Saint Andrew the Apostle

Andrew, whose name means “manly”, was the brother of Simon Peter and was born in Bethsaida, a village of Galilee. The Gospel according to John tells us that Andrew, a disciple of John the Baptist, was one of the two disciples who followed Jesus after John had declared of him, “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29). Andrew and the other disciple followed Jesus, and Andrew’s first act afterward was to find his brother and bring him to Jesus. For this reason, Andrew is given the title “the First-Called” by the Eastern Churches.

Though Andrew was not a part of the inner circle of disciples – Peter, James, and John, he is always named in the lists of the disciples. In Matthew and Luke, his name appears second, while in Mark and in the Acts of the Apostles he is listed after Peter, James, and John, as fourth in the list in company with Philip. Andrew appears prominently in several incidents in the Gospels. Andrew and Peter were fishermen, and in the Gospel according to Matthew Jesus calls them from their occupation, and they immediately respond to his call. Andrew was the disciple who brought the boy with the loaves and the fishes to Jesus for the feeding of the multitude.

The fourth century historian and bishop Eusebius writes that after Pentecost, Andrew preached in Scythia. Jerome and Theodoret locate his preaching in Greece (Achaia), and Nicephorus places him in Asia Minor and Thrace. The late second century Muratorian Fragment connects him with the writing of the Gospel according to John. A late tradition holds that he was martyred on November 30, c. 70 at Patras in Achaia. An ancient church still stands over the traditional site of his martyrdom. The earliest mention of his being crucified on an X-shaped (“Greek”) cross is from the tenth century. This tradition accounts for the X-shaped cross of St Andrew that appears in medieval and Renaissance iconography.

St Andrew’s body is said to have been taken to the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople in 357 and later translated to the cathedral in Amalfi, Italy. The patriarchate of Constantinople grounds its claim to be an apostolic see (like Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome) on the tradition of his having been the first bishop of the Church at Byzantium, the older town which the emperor Constantine enlarged to found Constantinople. The Churches of Greece and Russia particularly give high honor to St Andrew, and because of a legend that certain of his relics were translated to St Andrew’s Church in Fife in the eighth century, he became a patron saint of Scotland (hence the appearance of the X-shaped Cross of St Andrew on the Scottish flag and on the British Union Jack).

The feast of St Andrew was observed as early as the fourth century in the East and by the sixth century at Rome. The feast day determines the beginning of the Church year, since the First Sunday in Advent is always the Sunday nearest to St Andrew’s Day, whether before or after. In most liturgical books the sanctoral calendar begins with the commemoration of St Andrew the Apostle.

prepared from material from Lesser Feasts and Fasts
and from The New Book of Festivals and Commemorations
(Philip H. Pfatteicher, Fortress Press)

The Collect

Almighty God, who gave such grace to your apostle Andrew that he readily obeyed the call of your Son Jesus Christ, and brought his brother with him: Give us, who are called by your holy Word, grace to follow him without delay, and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Lesson
Deuteronomy 30:11-14

[Moses said to the people of Israel] For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

Psalm 19
Caeli enarrant

The heavens declare the glory of God, *
and the firmament shows his handiwork.

One day tells its tale to another, *
and one night imparts knowledge to another.

Although they have no words or language, *
and their voices are not heard,

Their sound has gone out into all lands, *
and their message to the ends of the world.

In the deep has he set a pavilion for the sun; *
it comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber;
it rejoices like a champion to run its course.

It goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens
and runs about to the end of it again; *
nothing is hidden from its burning heat.

The law of the LORD is perfect
and revives the soul; *
the testimony of the LORD is sure
and gives wisdom to the innocent.

The statutes of the LORD are just
and rejoice the heart; *
the commandment of the LORD is clear
and gives light to the eyes.

The fear of the LORD is clean
and endures for ever; *
the judgments of the LORD are true
and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold,
more than much fine gold, *
sweeter far than honey,
than honey in the comb.

By them also is your servant enlightened, *
and in keeping them there is great reward.

Who can tell how often he offends? *
cleanse me from my secret faults.

Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins;
let them not get dominion over me; *
then shall I be whole and sound,
and innocent of a great offense.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my
heart be acceptable in your sight, *
O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.

