Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop of Constantinople and Teacher of the Faith, 389

Gregory of Nazianzus and the brothers Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa are known together as the Cappadocian Fathers, theologians whose writings in the ecclesiastically tumultuous decades between the first Council of Nicaea and the first Council of Constantinople helped secure the orthodoxy of the Nicene teaching on the Triune God in the Church. Gregory was born about 330 in Nazianzus in Cappadocia (in modern day Turkey), the son of the local bishop. He studied rhetoric in Athens, where Basil, his lifelong friend, and Julian, the future emperor who would be known as the “Apostate”, were fellow students. In 359 he left Athens to become a monk, leading a solitary life with Basil in beautiful surroundings in Pontus. Their theological discussions and manner of life bore fruit in Basil’s organizational talents and in the contemplative Gregory’s theological depth and penetrating thought. After two years, Gregory returned home to help his father, then eighty years old, administer his diocese and estates. In a town rent by heresies and schism, Gregory’s defense of his father’s orthodoxy in the face of a violent mob brought peace to the town and some fame to Gregory.

In 361, against his own inclination, Gregory was ordained to the presbyterate. He fled to Basil for ten weeks, but eventually returned to his new duties, resolved to live an austere, priestly life. He wrote an apology for his flight, and this work became a classic text on the nature and duties of the presbyterate.

Gregory was not to live in peace for long, however. His friend Basil had become the metropolitan bishop of Caesarea, and in his fight against the Arian emperor Valens, Basil compelled Gregory to be consecrated bishop of Sasima, an unhealthy border town, in order to maintain his own influence in an area under dispute with a rival bishop in Tyana. According to Gregory, Sasima was “a detestable little place without water or grass or any mark of civilization.” He felt like “a bone flung to the dogs”, and this episode caused a serious rift in the relationship between the two lifelong friends. Basil accused Gregory, who never visited Sasima, of slackness, while Gregory was prepared neither to live in a hostile and unpleasant town nor to become a pawn in ecclesiastical politics. Basil and Gregory were later reconciled, but their friendship never recovered its former warmth. Gregory continued as bishop coadjutor to his father at Nazianzus until his father’s death in 374. Gregory’s own health broke down in 375, and he lived in Seleucia for the next five years, during which time Basil died.

After the death of the Arian emperor Valens, who had persecuted the orthodox catholic Christians, peace returned to the Church. In 379, Gregory removed to Constantinople, where for over thirty years the Arians had been in the ascendancy. Orthodox believers even lacked a church in which to gather, and neighboring bishops had sent Gregory, against his protests, to restore the orthodox community in the city. Gregory appeared in Constantinople as a new man, no longer in despair, and as one afire with the love of God. He transformed his own house into a church, and there he preached his famous five sermons on the Trinity, discourses marked by clarity, strength, and a charming gaiety. Through his skillful and profound teaching his reputation spread, and his congregation increased. Arians attacked him by slander, insults, and violence, but Gregory persisted in preaching the faith and doctrine of Nicaea. In 381, the new and orthodox emperor Theodosius entered Constantinople and expelled the Arian bishop and his clergy. That same year the Council of Constantinople was convened and finally established and confirmed the conclusions of the Council of Nicaea as the authoritative teaching of the Church. It was during this Council that, on a rainy day, the crowds gathered in the Great Church of Hagia Sophia acclaimed Gregory bishop, after a ray of sunlight suddenly shone upon him.

However, opposition to him did not cease, and for the sake of peace he resigned the see of Constantinople and returned to his home town of Nazianzus, where he died in 389. Because of the clarity, power, and depth of his teaching on the Trinity, he is given the epithet the Theologian.

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

The Collect (of a Teacher of the Faith)

Almighty God, you gave your servant Gregory of Nazianzus special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth revealed in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; 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 Gregory Nazianzus is taken from the website of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery.

