentieth-century theologians and philosophers both of religion and science.

Anselm died on April 21, 1109.  The Canterbury calendar of c. 1165 provides the earliest known evidence for his feasts, one of them commemorating his death and the other his translation (April 7).

prepared from The Oxford Dictionary of Saints and Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980)

The Collect

Almighty God, you raised up your servant Anselm to teach the Church of his day to understand its faith in your eternal Being, perfect justice, and saving mercy: Provide your Church in every age with devout and learned scholars and teachers, that we may be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr, 1012

Born in 953 or 954, Alphege (Old English, Ælfheah) became a monk at Deerhurst in Gloustershire, but retired after some years to a hermitage in Somerset. Dunstan appointed him abbot of Bath, a community largely composed of Alphege’s former disciples. In 984 Alphege became bishop of Winchester, where he became known for his personal austerity and his lavish almsgiving. In 994 king Æthelred sent him to parley with the Danes Anlaf and Swein, who had raided London and Wessex. The English paid tribute to the Danes, but Anlaf became a Christian and promised never again to come against England “with warlike intent”, a promise that he kept.

In 1005 Alphege succeeded Aelfric as archbishop of Canterbury and received the pallium at Rome. Meanwhile, Æthelred had proved himself unable to defeat the Danish invaders, and in 1011 the Danes overran much of southern England. Though the Danegeld tribute was paid to them, it did not prevent their pillaging and other acts of war against the English. In September of that year they besieged Canterbury and captured it through the treachery of an English archdeacon, Ælfmaer. For seven months they imprisoned Alphege with other magnates and demanded ransom. The ransom was paid for the other prisoners, but the sum demanded for the archbishop’s ransom was enormous and would have reduced his people to penury. Alphege refused to pay the ransom himself and forbade his people to do so as well. In response, the archbishop was brutally murdered, despite the efforts of the Viking commander Thorkell to save him by offering up all his possessions except his ship for Alphege’s life.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that the Danes were “much stirred against the bishop, because he would not promise them any fee, and forbade that any man should give anything for him. They were also much drunken…and took the bishop, and led him to their hustings, on the eve of the Saturday after Easter…and then they shamefully killed him. They overwhelmed him with bones and horns of oxen; and one of them smote him with an axe-iron on the head; so that he sunk downwards with the blow. And his holy blood fell on the earth, whilst his sacred soul was sent to the realm of God.”

This took place at Greenwich. Alphege was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral in London and became a national hero by his death.

When the Danish king Canute became king of England in 1016 his policy, after a short period of violence, was one of reconciliation between English and Dane. His policy found expression in the endowment of the abbey of Saint Edmund at Bury and in the translation of the body of Alphege to Canterbury in 1023. The body was interred north of the high altar, where the monks venerated it at the beginning and the end of each day. In his last sermon, Thomas Becket alluded to Alphege as Canterbury’s first martyr, and just before his death commended his cause to God and Saint Alphege.

prepared from the Oxford Dictionary of Saints
and Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980)

The Collect

O loving God, your martyr bishop Alphege of Canterbury suffered violent death when he refused to permit a ransom to be extorted from his people: Grant that all pastors of your flock may pattern themselves on the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep; and who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The icon of Saint Alphege was written by Aidan Hart and has been reproduced with his generous permission.

George Augustus Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand, and of Lichfield, 1878

George Augustus Selwyn was born on April 5, 1809, at Hampstead, London. He was prepared at Eton, and in 1831 was graduated from St John’s College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow.

Ordained to the diaconate in 1833 (and later to the presbyterate), Selwyn served as a curate at Windsor until his selection as missionary Bishop of New Zealand in 1841. A Tractarian in his convictions, he protested against a clause in his civil Letter Patent that gave him “power to ordain” (objecting that, as a bishop, he already had the power to ordain), signaling the beginnings of a less Erastian conception of episcopacy in the British colonies. On the voyage to his new field, he mastered the Maori language and was able to preach in it upon his arrival. In the tragic ten years’ war between the English and the Maoris, Selwyn was able to minister to both sides and to keep the affection and admiration of natives and colonists alike. He began missionary work in the Pacific islands of Melanesia in 1847.

Selwyn’s first general synod in 1859 laid down a constitution, influenced by that of the American Church and for which Selwyn was himself largely responsible, which was important for other subsequently-established English colonial Churches.

