John Donne, Presbyter and Poet, 1631

One of the greatest of English poets, and the best known preacher of his day in the Church of England, John Donne was born into a wealthy and pious Roman Catholic family around 1572. His mother was the granddaughter of a sister of Sir Thomas More. He entered Hart Hall, Oxford in 1584 and possibly studied after this at Cambridge or abroad. He studied law at the Inns of Court in London, entering Thavies Inn in 1591 and transferring to Lincoln’s Inn in 1592. During this time he was exercised over the problem of his religious allegiance (as a Catholic recusant in a country with a established reformed Church), and according to the biographer Izaak Walton, “betrothed himself to no Religion that might give him any other denomination than a Christian“. By 1598 he had conformed to the Church of England. In 1598 he entered into government service and a promising political career as private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Sir Thomas’ discovery in 1602 of Donne’s secret marriage to Ann More, the niece of his employer’s wife, the previous year brought his employment abruptly to an end. During the next several years he and his growing family lived in poverty, dependent on the charity of friends. He found some employment in the writing of controversial literature, but after repeated failures to find regular secular employment, he at last complied with the wishes of King James the First and was ordained to the ministry of the Church of England. The reason that he gave for his delay was scruple at accepting holy orders as a means of making a living. Following several brief cures, Donne was appointed Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1621, where he preached on all great festivals. He was also a regular preacher at court and was a favorite with both James the First and his son, Charles.

During a serious illness in 1623, he wrote his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (published in 1624) and the famous “Hymn to God the Father”. Donne died on March 31, 1631 and was buried in St Paul’s. His monument, which depicts him standing in his death shroud, survived the Great Fire that destroyed most of the old Cathedral. He is remembered on this day in several Anglican sanctoral calendars.

Donne’s secular poetry, satires, love-elegies, and lyrics, was written mainly in his youth. His religious poetry belongs mostly to the troubled and unhappy middle years of poverty and discouragement. After ordination his genius found expression in preaching. His poetry suffered eclipse after the Restoration but experienced a robust revival in the twentieth century. His vigorous, dramatic style, his capacity for introspection, and the subtle blend of argument and passion in his love poems and religious poems attracted poets who were rejecting Romanticism, mostly notably T.S. Eliot. Donne’s sermons are masterpieces of the old formal style of preaching, packed with patristic learning and adorned with brilliant images images and striking rhetorical flourishes. But his greatest strength was as a moral theologian, preaching as a sinner who has found mercy to other sinners. Donne’s great theme as a love poet was the bliss of union, a theme also found in his religious poetry, and his great theme as a preacher was God’s mercy.

prepared from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

The Collect

Almighty God, the root and fountain of all being: Open our eyes to see, with your servant John Donne, that whatever has any being is a mirror in which we may behold you; 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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Batter my heart, three-person’d God

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely’I love you,’and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,’untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done†;
For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sins their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow’d in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.

†The reader will note the play on “done” and “Donne”.

Death

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Keble, Presbyter and Reformer of the Church, 1866

New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove:
Through sleep and darkness safely brought,
Restored to life and power and thought.

These familiar words of John Keble are from his cycle of poems entitled The Christian Year (1827), which he wrote to restore within the Church of England a deep feeling for the church year, “to bring the thoughts and feelings of the reader into unison with those exemplified in the Prayer Book.” The work went through ninety-five editions, but this was not the fame Keble sought. His consuming desire was to be a faithful pastor who finds his fulfillment in daily services, confirmation classes, visits to village schools, and a voluminous correspondence with those seeking spiritual counsel.

Born in 1792, Keble received his early education in his father’s vicarage. At fourteen, he won a scholarship to Oxford, and after a brilliant career at Corpus Christi College, he was elected to one of the much-coveted Fellowships of Oriel College, having graduated from his college with highest honors. He was ordained a deacon in 1815 and in 1816 a presbyter. In 1817 he became a tutor at Oriel, but he resigned in 1823 to become his father’s curate in his rural cure in the Cotswolds. There he composed the poems of The Christian Year. In 1831 he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford.