Julian of Norwich, Anchoress, c. 1417

Little is known of the early life of the mystic and spiritual writer whom later generations have known as Dame Julian, except for the probable date of her birth (1354). Her own writings in the Revelations of Divine Love are concerned only with her visions, or “showings”, that she experienced when she was thirty years old.

On the seventh day of a grave illness, after she had already received the last rites, she was suddenly freed from all pain. She then had fifteen (or sixteen) visions of the Passion of Christ which brought her great peace and joy. “From that time I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s meaning,” she wrote, “and fifteen years after I was answered in ghostly [spiritual] understanding: ‘Wouldst thou learn the Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well. Love was his meaning. Who showed it thee? Love. What showed he thee? Love. Wherefore showed it he? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same.’ Thus it was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.”

Julian had long desired three gifts from God: “the mind of his passion, bodily sickness in youth, and three wounds – of contrition, of compassion, of will-full longing toward God.” Her illness brought her the first two wounds, which then passed from her mind. The third, “will-full longing” (divinely inspired longing), never left her.

She became an anchoress at Norwich soon after her recovery from illness, living in a small dwelling attached to the Church of St Julian (by which name she became known to later generations). Even in her lifetime, she was famed as a mystic and spiritual counselor and was visited frequently by clerics and lay persons, including the famous mystic Margery Kempe. Kempe says of Julian: “This anchoress was expert in knowledge of our Lord and could give good counsel. I spent much time with her talking of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Lady Julian’s book, Revelations of Divine Love, is a tender and beautiful exposition of God’s eternal and all-embracing love, showing how his charity toward humanity is exhibited in the Passion of our Lord. Again and again she referred to Christ as “our courteous Lord”. Many have found strength in the words the Lord had given her: “I can make all things well; I will make all things well; I shall make all things well; and thou canst see for thyself that all manner of things shall be well.”

adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980)

The Collect

Lord God, in your compassion you granted to the Lady Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and Teacher of the Faith, 373

Rarely in the history of the Church has the course of its development been more significantly influenced by one person than it was by Athanasius in the fourth century. It is not an exaggeration to say that by his tireless defense of the phrase in the Creed of Nicaea, homoousios, “of one being [with the Father]”, he preserved orthodox teaching for the Church in the East during a doctrinally turbulent time in the Church’s history. Two of the late fourth century defenders of the Nicene teaching noted his contribution, Gregory of Nazianzus calling him “the pillar of the Church”, and Basil the Great saying that Athanasius was “the God-given physician of her wounds”.

Born about 296 in Alexandria of Christian parents who were probably Egyptian (several writers commented on the darkness of his skin), Athanasius was educated in the catechetical school in that city. He joined the clergy about 312 and was ordained to the diaconate by Bishop Alexander in 319. He quickly gained attention by his opposition to the teaching of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, whose denial of the full deity of the Second Person of the Trinity (the Son) was gaining widespread acceptance through the East. Athanasius accompanied Alexander as his secretary and theological adviser to the Council of Nicaea in 325, which dealt with the Arian controversy. Athanasius was successful in winning acceptance of the phrase, homoousios, despite the fact that a number of the bishops objected to the use of a phrase not drawn directly from the Scriptures. Athanasius realized that nothing less than the unequivocal expression of the full Godhead of the Son in homoousios was necessary to defend the Church’s confession of Jesus against the Arians.

On Alexander’s death in 328, Athanasius, whom Alexander had named as his successor, became bishop of Alexandria, with the general approval of the bishops of Egypt. As a new bishop, Athanasius made extensive pastoral visits in the entire Egyptian province (over which the bishop of Alexandria was metropolitan), but he faced vicious opposition from numerous schismatics who had opposed his election to the episcopate.

Throughout the fractured and tumultuous course of his episcopate, Athanasius defended Nicene christology against emperors, magistrates, councils, bishops, and theologians. He suffered exile five times, to places as far-flung as northern Gaul and the Libyan desert. Supported by the bishops of Rome and generally supported by the Church in the West, Athanasius sometimes seemed to stand alone in the East for the catholic faith, hence the phrase that became a byword: Athanasius contra mundum – Athanasius against the world. In his own city he became a beloved bishop, so that by the time of his last exile, in 364, the emperor Valens had to recall him after only four months to avoid an insurrection in the city. He then remained in his see until his death on May 2, 373. During his forty-five year episcopate he had spent altogether seventeen years away from his see in exile.