The Epistle
Romans 10:8b-18

“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for

“Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.”

The Gospel
Matthew 4:18-22

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

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The scripture texts for the Lesson, Epistle, and Gospel are taken from the English Standard Version Bible. The Collect and Psalm are taken from the Book of Common Prayer (1979).

The icon of Saint Andrew the Apostle was written by and is © Aidan Hart and is reproduced here with his generous permission.

Clement, Bishop of Rome, c. 100

Believed from very early on to have been a late first century bishop of the Church in Rome and disciple of the apostles Peter and Paul, Clement is known today mainly for his letter to the Church in Corinth known as the First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians. Written about the year 96, the epistle is an early and significant witness to the function and authority of the ministers of the Christian Church. It also demonstrates for the first time the effective intervention of a bishop of Rome in the affairs of another Church, and it provides evidence for the residence and martyrdom of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Rome.

The occasion of the letter was the action of a younger faction at Corinth (ever the troubled, divisive church) who had deposed the older presbyters because of dissatisfaction with their ministration. The unity of the Church was being jeopardized by a dispute over its ministry. Clement’s letter sets out a hierarchical and organic view of Church authority, insisting that God requires due order in all things, that the deposed presbyters must be reinstated, and that the legitimate authorities must be obeyed. He writes, “You, therefore, the prime movers of the schism, submit to the presbyters, and, bending the knees of your hearts, accept correction and change your minds. Learn submissiveness, and rid yourselves of your boastful and proud incorrigibility of tongue. Surely, it is better for you to be little and honorable within the flock of Christ than to be esteemed above your deserts and forfeit the hope which he holds out.”

Clement uses the terms “bishop” and “presbyter” interchangeably in the letter, and both internal and external evidence (e.g., the letter of Ignatius of Antioch to the Romans) suggests that the episcopate not only at Corinth at the time but also at Rome, was plural; i.e., that those Churches were ruled and overseen by a council of presbyter-bishops – so that Clement was probably one of the bishops of the Church in Rome at the time. It would not be until the middle of the second century that the single, or monarchical, episcopate of one bishop in a church surrounded by the presbyters and deacons, would arise at Rome. In Clement’s letter, it is the “rulers” of the church (the presbyter-bishops) who lead its worship and “offer the gifts” of the Eucharist, just as the duly appointed priests of the Old Testament cultus performed the various sacrifices and liturgies in their time. In setting out the bare lineaments of apostolic appointment of ministers in the churches, Clement lays the groundwork for Tertullian and Irenaeus of Lyons, who would uphold the apostolic succession of bishops and presbyters against the gnostics in the late second century: “The Apostles preached to us the Gospel received from Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was God’s Ambassador. Christ, in other words, comes with a message from God, and the Apostles with a message from Christ. Both these orderly arrangements, therefore, originate from the will of God. And so, after receiving their instructions and being fully assured through the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as confirmed in faith by the word of God, they went forth, equipped with the fullness of the Holy Spirit, to preach the good news that the Kingdom of God was close at hand. From land to land, accordingly, and from city to city they preached, and from among their earliest converts appointed men whom they had tested by the Spirit to act as bishops and deacons for the future believers.”

In keeping with his organic view of the Church, Clement commends each Christian to his place in the whole Body of Christ, in words that recall the Apostle Paul: “Therefore the whole of our body be maintained in Christ Jesus, and let each submit to his neighbor’s rights in the measure determined by the special gift bestowed on him. Let the strong care for the weak, and the weak respect the strong; let the rich support the poor, and the poor render thanks to God for giving them the means of supplying their needs; let the wise man show his wisdom not in words but in active help; the humble man must not testify for himself, but leave it to another to testify in his behalf. He who is continent must not boast, knowing that it is another who confers on him the ability to remain continent. Let us therefore reflect, brethren, of what clay we were made, what and who we were when we entered the world, out of what grave and darkness our Maker and Creator has brought us into the world, where he had prepared his benefits before our birth. Since, then, we owe all these blessings to him, we are obliged to thank him in every way. To him be the glory forever and evermore. Amen.”

