Born at Drepanum (later renamed Helenopolis in her honor) in Bithynia, possibly an innkeeper’s daughter, about the year 270 Flavia Iulia Helena became the wife or concubine of the Roman general Constantius Chlorus. When he became co-emperor (Caesar) in the West in 292 he repudiated her in order to marry the stepdaughter of his patron, the Western Augustus Maximianus Herculius. But her son, who became the emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, greatly honored and respected her, bringing her to the imperial court on his accession in 308 and conferring on her the title Augusta. In about 312, when over the age of sixty, she became a Christian under Constantine’s influence. She was so devout that contemporaries thought that she had been a Christian since childhood. She dressed modestly and gave generously to churches, to the poor, and to prisoners. In 326 she made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she provided the wherewithal for the building of a basilica on the Mount of Olives and another at Bethlehem. According to Ambrose of Milan, she had a part in the finding of the True Cross, the cross on which Jesus was crucified, though this is generally thought a pious legend rather than history. Constantine was with her when she died in the Holy Land about the year 330. Her body was taken to Constantinople and buried in the imperial vault in the Church of the Apostles.

In the Eastern (Orthodox) Church, she is commemorated on this day, together with her son Constantine. She is also commemorated on this date in the Calendar of the Church of England. The traditional date of her commemoration in the West in August 18.

prepared from The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Celebrating the Saints,
and The New Book of Festivals and Commemorations

The Collect

Almighty God, by your Holy Spirit you have made us one with your saints in heaven and on earth: Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to your power and mercy. We ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whom all our intercessions are acceptable through the Spirit, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Alcuin (Old English, Ealhwine) was born in Northumberland around 735 into a noble family related to Willibrord, the first missionary to the Frisians. Alcuin was educated at the cathedral school in York under Egbert, archbishop of York and a pupil of Bede the Venerable. Ordained a deacon in 770, he then became the head of the York school. Under Ælberht, bishop and then archbishop of York, he visited Rome and the Frankish court and helped to create a library at the cathedral where he served as librarian and Master of the Schools. Following a meeting in 781 with Charlemagne in Pavia, the Frankish king persuaded him to join the court scholars at Aachen and to serve as his chief minister, with special responsibility for reviving education and learning in the Frankish dominions.

Alcuin withdrew from court life in 796 to become abbot of Saint Martin’s at Tours, where he died on May 19, 804. He was buried in the Church of Saint Martin.

Alcuin was man of vast learning, integrity, and personal charm. In his direction of Charlemagne’s palace school at Aachen, he was primarily responsible for the preservation of the classical heritage of European civilization. Under his direction and influence, schools were revived and established in cathedrals and monasteries, and manuscripts both pagan and Christian from classical antiquity were collated and copied. His own writings include biblical exegesis; a major theological work on the Trinity; moral and philosophical essays; manuals of grammar, rhetoric, orthography, and mathematics; and poems on a wide variety of subjects.

Under Charlemagne’s authority, Alcuin also led the Carolingian liturgical reform. He revised the Roman lectionary and adapted the Gregorian sacramentary for use in Gaul (Francia) by incorporating elements from the Gelasian sacramentary and composing a series of fesal and votive masses. This liturgical work preserved many of the Collects that have come down to the present day, including the Collect for Purity of Heart that has begun the Anglican eucharistic liturgy since the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.

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

The Collect

Almighty God, in a rude and barbarous age you raised up your deacon Alcuin to rekindle the light of learning: Illumine our minds, we pray, that amid the uncertainties and confusions of our own time we may show forth your eternal truth; 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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The propers for the commemoration of Alcuin, Deacon and Abbot of Tours, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The Church Missionary Society began work in 1899 in the Sudan in Omdurman, and the Christian faith spread rapidly among Africans of the southern region of the country. Until 1974, the Diocese of Sudan was part of the (Anglican) Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East. The Church in the Sudan reverted to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury until the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, consisting of four new dioceses, was established in 1976.

In 1983 the government of Sudan was seized by Islamicists who declared sharia, requiring all Sudanese to convert to Islam on pain of death. On May 16 a small group of Anglican and Roman Catholic chiefs in southern Sudan, together with their bishops, clergy, and laity, declared that they “would not abandon God as [they] knew him”. With that declaration the second cycle of the Sudanese civil war began. (The first cycle of the civil war had started with the departure of the British from Khartoum in 1957 and ended in 1972.) Peace was finally signed on January 9, 2005, but two and a half million of the Sudanese people had been killed, most of them Christian. By the end of the civil war, two thirds of the six million people of southern Sudan were internally displaced, and another million were in exile throughout Africa and the rest of the world, including the bishops of most of the dioceses of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan. The southern part of Sudan became independent in 2011, as South Sudan, and a state of war exists between the two nations at present. The bishops of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan and of the Roman Catholic Church in the Sudan are in the forefront of working for peace between the war-torn nations.