Athanasius wrote voluminously. His Defense against the Arians and The History of the Arians remain the best extant sources of knowledge about the Church in the first half of the fourth century. His brilliant treatise On the Incarnation, written in his youth, and his Discourses against the Arians remain among the clearest and most forceful explanations of the unity of the triune God and of the necessity of the incarnation of Jesus. His biographical Life of Saint Antony was immensely popular (it was known to English hagiographers at the time of the Venerable Bede) and had a wide influence in promoting monasticism. Because Alexandria was recognized as having the best astronomers in the classical world, it fell to the bishop of Alexandria to send out a festal letter soon after the feast of the Epiphany each year, giving the proper date for the beginning of Lent and for the celebration of the Paschal feast (Easter). In his Festal Letter of 367, his thirty-ninth such letter, Athanasius gave the oldest extant list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, calling them “the springs of salvation”.

In On the Incarnation, he writes: The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his great love took to himself a body and moved as man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, halfway. He became himself an object for the sense, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which he, the Word of God, did in the body. Human and human-minded as men were, therefore, to whichever side they looked in the sensible world, they found themselves taught the truth.”

adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980),
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, and
The New Book of Festivals and Commemorations

The Collect

Uphold your Church, O God of truth, as you upheld your servant Athanasius, to maintain and proclaim boldly the catholic faith against all opposition, trusting solely in the grace of your eternal Word, who took upon himself our humanity that we might share his divinity; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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The image is of a Coptic icon of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria.

Saint Philip and Saint James, Apostles

The apostles commemorated on this day are among those about whom little is known, apart from what is written about them in the Gospels. Philip figures in several important incidents in Jesus’ ministry as recorded in John’s Gospel. Jesus called Philip soon after calling Andrew and Simon Peter, and Philip in turn found his friend Nathanael (sometimes identified with Bartholomew) and brought him to see Jesus, the Messiah. Later, when Jesus saw the hungry crowd, he asked Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” (John 6:5). Philip’s pragmatic response, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little” (John 6:7), was the prelude to the feeding of the multitude with the loaves and fishes, a narrative in which Jesus is shown as the messianic king who feeds the people of God in the wilderness. In a later incident, some Greeks came to Philip (whose name is Greek), asking to see Jesus. At the Last Supper, Philip’s request, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us”, brought Jesus’ response, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:8, 9).

According to tradition, Philip went after Pentecost to Scythia on the northern coast of the Black Sea to preach the Gospel with remarkable success, and then to Phrygia (in Asia Minor), where he remained until his death. He is said to have been crucified or stoned there in the town of Hierapolis. In the West he is represented in iconography by a Latin or a Tau cross, an emblem of his crucifixion, and by two loaves of bread, recalling the miracle of the feeding of the multitude.

James is traditionally known as James the Less to distinguish him from James the son of Zebedee and from James, the brother of the Lord, perhaps indicating youth or short stature. He is known to us from the list of the Twelve, where he is called James the son of Alphaeus. He may also the person referred to in Mark’s Gospel as James the younger, who, with Mary the mother of Jesus and the other women, watched the crucifixion from a distance.

James is iconographically depicted in the West with a saw with which he is held in some traditions to have been dismembered, or by a fuller’s club with which, according to other accounts, he was beaten to death.

Both apostles are commemorated on the same day because the church in Rome where their relics rest was dedicated on May 1, c. 560.

prepared from Lesser Feasts and Fasts
and The New Book of Festivals and Commemorations

The Collect

Almighty God, you gave to your apostles Philip and James the grace and strength to bear witness to Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life: Grant that we, being mindful of their victory of faith, may glorify in life and death the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

The Lesson
Isaiah 30:18-21

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.