There is evidence that Clement’s epistle was read in the liturgy at Corinth around the year 170, and several ancient manuscripts include it in their canonical books of the New Testament, along with a second letter, erroneously ascribed to Clement (“Second Clement”), which is actually an early homily of unknown authorship on the character of the Christian life and the importance of penance. The text of Clement’s genuine epistle was lost to the Western Church during the Middle Ages (when Clement was thought of primarily as an early martyr) and was not rediscovered until 1628.

Aside from his authorship of this letter, we know little for certain about Clement. In fact, his name is not mentioned in the letter itself, which is addressed by “the Church of God…at Rome” to “the Church of God…at Corinth”. Despite this, Clementine authorship was not doubted in antiquity and has been called into question in modern times on only slender evidence. Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome state that the letter was written by Clement “as a representative of the Church of Rome”. Clement’s episcopate (presbyterate) probably fell sometime between the years 92 and 101. That he may have been of Jewish origin is inferred from his fondness for drawing heavily on the Old Testament for illustrative material. He has been identified by some with the Apostle Paul’s fellow laborer of the same name, mentioned in Philippians 4. Though the medieval Church remembered him primarily as a martyr, neither the place nor the manner of his death is known.

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

The Collect

Almighty God, you chose your servant Clement of Rome to recall the Church in Corinth to obedience and stability; Grant that your Church may be grounded and settled in your truth by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; reveal to it what is not yet known; fill up what is lacking; confirm what has already been revealed; and keep it blameless in your service; 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 Clement, Bishop of Rome, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The quotations from First Clement are taken from Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation (edited by Johannes Quasten and Joseph C. Plumpe).

Edmund, King of East Anglia, Martyr, 870

Born of Saxon stock, Edmund was brought up as a Christian and became king of the East Anglians before 865. In 869 to 870 an army of Vikings, led by Ingwar, invaded East Anglia. Edmund led his army against them but was defeated and captured. He refused to renounce the Christian faith or to rule as Ingwar’s vassal. He was then killed, whether by being scourged, shot with arrows, and then beheaded, as the traditional account relates, or by being “spread-eagled” as a sacrifice to the gods in accordance with Viking practice elsewhere. His death took place at Hellesdon in Norfolk, and his body was buried in a small wooden chapel nearby. Around 915 his body was discovered to be incorrupt and was translated to Bedricsworth, later call Bury St Edmunds. In 925 King Athelstan founded a community of two priests and four deacons to take care of the shrine. His veneration growing through the years, with its fulfillment of the ideals of Old English heroism, provincial independence, and Christian sanctity, by the eleventh century his feast figured prominently in monastic calendars in southern England and later in that of Sarum. His relics were again translated in 1095 to a large new Norman church and re-enshrined in 1198.

His iconography includes an arrow (often a golden arrow), the supposed instrument of his martyrdom, or else a wolf, believed to have guarded his head after death.

adapted from The Oxford Dictionary of Saints

The Collect

O God of ineffable mercy, you gave grace and fortitude to blessed Edmund the king to triumph over the enemy of his people by nobly dying for your Name: Bestow on us your servants the shield of faith with which we can withstand the assaults of our ancient enemy; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer, 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 Edmund, King of East Anglia and Martyr, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The icon of St Edmund the Martyr was written by Helen McIldowie-Jenkins and is reproduced here with her generous permission.

Elizabeth, Princess of Hungary, 1231

Born at Pressburg in 1207, the daughter of King Andrew the Second of Hungary, Elizabeth (Erzsébet) was brought up in Thuringia and in 1221 married Louis the Fourth, Landgrave of Thuringia. Ardent, passionate, and handsome, she enjoyed a married life of extraordinary happiness, bore three children, and was generous to a fault. Louis was sympathetic to her extravagant almsgiving and allowed her to spend her dowry in providing for the poor. During a famine and epidemic in 1226, while he was in Italy, Elizabeth sold her jewels and established a hospital for the sick and the poor, and she opened the princely granaries to supply their needs.

In 1227 Louis went on crusade under Frederick the Third, and in less than three months he died of plague. Elizabeth was first incredulous, then distraught almost to the point of insanity. His death was a turning point in her life.