The second century north African theologian Tertullian wrote, semen est sanguis christianorum (the blood of the Christians is seed), often paraphrased “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Christians were estimated to be only five percent of the population in southern Sudan in 1983, but today nearly ninety percent of the population of South Sudan is either Anglican or Roman Catholic. In the words of their bishops, the Sudanese Christians “live only on the mercy of God…whether we live or die we are the Lord’s…we have had nothing else but the grace of God and his guidance.”

adapted from the Anglican Communion website
and the proposal to the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church

The Collect

O God, steadfast in the midst of persecution, by your providence the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church: Grant us your grace, that as the martyrs of the Sudan refused to abandon Christ even in the face of torture and death, and so by their sacrifice brought forth a plentiful harvest, we too may be steadfast in our faith in Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The image of the Martyrs of Sudan was painted by Awer Bul, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. The iconographical painting was commissioned by Hope with Sudan, and the image is taken from the Hope with Sudan website.

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.

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The propers for the commemoration of Dame Julian of Norwich are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Born in north Africa at Tagaste of Berber parents, Monnica was married to Patricius, a Latinized provincial of Tagaste. By her patient persistence Monnica won over her husband, who was baptized the year before he died. By Patricius, Monnica was the mother of three children: Augustine, Navigius, and Perpetus. She is especially venerated as the mother of Augustine, later bishop of Hippo, and in her patient treatment of him through many years of anxiety ending in his conversion, she is seen as the model of Christian motherhood.

Most of our information about Monnica comes from Book IX of Augustine’s Confessions. We learn that that when he was young, Monnica enrolled him as a catechumen according to the custom of the day, but his dissolute life caused her so much distress that at one time she refused to allow him to live in her house. Advised by a presbyter of the Church that the time for his conversion had not yet come, she relented and gave up arguing with him, turning instead to prayer, fasts, and vigils, hoping that these would succeed where argument had failed. Eventually Augustine went to Rome, deceiving his mother about the time of his departure in order to travel without her. He went on from Rome to Milan, but Monnica followed him. She was esteemed by Ambrose, the bishop of that city, who also helped Augustine towards conversion to Christ and a deep moral transformation, which took place in 386. As a consequence, Augustine renounced his mother’s plans for his marriage, determining to remain celibate, and with his mother and a few close friends he withdrew for a period to prepare for baptism. Augustine was baptized in 387. Monnica and his friends set out on the jounrey to Africa with him, but she died along the way, at Ostia, where she was buried.

Augustine writes that his brother expressed sorrow, for her sake, that she should die so far from her own country. She said to her sons, “It does not matter where you bury my body. Do not let that worry you. All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.” To the question, whether she was not afraid at the thought of leaving her body in an alien land, she replied, “Nothing is far from God, and I need have no fear that he will not know where to find me, when he comes to raise me to life at the end of the world.”

Modern excavations at Ostia uncovered her original tomb, but her mortal remains were transferred in 1430 to the Church of Saint Augustine in Rome.

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

The Collect

O Lord, through spiritual discipline you strengthened your servant Monnica to persevere in offering her love and prayers and tears for the conversion of her husband and of Augustine their son: Deepen our devotion, we pray, and use us in accordance with your will to bring others, even our own kindred, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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The image of Monnica is from Saint Monica’s Church in the Diocese of Trenton, from a study of the saint done by John Nava, the artist who created the stunning tapestries in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. Saint Monnica is also depicted in one of the tapestry panels (below).

The propers for the commemoration of Monnica, Widow and Mother of Augustine of Hippo, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

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, homousios, “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, homousios, 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 homousios 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 a Coptic icon of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria.

The propers for the commemoration of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, are published on the Lectionary page website.

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, who gave to your apostles Philip and James grace and strength to bear witness to the truth: 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; *
I shall keep it with all my heart.

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

Incline my heart to your decrees *
and not to unjust gain.

Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless; *
give me life in your ways.

Fulfill your promise to your servant, *
which you make to those who fear you.

Turn away the reproach which I dread, *
because your judgments are good.

Behold, I long for your commandments; *
in your righteousness preserve my life.

The Epistle
2 Corinthians 4:1-6

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.

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 (1979).

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 propers for the commemoration of Catherine of Siena are published on the Lectionary Page website.

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 the Son of God: We thank you for this witness, and pray that we may be firmly grounded in its truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, 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 are the nations in an uproar? *
Why do the peoples mutter empty threats?

Why do the kings of the earth rise up in revolt,
and the princes plot together, *
against the LORD and against his Anointed?

“Let us break their yoke,” they say; *
“let us cast off their bonds from us.”

He whose throne is in heaven is laughing; *
the Lord has them in derision.

Then he speaks to them in his wrath, *
and his rage fills them with terror.

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

Let me announce the decree of the LORD: *
he said to me, “You are my Son;
this day have I begotten you.

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

You shall crush them with an iron rod *
and shatter them like a piece of pottery.”

And now, you kings, be wise; *
be warned, you rulers of the earth.

Submit to the LORD with fear, *
and with trembling bow before him;

Lest he be angry and you perish; *
for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Happy are they all *
who take refuge 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 1:1-15

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

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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 (1979).

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 propers for the commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr, as published on the Lectionary Page website.

The icon of Saint Alphege is taken from Aidan Hart’s gallery of icons and is reproduced here with his generous permission.