For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.

Psalm 119:33-40
Legem pone

Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, * and I shall keep it to the end.

Give me understanding, and I shall keep your law; * indeed, I shall keep it with my whole heart.

Make me go in the path of your commandments, * for therein is my desire.

Incline my heart to your testimonies, * and not to covetous desires.

O turn away my eyes, lest they behold vanity, * and revive me in your ways.

Confirm your word to your servant, * and to all those who fear you.

Take away the reproach that I am afraid of, * for your judgments are good.

Behold, my delight is in your precepts; * O revive me in your righteousness.

The Epistle
2 Corinthians 4:1-7

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

The Gospel
John 14:6-14

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
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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).

Catherine of Siena, Reformer of the Church, 1380

Born in 1347, Catherine Benincasa was the youngest of twenty-five children of a wealthy dyer of Siena. At six years old, walking home from a visit, she stopped on the road and gazed upward, beholding a vision of “our Lord seated in glory with Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint John.” She would later say that in the vision Jesus had smiled on her and blessed her. Thenceforth, Catherine devoted herself at home to a life of prayer and penance in spite of her mother’s opposition. In response to attempts to force her to live like other girls, Catherine finally cut off her hair, said to have been her chief beauty. In the end, convinced that she would stand against all opposition, her father let her live as she wished, to close herself away in a darkened room, fasting and sleeping on boards. Eventually she became a tertiary of the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans.

Catherine had numerous visions and was tried severely by loathsome temptations and degrading images. She frequently felt abandoned by the Lord. At last, in 1366, Jesus appeared to her with Mary and the heavenly host, and espoused her to himself, ending her long years of lonely prayer and struggle. She began to mix with other people, first through nursing the sick in hospital (particularly lepers and those suffering from cancer) and then by gathering a group of disciples, men and women, including Dominicans and Augustinians. They accompanied her on her frequent journeys, and their influence was manifested in several spectacular conversions and in their call to reform and repentance through a renewal of the love of God.

Opinion in her home city was sharply divided about whether she was a saint or a fanatic, but when Raymond of Capua, a leading member of the Dominicans, was appointed her confessor, he helped her to win full support from the mother house of their order. Catherine was a courageous worker in time of severe plague, she visited prisoners condemned to death, and she was called upon to arbitrate feuds and to prepare troubled sinners for confession. She expressed her ideals in her Dialogue, an ecstatic mystical work, and in her letters, both of which were dictated by her, as she never learned to write. Her personal holiness, enhanced rather diminished by criticism, together with her writings, made her an influential spiritual leader of the late Middle Ages.

During the great papal schism of the fourteenth century, with rival popes in Avignon and in Rome, Catherine wrote tirelessly to princes, kings, and popes, urging them to restore the unity of the Church. She was invited to Rome by Pope Urban the Sixth, whom she had admonished to moderate his harshness and whose papacy she supported. There she wore herself out working for the cause of the Church’s unity. She suffered a paralytic stroke on April 21, 1380, and died eight days later.

Her friend, confessor, and biographer, Raymond of Capua, later Master General of the Dominicans, wrote her Life, which was influential in her canonization in 1461. She became not only Siena’s principal saint, but also a figure of international importance whose influence, it was popularly believed, was decisive in bringing about the return of the papacy to Rome. Like Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine had prophetic vision and personal intransigence, qualities that led both of them to identify God’s cause with their own. She was declared a Doctor (Teacher) of the Church in 1970.

adapted from The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
and Lesser Feasts and Fasts

The Collect

Everlasting God, you so kindled the flame of holy love in the heart of blessed Catherine of Siena, as she meditated on the passion of your Son our Savior, that she devoted her life to the poor and the sick, and to the peace and unity of the Church: Grant that we also may share in the mystery of Christ’s death, and rejoice in the revelation of his glory; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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The image of St. Catherine is by Giovanni di Paolo, c. 1475.

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.