England was in the early nineteenth century undergoing a turbulent change from a rural to an industrial and urban society. Among the reforms of the 1830s, Parliament acted to abolish ten Anglican bishoprics in Ireland. Keble vigorously attacked this action as undermining the independence of the Church. His assizes sermon of July 14, 1834, preached at the opening of the court term before the University, denounced this “national apostasy” and was the spark that ignited the Oxford Movement. Those drawn to the Movement began to publish a series of “Tracts for the Times” – hence the popular term, “Tractarians” – which sought to recall the Church to its ancient sacramental heritage. John Henry Newman was the intellectual leader of the movement, Edward Bouverie Pusey was the prophet of its devotional life, and John Keble was its pastoral inspiration.

In 1836, Keble became Vicar of Hursley, near Winchester, where he settled down to family life and remained as pastor and priest until his life’s end.

Though bitterly attacked, Keble’s loyalty to the Church was unwavering. Within three years of his death, John Keble College was established at Oxford “to give an education in strict fidelity to the Church of England”. For Keble, this would have meant dedication to learning in order “to live more nearly as we pray”.

from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, with additions and amendments

The Collect

Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know your presence and obey your will; that, following the example of your servant John Keble, we may accomplish with integrity and courage what you give us to do, and endure what you give us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Charles Henry Brent, Bishop and Missionary to the Philippines, 1929

Born in Canada in 1862, educated at Trinity College of the University of Toronto, and ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada, Charles Henry Brent came to the United States where, in 1901, the House of Bishops of The Protestant Episcopal Church elected him Missionary Bishop of the Philippines. Though he arrived in Manila with all the trappings of the new American establishment, Bishop Brent soon demonstrated that he would resist the nationalistic and cultural imperialist temptations that marked some Protestant missions. He refused to waste his time in criticism of the Roman Catholic faith of most Filipinos. He declined to serve as a mere chaplain to the wealthy American expatriate community in Manila. As a missionary bishop, he determined instead to go to the multitude of non-Christians in the islands and to see that American government of the islands was responsible.

Bishop Brent founded several schools and a charity hospital in Manila. He began a crusade against the opium trade, which he expanded to the Asian continent, becoming in 1909 a sort of early 20th century “drug czar” as President of the Opium Conference in Shanghai.

His evangelistic missions took him to the sophisticated Chinese community of Manila and to the pagan and tribal Igorots of Luzon. He initiated a Christian mission among the hostile Moros of the Sulu Archipelago. But by 1917 his health was such that he accepted election as Bishop of Western New York, having declined three previous elections to remain at his post in the Philippines.

As noted in Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980), Bishop Brent:

“was the outstanding figure of the [Protestant] Episcopal Church on the world scene for two decades. The central focus of his life and ministry was the cause of Christian unity. After attending the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, he led the Episcopal Church in the movement that culminated in the first World Conference on Faith and Order, held in Lausanne in 1927, and over which he presided.”

The historian James Thayer Addison described Brent as “a saint of disciplined vigor…a priest and bishop who gloried in the heritage of his Church, yet who stood among all Christian brothers as one who served…He was everywhere an ambassador of Christ.”

While serving as Bishop of Western New York, Brent preached a sermon at the consecration of Dr E. M. Stires as Bishop of Long Island, which sermon Brent entitled, “The Authority of Christ.” The concerns of the catholic bishop and ecumenist show in his admonition that:

“The unity of Christendom is no longer a beautiful dream. It is a pressing necessity for the arousing of that passion for Christ which will be the most flaming thing in the world…Nationalism began to eat into the body of Christendom four hundred years ago and has continued to work until Christianity has been nationalized instead of the nations being Christianized…Until the churches unite we shall have to move as men grievously wounded—haltingly, lamely, without a supernational and final guide in the moral and spiritual movements of the time. We shall be unable to invite the nations to walk in the light of the Kingdom of God and in this way bring their glory and honor, together with that of their rulers, into it.”

One of Brent’s prayers for the mission of the Church was included in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer (1979) and in the Anglican Church in North America’s Book of Common Prayer (2019):

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name.