Her brother-in-law Henry, regent for her young son the Landgrave Herman, drove her from the court. Some advisers wished her to marry again, but she refused. In 1228 she settle at Marburg under the spiritual direction of her confessor, Conrad of Marburg, whom she had known since 1225. Conrad’s direction was domineering and severe, and he made Elizabeth dismiss her favorite ladies-in-waiting, for whom he substituted two harsh companions, who would punish her with slaps in the face and with blows from a rod.

Already attracted to their piety and special charism by her longtime concern for the sick and the poor, Elizabeth became a Franciscan tertiary, expressing her ardor in a love of poverty, the relief of the sick, the poor, and the aged by building and working in a hospital close to her modest house. She made ample provision for the education of her own children (her son Herman was deposed by Henry and sent into exile as well). She occupied herself with such tasks as spinning and carding, and cleaning the homes of the poor and fishing to help feed them. She refused an offer to return to Hungary, preferring to live out her life in resilient exile, a life of self-denial and service to the poor that lasted only two or three years. She died on the sixteenth of November 1231 at the age of only twenty-four, exhausted by her austerities. She was canonized only four years later by Pope Gregory the Ninth, and her relics were translated to the Church of Saint Elizabeth in Marburg where they remained until they were removed to an unknown place by Philip of Hesse in 1539. With Louis of France, Elizabeth shares the title of patron of the Third Order of Saint Francis.

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

The Collect

Almighty God, by your grace your servant Elizabeth of Hungary recognized and honored Jesus in the poor of this world: Grant that we, following her example, may with love and gladness serve those in any need or trouble, in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ; 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 Elizabeth of Hungary are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 680

In the following year, that is the year of our Lord 680, Hilda, abbess of the monastery of Streanaeshalch, of which I have already spoken, a most religious servant of Christ, after an earthly life devoted to the work of heaven passed away to receive the reward of a heavenly life on the seventeenth of November at the age of sixty-six. Her life on earth fell into two equal parts: for she spent thirty-three years most nobly on secular occupations, and dedicated the ensuing thirty-three even more nobly to our Lord in the monastic life. She was nobly born, the daughter of Hereric, nephew to King Edwin. With Edwin she received the Faith and sacraments of Christ through the preaching of Paulinus of blessed memory, first bishop of the Northumbrians, and she preserved this Faith inviolate until she was found worthy to see her Master in heaven….

Thus the Venerable Bede introduced his account of the life and death of Hilda, abbess of Whitby, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Related to the royal families of Northumbria and of East Anglia, Hilda, whose parents had lived in exile in the British enclave of Elmet (West Yorkshire), became a Christian at the age of thirteen, instructed and then baptized by Paulinus, the missionary bishop of Northumbria. Chaste and respected, she lived at the king’s court for twenty years, at which point she decided to enter the monastic life. She intended at first to journey to Gaul and join her sister in the convent at Chelles, near Paris, but Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, impressed with her holiness of life, gave her a small plot of land on the banks of the River Wear, where she lived according to the monastic rule with a few companions for a year.

Aidan then appointed her abbess of Heruteu (Hartlepool), where she established the rule of life that she learned mostly from Irish sources, based perhaps in part on the Rule of Columbanus. She became renowned for her wisdom, eagerness for learning, and devotion to the service of God. In 657 she founded (or reorganized) the monastery at Whitby (known then as Streanaeshalch) as a double monastery based on Gallic examples, where both nuns and monks lived in strict obedience to Hilda’s rule of righteousness, mercy, purity, peace, and charity. Known for her prudence, kings and nobles as well as ordinary folk sought her advice and counsel. Whitby soon established a reputation for learning, and those living under her direction studied the Scriptures and occupied themselves in good works so diligently that many were found qualified for ordination. Five monks under her rule became bishops of the Church in England, one of whom continued his studies in Rome before returning to England to become a bishop. She encouraged Caedmon, a lay servant at Whitby, and was so delighted with his poetry that she encouraged him to become a monk and to continue singing his inspired poetry. Bede tells us that all who knew Hilda called her Mother because of her devotion and grace. She was an example of holy life not only to members of her own community, but she also brought about the amendment of life and led to salvation many who lived at some distance from Whitby, as they heard about her inspiring industry and goodness.