After the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, Selwyn was reluctantly persuaded to accept the See of Lichfield in England. He died on April 11, 1878, and his grave in the cathedral has been a place of pilgrimage for the Maoris to whom he first brought the light of the Gospel.

Bishop Selwyn twice visited America, and was the preacher at the 1874 General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

His son, John Richardson Selwyn, was Bishop of Melanesia and master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, which had been founded in memory of his father in 1881.

prepared from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, amended
and enlarged with material from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

The Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant George Augustus Selwyn, whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of New Zealand and Melanesia, and to lay a firm foundation for the growth of your Church in many nations. Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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The image of the painting of Bishop Augustus Selwyn is taken from the webpage of the Selwyn College Archives.

William Law, Presbyter and Teacher of the Faith, 1761

William Law, born in 1686, became a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1711, but in 1714, at the death of Queen Anne, he became a Non-Juror: that is to say, he found himself unable to take the required oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian dynasty (who had replaced the Stuart dynasty) as the lawful rulers of Great Britain, and was accordingly ineligible to serve as a university teacher or parish minister. He became for ten years a private tutor in the family of the historian Edward Gibbon (who, despite his generally cynical attitude toward all things Christian, invariably wrote of Law with respect and admiration), and then retired to his native King’s Cliffe. Forbidden the use of the pulpit and the lecture-hall, he preached through his books. These include Christian Perfection, The Spirit of Love, The Spirit of Prayer, and best-known of all, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, published in 1728. The thesis of this last book is that God does not merely forgive our disobedience, he calls us to obedience, and to a life completely centered in him. Law writes, “If you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but because you never thoroughly intended it.”

The immediate influence of the book was considerable. Dr. Samuel Johnson said (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, chapter 1), “I became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not think much against it; and this lasted until I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up Law’s Serious Call, expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational inquiry.” Gibbon, Law’s sometime employer, said that “If Mr. Law finds a spark of piety in a reader’s mind, he will soon kindle it into a flame.” John Wesley calls it one of three books which accounted for his first “explicit resolve to be all devoted to God.” Later, when denying, in response to a question, that Methodism was founded on Law’s writings, he added that “Methodists carefully read these books and were greatly profitted by them.” In 1744 he published extracts from the Serious Call, thereby introducing it to a wider audience than it already had. About eighteen months before his death, he called it “a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, either for beauty of expression or for depth of thought.”

Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Henry Venn, William Wilberforce, and Thomas Scott each described reading the book as a major turning-point in his life. All in all, there were few leaders of the English Evangelical movement on whom it did not have a profound influence.

Some Christians have considered Law’s work inadequate, as insufficiently concerned with justification by faith and thereby promoting works-righteousness, to which objection Law would reply that he did not offer the book as a complete presentation of the Gospel but only as a reminder of the words, “Go and sin no more,” which are surely a part of the Gospel.

adapted from James Kiefer’s biographical sketch (edited)

The Collect

Almighty God, whose servant William Law taught us to hear and follow your call to a devout and holy life: Grant that we, loving you above all things and in all things, may seek your purpose and shape our actions to your will, that we may grow in all virtue and be diligent in prayer all the days of our lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Ghost be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pastor and Theologian, 1945

Born in 1906, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the son of a prominent professor of psychiatry and neurology in Berlin. The younger Bonhoeffer studied theology at Tübingen and Berlin, though he was later influenced deeply by Karl Barth. After his ordination, he worked in Barcelona and at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, returning to a university lectureship and pastoral work in Berlin in 1931. Opposed to the Nazi movement from the first, he sided with the Confessing Church against the so-called German Christians, and he signed the Barmen Declaration in 1934. After serving as chaplain to a Lutheran congregation in London, he returned to Germany in 1935 to become the head of a Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde in Pomerania. It was here that he put into practice ideas he had learned in England at the seminary communities at Kelham and Mirfield. He was forbidden by the Nazi government to teach and was dismissed from his lectureship in Berlin in 1936. In 1937 the seminary at Finkenwalde was closed by the government (stimulating Bonhoeffer to write his treatise on Christian fellowship, Life Together). On the cusp of the outbreak of the Second World War Bonhoeffer was in America on a lecture tour, but he felt it his duty to return to Germany despite Reinhold Neibuhr’s urging him to remain in the United States.