In 663, Whitby was the site of the famous synod convened to decide between Celtic and Roman practices that were dividing the Church in Northumbria. Hilda favored the Celtic position, but when the Roman position prevailed she was obedient to the synod’s decision. At the end of her life, Hilda was afflicted by a prolonged illness that Bede tells us was intended that her strength might be “made perfect in weakness”. On the last day of her life, the seventeenth of November, 680, she received Holy Communion early in the morning and summoned her nuns to her deathbed, urging them to maintain the Gospel of peace among themselves and with others.

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

The Collect

O God of peace, by whose grace the abbess Hilda was endowed with gifts of justice, prudence, and strength to rule as a wise mother over the nuns and monks of her household, and to become a trusted and reconciling friend to leaders of the Church: Give us the grace to recognize and accept the varied gifts you bestow on men and women, that our common life may be enriched and your gracious will be done; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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The propers for Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The icon of Saint Hilda of Whitby was written by and is © Aidan Hart, and is reproduced here with his generous permission.

The quotation from the Venerable Bede is from The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Penguin Books 1990).

Margaret, Queen of Scotland, 1093

Granddaughter of King Edmund Ironside and grandniece of King Edward the Confessor, Margaret was well educated, mostly in Hungary, where her family was raised in exile during the rule of the Danish kings in England. As one of the last members of the Anglo-Saxon royal family, she was in danger after the Norman Conquest and took refuge at the court of Malcolm the Third, king of Scotland, made famous by Shakespeare in his play Macbeth. Intelligent, beautiful, and devout, Margaret married Malcolm in 1069 or 1070. Their union was exceptionally happy and fruitful for the Scottish nation, producing eight children. Two of her children, Alexander and David, became kings of Scotland. Through Margaret and her daughter Matilda English monarchs from the reign of Henry the Second to the present day can trace their ancestry to the pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon kings of England.

According to her biographer Turgot, prior of Durham and bishop of Saint Andrews, Margaret sought with considerable zeal to reform what she considered to be careless practices in the Church in Scotland, then at a low ebb in its ecclesial life. She insisted that the observance of Lent was to begin on Ash Wednesday, rather than on the following Monday. She further insisted that the Mass be celebrated according to the accepted Roman rite of the Church, and not in barbarous form and language. The Lord’s Day was to be a day when, she said, “we apply ourselves only to prayers”. She played a prominent role in the foundation of monasteries, churches, orphanages, and hostels for pilgrims. She and Malcolm together worked to rebuild the abbey of Iona, made famous centuries before by Columba and Aidan, and they had Dumfermline built to be a burial place for the Scottish royal family, like a Scottish Westminster Abbey.

Margaret’s private life was devoted to prayer and reading, lavish almsgiving (including the ransoming of Anglo-Saxon captives), and ecclesiastical needlework. She saw to the spiritual welfare of her large household, providing servants with opportunity for regular worship and prayer. Her influence over the king was considerable as he, strong-willed and initially rough in character, came through love for her to value what she valued. Turgot wrote that Malcolm saw “that Christ truly dwelt in her heart…what she rejected, he rejected…what she loved, he for love of her loved too.” Although he could not read, he liked to see the books she used at prayer and would have them embellished with gold and silver bindings. One such book thought to be hers, a pocket Gospel with fine portraits of the Evangelists, survives in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. A psalter at Edinburgh University Library may well have been hers, too.

Margaret lived just long enough to learn of the tragic deaths of her husband and one of their sons on a military expedition against the English king William Rufus, who had confiscated her father’s estates in England. Worn by her austerities and the rigors of childbearing, Margaret died on the sixteenth of November, 1093, at the age of forty-seven. She was buried beside Malcolm at Dunfermline, and her body was translated in 1250. At the Reformation, her body and Malcolm’s were translated to the Escorial in Madrid. Her work among the people and her reforms of the Church made her Scotland’s most beloved saint, and the Roman Catholic Church named her a patron of Scotland in 1673.

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

The Collect

O God, you called your servant Margaret to an earthly throne that she might advance your heavenly kingdom, and gave her zeal for your Church and love for your people: Mercifully grant that we who commemorate her this day may be fruitful in good works, and attain to the glorious crown of your saints; 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 Margaret, Queen of Scotland, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Consecration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1784

Samuel Seabury, the first bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, was born in Groton, Connecticut, on the thirtieth of November 1729. After ordination in England in 1753, he was assigned to Christ Church, New Brunswick, New Jersey as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In 1757, he become rector of Grace Church, Jamaica, Long Island, and in 1766 rector of St Peter’s, Westchester County. During the American War for Independence, he remained loyal to the Crown and served as a chaplain in the British army.