His defiant opposition to the Nazi regime (including attempts at mediating between Germans opposed to Hitler and the British government, and his joining a number of high-ranking military officers in a plan to assassinate Hitler) led to his arrest in 1943. After imprisonment in Buchenwald he was hanged by the Gestapo at Flossenbürg on the morning of April 9, 1945.

In Celebrating the Saints, Robert Atwell writes that Bonhoeffer’s experiences “led him to propose a more radical theology in his later works, which have been influential among post-war theologians”. He is in particular considered a forerunner of the “death of God” movement in 1960s liberal Protestant theology. However, this is to read one of his best-known works, a collection of his Letters and Papers from Prison, out of the context of his surroundings and other writings. As a radical theologian (which Bonhoeffer arguably was), he is by his misinterpreters not thought of as one who gets to the root of the matter, as the word implies, but as an iconoclast. “Yet he was and remained a Lutheran and a very orthodox clergyman. His last act before he died was to conduct a religious service” (from the “Translator’s Preface” to Christ the Center, © 1960 Harper San Francisco). As is clear from Christ the Center, a reconstruction of Bonhoeffer’s lectures from his student’s notes, christology – and a robustly orthodox christology at that – lay at the center of Bonhoeffer’s theology. After his experiences of a German Church that lay prostrate and compliant before the pagan and destructive idolatry of Naziism, Bonhoeffer sought a radical reform of the Church, which in its existing form he thought to have no message for his time. In its place he sought a Christianity capable of dispensing with religion (understood in a Barthian sense) and with the cheap grace of religious transactions as a prerequisite of authentic biblical faith.

prepared from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
and other sources

The Collect

Gracious God, the Beyond in the midst of our life, you gave grace to your servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer to know and to teach the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and to bear the cost of following him; Grant that we, strengthened by his teaching and example, may receive your word and embrace its call with an undivided heart; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The photograph is of the statue of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the western wall of Westminster Abbey, one of the series of twentieth-century martyrs commemorated there.

William Augustus Muhlenberg, Presbyter, Reformer of the Church, and Renewer of Society, 1877

William Augustus Muhlenberg was born in Philadelphia in 1796, into a prominent German Lutheran family (he was a great-grandson of the Revd. Dr. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, considered the patriarch of American Lutheranism), and was drawn to the Protestant Episcopal Church by its use of English. He deliberately chose to remain unmarried to free himself for a variety of ministries. As a young clergyman, he was deeply involved in the Sunday School movement and was concerned that the Church should minister to all classes in society. Aware of the limitations of the hymnody of the times, he wrote hymns and compiled hymnals, thus widening the range of music in Episcopal churches. During the course of his ministry Muhlenberg expressed a High Church understanding of the Christian faith which he called “Evangelical Catholicism” (perhaps recalling his Lutheran heritage), the expression of which provided the basis for his reforms and innovations of the Church’s life.

For twenty years he headed a boys’ school in Flushing, New York, where many influential churchmen were educated. The use of music, flowers, and color, and the emphasis on the liturgical year in the worship there became a potent influence. In 1846, he founded the Church of the Holy Communion in New York City. Again, he was bold and innovative: no pew rents, a parish school, a parish unemployment fund, and trips to the country for poor city children. In 1851 he founded a monthly church journal, The Evangelical Catholic, which reflected his desire for the ecumenical reunion of the Protestant Churches. His conception of beauty in worship, vivid and symbolic, had at its heart the Holy Communion itself, celebrated every Sunday. It was there that Anne Ayres founded the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion. In 1857, the two of them founded St Luke’s Hospital, where Muhlenberg was the pastor-superintendent and she the matron.

Muhlenberg’s concern for sacramental worship and evangelism led him and several associates to memorialize the General Convention of 1853, calling for flexibility in worship and polity to enable the Church better to fulfill its mission. The inclusion by the “Memorial” of traditional catholic elements – the Creeds, the Eucharist, and episcopal ordination – together with an emphasis on the Reformation doctrine of grace, appealed to people of varying views. Although the Church was not ready to adopt the specific suggestions of the Memorial, its influence was great, notably in preparing the ground for liturgical reform and ecumenical action.

adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, with additions

The Collect

Do not let your Church close its eyes, O Lord, to the plight of the poor and neglected, the homeless and destitute, the old and the sick, the lonely and those who have none to care for them. Give us the vision and compassion with which you so richly endowed your servant William Augustus Muhlenberg, that we may labor tirelessly to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Project Canterbury has transcribed and published several of Muhlenberg’s works, including the introduction to the “Memorial of Sundry Presbyters of the Protestant Episcopal Church“, as well as Sister Anne Ayres’ “The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg, Doctor in Divinity”.

The Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Virgin Mary

The feast of the Annunciation celebrates the angel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she was to become the mother of the Messiah, and her willing submission to God’s will, whereupon the Word of God was conceived and made incarnate in her womb. The celebration of the feast probably began in the East in the fifth century and was introduced into the West in the sixth and seventh centuries. By the time of the Tenth Synod of Toledo in 656, it was celebrated nearly universally in the Church. While the feast falls exactly nine months before December 25, it is likely that the dating of the birth of Jesus depends on the dating of his conception, rather than the other way round. There was widespread belief among Jews of the late Second Temple period in the “integral age” of prophets and other great men of God, like Abraham; that is, that their lives formed an integral whole, and that they died on the same dates as their birth or conception. Thus, from a presumed dating of the crucifixion to March 25, the angelic announcement to Mary and the conception of Jesus were dated to March 25, and the birth of Jesus to December 25, nine months later.

Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive and bear a Son who would be the Messiah, the Son of the Most High, whose name would be Jesus. Astounded, Mary asked how this could be so, since she was a virgin and as yet unmarried. The angel replied that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, and that the power of the Most High would overshadow her, and through this divine means she would conceive. “With God,” said Gabriel, “nothing is impossible.” The same God who had caused Mary’s elderly and barren cousin Elizabeth to conceive would also cause her to conceive without the agency of a man. The Messiah was to be born, “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Mary was chosen by the grace of God to be the mother of the Messiah, and so Gabriel called her “favored one”, and Mary’s assent to the angelic announcement opened the way for God to accomplish the salvation of the world, so that all generations call her “blessed” (Luke 1:48).

Cyril of Jerusalem was the first to use the title Theotokos, “God-bearer”, for the Blessed Virgin Mary, a title that was affirmed by the Council of Ephesus (the Third Ecumenical Council) in 431. In the mid-second century Justin Martyr wrote that Mary is “the new Eve,” and as the mother of the New Israel, Mary is the counterpart to Abraham, the father of the chosen people of God.

Although the festival has long been associated with the Mary (in England it is called “Lady Day”), it is a feast of our Lord – the feast of the Annunciation of our Lord, the commemoration and celebration of his conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In many parts of western Europe throughout the Medieval period, the Renaissance, and even into the eighteenth century, March 25 was considered the beginning of the new year, reflecting the idea that with the Lord’s conception a new age had begun. There was also a tradition that March 25 was the day on which the world was created, thus joining the first creation and the new creation in one day.

prepared from various sources, including
the New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
and Lesser Feasts and Fasts

The Collect

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his Cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Lesson
Isaiah 7:10-14

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Psalm 40:5-13
Expectans expectavi

I waited patiently for the LORD, *
and he inclined to me, and heard my call.

He brought me out of the horrible pit, out of the mire and clay; *
he set my feet upon the rock, and secured my footing.

He has put a new song in my mouth, *
a song of thanksgiving unto our God.

Many shall see and fear, *
and shall put their trust in the LORD.

Blessed is the man who has set his hope in the LORD, *
and has not turned to the proud, or to those who go about lying.

O LORD my God, great are the wondrous works which you have done, and also your thoughts toward us; *
there is none who can be compared with you.

If I should declare them and speak of them, *
they would be more than I am able to express.

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, *
but my ears you have opened.

Burnt offerings and sin offerings you have not required, *
and so I said, “Behold, I come;

In the volume of the book it is written of me, that I delight to do your will, O my God; *
indeed, your law is within my heart.”

I have declared your righteousness in the great congregation; *
behold, I will not restrain my lips, O LORD, and that you know.

I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart; *
my talk has been of your truth and of your salvation.

I have not concealed your loving mercy and truth *
from the great congregation.

The Epistle
Hebrews 10:4-10

When Christ came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”

When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The Canticle: Magnificat
The Song of Mary

My soul magnifies the Lord, *
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;

For he has regarded *
the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold, from now on, *
all generations will call me blessed;

For he that is mighty has magnified me, *
and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on those who fear him, *
throughout all generations.