After the War, a number of Connecticut clergymen, meeting in secret on the twenty-fifth of March 1783 named Seabury or Jeremiah Leaming, whoever would be willing and able, to seek episcopal consecration in England. Leaming declined, while Seabury accepted and set sail for England.

After a year of negotiation, Seabury found it impossible to obtain episcopal orders from the Church of England because, as an American citizen, he could not swear allegiance to the Crown. On the advice of Martin Routh, a young professor and patristics scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, he did not seek consecration at the hands of bishops in the Church of Denmark as he had considered, because of the irregularity of their succession. Seabury then turned to the Non-Juring bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and on the twenty-fourth of November 1784, in Aberdeen, he was consecrated by the bishop and the bishop coadjutor of Aberdeen and the bishop of Ross and Caithness, in the presence of a number of clergy and laity.

On his return home, Seabury was recognized as Bishop of Connecticut in Convocation on the third of August 1785 at Middletown. While serving setting the Church in Connecticut in order, White also responded to appeals from parishes in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey to help set the Church in order in those states, being as they were at the time without bishops or diocesan organization. With William White, the Bishop of Pennsylvania (whose was able to obtain consecration at the hands of English bishops because of a parliamentary change in the law regarding the oath of allegiance to the Crown), he was active in the organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church at the General Convention of 1789. Seabury played a decisive role in the development of the American Book of Common Prayer, when he kept his promise, made in a concordat with the Scottish bishops, to move the American Church to adopt the Scottish form for the celebration of the Holy Communion, with the restoration of the epiclesis, the prayer for the Holy Spirit, to the eucharistic prayer, as well as the prayer of oblation after the Words of Institution and the epiclesis, which had disappeared form the prayer of consecration in English Prayer Books after the first (1549) version. Hence to this day it is customary to speak of this as the Scoto-American tradition of the shape of Prayer Book eucharistic prayers.

In 1790 Seabury became responsible for the episcopal oversight of the churches in Rhode Island, and at the General Convention of 1792 he participated in the first consecration of a bishop on American soil, that of John Claggett of Maryland. Seabury died on the twenty-fifth of February 1796 and is buried beneath St James’ Church, New London.

prepared from Lesser Feasts and Fasts
and other sources

The Collect

We give you thanks, O Lord our God, for your goodness in bestowing upon the Church in North America the gift of the episcopate, which we celebrate in this remembrance of the consecration of Samuel Seabury; and we pray that, joined together in unity with our bishops, and nourished by your holy Sacraments, we may proclaim the Gospel of redemption with apostolic zeal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, 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 the Consecration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Charles Simeon, Presbyter, 1836

Charles Simeon’s education took place at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge, where, in 1779, his conversion took place while a student as he prepared himself to receive Holy Communion, an act required of the undergraduates. His first communion had been a deeply depressing and discouraging experience, because of his use of the popular devotional tract, The Whole Duty of Man, which emphasized law and obedience as the means of rightly receiving the Sacrament. When he was again preparing for his Easter communion, he was given a copy of Bishop Thomas Wilson’s Instructions for the Lord’s Supper. Here was a quite different approach, which recognized that the Law could not make one righteous, and that only the sacrifice of Christ, perceived by faith, could enable one to communicate worthily. This time, Simeon’s experience of Holy Communion was one of peace and exhiliration, a new beginning of a Christian life whose influence is difficult to exaggerate.

In 1783 Simeon was ordained to the presbyterate and in the same year was appointed vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, a living that he held until his death. At an early date he had come under the influence of the Henry and John Venn, and his entire future ministry was formed by their Evangelicalism. At first he met with open hostility both in the university and among his congregation, but his pastoral zeal broke down all opposition. He exercised a significant influence among Evangelical undergraduates and ordinands at Cambridge, and he was soon recognized as a leader in the Evangelical movement in the Church of England. He helped to found the Church Missionary Society in 1799 and was active in recruiting and supporting missionaries, including his own curate, Henry Martyn. After their reorganization, in part occasioned by initial resistance to English missions in India, the East India Company frequently consulted him on the choice of their chaplains. Simeon was a prominent supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society. To further the cause of Evangelicalism in the Church of England, he founded a body of trustees for securing and administering Church patronage (appointments to livings in the Church) in accordance with Evangelical principles. As a preacher, Simeon ranks high in the history of Anglicanism, his sermons unfailingly biblical, simple, and passionately delivered.

The nineteenth century English historian Thomas Macauley said of Charles Simeon, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the remote corners of England, you would allow that his read sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.” The Irish ecclesiastical historian, William Edward Hartpole Lecky, described the influence of Simeon and his friends and colleagues in ministry thus: “They gradually changed the whole spirit of the English Church. They infused into it a new fire and passion of devotion, kindled a spirit of fervent philanthropy, raised the standard of clerical duty, and completely altered the whole tone and tendency of the preaching of its ministers.”

Simeon died on the thirteenth of November, 1836. He is commemorated in the calendars of The Episcopal Church and of the Anglican Church of Canada on the twelfth of November, and on the thirteenth in the calendar of the Church of England.

prepared from Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980)
and The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

The Collect

O loving God, we know that all things are ordered by your unerring wisdom and unbounded love: Grant us in all things to see your hand; that, following the example and teaching of your servant Charles Simeon, we may walk with Christ in all simplicity, and serve you with a quiet and contented mind; 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 Charles Simeon, Priest, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Martin, Bishop of Tours, 397

One of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages and one of the patron saints of France, Martin was born in Pannonia (now Hungary) around the year 316. His father was a pagan officer in the Roman army, and Martin joined the army for some time as well, probably as a conscript. He intended to become a Christian from an early age and enrolled among the catechumens while still a soldier. He became convinced that his commitment to Christ prevented his serving as a soldier, because he would be expected to kill the enemy in battle. After protesting against his military service, he was imprisoned, and at the end of hostilities, was discharged. According to an ancient legend, while Martin was still a catechumen, he was approached by a poor man who asked for alms in the Name of Christ. Martin, drawing his sword, cut off part of his military cloak and gave it to the beggar. On the following night, Jesus appeared to Martin, clothed in half a cloak, and said to him, “Martin, a simple catechumen, covered me with this garment.”

Martin became a disciple of Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, and was baptized. On Hilary’s return to Poitiers from banishment in 360, Martin rejoined him and, inspired by the monastic movement in Egypt, established a hermitage on land given to him by the bishop. Disciples joined Martin in this first monastery in Gaul, and here Martin remained as the pioneer of Western monasticism until he was elected bishop of Tours by the acclamation of the clergy and the people – and to his own dismay. As bishop he continued his ascetic life, living first in a cell near his cathedral church and later at the monastery he founded at Marmoutier, near Tours, which soon numbered some eighty monks. He founded other monasteries, seeing them as a means of achieving his mission to convert the pagans (pagani, “country dwellers”) in the rural areas. (Until that time, Christianity in Gaul, as elsewhere in the Roman empire, had largely been confined to cities and towns.) The monasticism he pioneered had great influence on the development of Celtic monasticism in Britain, where Ninian and others promoted Martin’s ascetic and missionary ideas. The oldest church in Canterbury, antedating the Anglo-Saxon invasions, is dedicated to Saint Martin, and was given early in the seventh century to Augustine of Canterbury by Ethelbert, king of Kent, to use as a center for worship and mission. A diligent missionary, Martin was also a capable pastor, making visitations about his diocese on feet, by ass, or by boat. He was a staunch defender of the poor and helpless.

The most famous of the doctrinal disputes in which Martin became involved concerned the Priscillianists, a Gnostic sect who appealed to the Western emperor Maximus after their condemnation by the synod of Bordeaux in 384, following on the condemnations of Pope Damasus and Ambrose, bishop of Milan. Priscillian, the leader of the sect, was accused at Maximus’ court of sorcery, a capital offense. Martin (and Ambrose) pleaded in Priscillian’s favor, condemning his teaching but maintaining that such matters should be dealt with by the Church and not by the emperor. This stand met with opposition from contemporaries, but the wisdom of the argument was demonstrated in that after Priscillian was executed, the first example of the death penalty for heresy, the sect increased in Spain, where it continued to exist until the sixth century.