He has shown the strength of his arm; *
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has exalted the humble and meek.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent empty away.

He, remembering his mercy, has helped his servant Israel, *
as he promised to our fathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; *
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

The Gospel
Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

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The scripture texts for the Lesson, the Epistle, and Gospel are taken from the English Standard Version Bible. The Collect, Psalm, and Canticle are taken from the Book of Common Prayer (2019).

While not so specified in the Calendar of the Book of Common Prayer (2019), when the feast of the Annunciation falls within Holy Week, by long tradition it is transferred to the first open weekday after the Easter Octave, which this year falls on Monday, April 8.

The image is of The Annunciation (1898) by Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Tikhon, Bishop and Ecumenist

Born Vasily Ivanovich Belavin, the son of a village priest in the Pskov diocese, Tikhon, Enlightener of North America, was the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia since Czar Peter the Great suppressed the patriarchate and created a ruling Holy Synod for the Russian Orthodox Church in 1700. Vasily studied theology at the seminary in Pskov and the Theological Academy of St. Petersburg, becoming after graduation an instructor in the Pskov Seminary and then the Kholm Seminary, where he became rector. Prior to his transfer to Kholm he was tonsured a monk, took the name Tikhon (after the 18th century Russian bishop and spiritual writer, Tikhon of Zadonsk), and was ordained.

He became successively Bishop of Lublin (1897), of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska (1898), of Yaroslav (1907), and of Vilna (1914). In April 1917 he became metropolitan archbishop of Moscow, and in November of that year was elected Patriarch by the Panrussian Council. Though neither an eminent scholar nor a Church politician, his courage and humility gave him the moral authority needed in the subsequent difficult years. He openly condemned the killings of the Czar’s family in 1918, protested against the violent attacks of the Bolsheviks on the Church, and in 1919 he anathematized all who persecuted the Church, calling upon the people to resist, though in the same year he imposed neutrality on the clergy in the civil war between the Reds (Bolsheviks) and the Whites (anti-Bolsheviks) and refused to give his blessing to the latter. Owing to his resistance to the State policy of confiscating Church property during the famine of 1921-22 he was placed under arrest, but due to English political pressure, was not brought to trial. During his imprisonment the State-supported schismatic “Living Church” was set up, which called a council in 1923 to depose him and gained many adherents. In the same year Tikhon signed a declaration professing loyalty to the Soviet government, which gained him less intolerable conditions, and he was allowed to live in the Donskoy monastery at Moscow (where he had been imprisoned) and to officiate in the churches of the capital.

Owing to his personal influence many schismatics returned to the Patriarchal Church, and his death was the occasion of great popular demonstrations of veneration and affection. Tikhon was canonized in 1989, and his relics were discovered in Donskoy Monastery after his canonization. His feast day is celebrated on April 7, and his glorification (canonization) is celebrated on October 9.

As Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, and later (after 1903) Archbishop of the Aleutian Islands and North America, Tikhon encouraged the publication of Orthodox writings in English, including a translation of the Russian Orthodox liturgy. He himself wrote a catechism based on the Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.

In 1900, the Rt. Revd. Charles Grafton, Bishop of the Diocese of Fond du Lac (in The Protestant Episcopal Church), invited Bishop Tikhon to the consecration of the Revd. Dr. R.H. Weller as Bishop Coadjutor of Fond du Lac. One writer states that it was Bishop Grafton’s intention that Bishop Tikhon should join in the laying on of hands as a co-consecrator, but “owing to the strong opposition of one of the assisting bishops,” this did not occur. Bishop Tikhon remained a close friend of Bishop Grafton, and through the latter’s influence, Tikhon was made an honorary doctor of theology by Nashotah House.

A eucharistic liturgy known as the Liturgy of St Tikhon, based on the 1892 Holy Communion service of the Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church) with some amendments to conform to Orthodox worship, is used by some Western Rite Orthodox parishes. Tikhon is not known formally to have approved this rite that bears his name, though the Holy Synod in Moscow, to whom he passed on a request from Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians during his North American episcopate, granted the possibility of a Western Rite based on the Anglican liturgy with changes to conform to Orthodox praxis.

prepared from various sources,
including The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,
the Orthodoxwiki website, and others

The Collect

Almighty God, who gave to your servant Tikhon boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to suffer for this faith: Grant that we may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The icon of Saint Tikhon of Moscow is © Conciliar Press.