Martin died on the eighth of November 397 at Candes and was buried at Tours three days later (some sources suggest that he died on the eleventh of November). His tomb became a much-visited shrine and a sanctuary for those seeking protection and justice. In the 1662 Prayer Book, he is commemorated on both the eleventh of November (the date of his burial) and on the fourth of July (the date of the translation of his relics and of his ordination).

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

The Collect

Lord God of hosts, you clothed your servant Martin the soldier with the spirit of sacrifice, and set him as a bishop in your Church to be a defender of the catholic faith: Give us grace to follow in his holy steps, that at the last we may be found clothed with righteousness in the dwellings of peace; 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 Martin, Bishops of Tours, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The icon of Saint Martin of Tours was written by and is © Aidan Hart, and is reproduced here with his generous permission.

Willibrord, Archbishop of Utrecht, Missionary to Frisia, 739

We know of Willibrord’s life and missionary labors through a few notes written by a contemporary, the Venerable Bede, in his The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and in a biography of Willibrord written by his younger kinsman, Alcuin. Willibrord was born in Northumbria about the year 658 and from the age of seven was brought up and educated in Bishop Wilfrid’s monastery at Ripon. On Wilfrid’s virtual deposition as bishop in 678 and his subsequent expulsion from Northumbria, Willibrord went to Ireland both for study and for voluntary exile for twelve years, where he was ordained to the presbyterate and acquired the desire to do missionary work. On his return to England in 690, he decided to travel to Frisia, a still-pagan area increasingly under the domination of the Christian Franks. With twelve missionary companions, he made his way to Frisia through the kingdom of the Franks, having obtained the permission of Pepin the Second, duke of Austrasia, who had recently conquered western Frisia, to preach among the Frisians. Bede tells us that the mission prospered, and that the companions “converted many folk in a short while from idolatry to faith in Christ.” During this time, Willibrord traveled to Rome, where he received the approbation and encouragement of Pope Sergius for the mission. Willibrord returned to Frisia and went again to Rome in 695, at Pepin’s behest, to be ordained to the episcopate by Pope Sergius, who bestowed on him the name Clement and sent him back with the definite mission to establish the Church in Frisia with a metropolitan see at Utrecht and suffragan bishoprics according to the pattern at Canterbury and elsewhere.

In 678 Willibrord established his largest monastery at Echternach, in what is now Luxembourg, where he died more than forty years later.

In the area of Frisia rule by the Franks, Willibrord’s missionary work was permanently fruitful, but his work in other areas was more sporadic. In 714 he was driven from Utrecht by Radbod, the pagan Frisian king, who had churches destroyed and Christian clergy killed. Willibrord’s work seemed largely destroyed, but in 719, on Radbod’s death, Willibrord returned, restoring the Church not only in western Frisia but also taking the mission to eastern Frisia, which he had never before entered. During these years he was joined for a time by Boniface, who he wished to succeed him, but Boniface went on to the Saxons of Germany instead. Willibrord then entered the lands of the Danes, where he bought thirty slave-boys and educated them as Christians. In Helgoland he baptized a number of the inhabitants and killed sacred cattle in order to feed his followers, and at Walcheren he destroyed an idol at risk of his life.

Alcuin described his work as based on energetic preaching and ministry, informed by prayer and sacred reading. Willibrord was always venerable, gracious, and full of joy. Though not tremendously or rapidly successful, Willibrord’s pioneering missionary work prepared the way for the successes of later English Christian influence in Germanic Europe, most notably the missionary work of Boniface. Willibrord thoroughly deserves his titles of Apostle to the Frisians and patron saint of Holland.

He died at the age of 81, on the seventh of November 739 at Echternach, and was immediately venerated as a saint. One of his most interesting surviving relics is the Calendar of Saint Willibrord, written for his own private use, which contains marginal notes in his own hand recording his consecration at Rome and other biographical details.

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

The Collect

O Lord our God,you call whom you will and send them where you choose: We thank you for sending your servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve you, the living God; and we entreat you to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of your service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; 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 Willibrord, Archbishop of Utrecht and Missionary to Frisia, are published on the Lectionary Page website.