Bishop Brent died in 1929.

The Collect

Heavenly Father, whose Son prayed that we all might be one: Deliver us from arrogance and prejudice, and give us wisdom and forbearance, that, following your servant Charles Henry Brent, we may be united in one family with all who confess the Name of your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Virgin Mary

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

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

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

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

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

The Collect

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

The Lesson
Isaiah 7:10-14

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

Psalm 40:5-13
Expectans expectavi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Epistle
Hebrews 10:4-10

When Christ came into the world, he said,

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

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

The Canticle: Magnificat
The Song of Mary

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

For he has regarded *
the lowliness of his handmaiden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gospel
Luke 1:26-38

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

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

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

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

The Annunciation (Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898)

James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Teacher of the Faith, 1656

James Ussher was born in Dublin in 1581 into a respected Anglo-Irish family. He entered the newly-founded Trinity College, Dublin at the age of thirteen. Already a gifted polyglot, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree by 1598 and received his Master of Arts and a Fellowship by 1600. He was ordained to the diaconate (and possibly to the presbyterate on the same day) in 1602 by his uncle Henry Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. In 1606 he was appointed chancellor of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and prebend of Finglas, and became the first professor of theology at Trinity College and a Bachelor of Divinity in 1607, subsequently receiving his doctorate in divinity in 1612. He later served Trinity College as vice-chancellor and as provost. In 1621 he was appointed Bishop of Meath by King James the First, becoming a national figure in Ireland as a member of the Privy Council, and he was nominated Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland in 1625.

Ussher was an historian and scholar of vast learning and erudition and was acquainted with most of the English writers and divines of his day. The breadth of his learning made him an authority on subjects as diverse as the early history of the Irish Church (which he sought to demonstrate as differing from the Roman Catholic Church and being closer to the reformed Church of Ireland) and the epistles of Saint Ignatius of Antioch. His researches on the latter uncovered two manuscripts in libraries in England (and a third that he traced to the Medicean library in Florence) on the basis of which he demonstrated the authenticity of seven genuine letters, thereby producing the strongest extant evidence of the existence of episcopacy in the early Church at a time when the authenticity of the Ignatian epistles, and the existence of the episcopate in the early Church, was under attack by presbyterian churchmen and divines in England and Scotland.

A Calvinist in theology, Ussher was nevertheless at least conciliatory with William Laud, the High Church archbishop of Canterbury who strenuously resisted Calvinist Puritans in the Church of England, supporting Laud’s appointment as Chancellor of Trinity College in 1633. However, he resisted Laud’s pressure to bring the Church of Ireland into conformity with the Church of England, and at a convocation in 1634 ensured that the English Articles of Religion were adopted in addition to the more Calvinistic Irish Articles, not instead of them, and that the Irish canons were redrafted on the basis of English canons, rather than being replaced by them.

In 1640, in the midst of the turbulence of the growing conflict between King Charles the First and Parliament, Ussher left Ireland for what would be the last time. His home and income were destroyed in the Irish uprising of 1641, and Parliament voted him an annual pension. During the governmental conflict that became the English Civil Wars and the religious conflict between the supporters of episcopacy and its presbyterian detractors, he endeavored to bring about a reconciliation between the episcopalians and the presbyterians in the Church of England. Eventually the irresolution of the conflict and open warfare led him to choose between his Puritan allies in Parliament and his instinctive loyalty to the monarchy.

With the establishment of a presbyterian government in the Church and the defeat of the royalist cause, Ussher retired to his scholarly studies. In 1647 he produced a treatise on the origin of the Creeds. His most famous work, the Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti (Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world) was published in 1650, and its second volume, Annalium pars postierior, in 1654. In this work he calculated the date of Creation and produced a chronology of the world from that date, October 23, 4004 BC to the present-day. While his chronology fell into disrepute (mostly through twentieth century association with “young earth” creationism), this work represented a considerable feat of scholarship, requiring great depth and breadth of learning in what was then known of ancient history, including the rise of the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, as well as expertise in the Bible, biblical languages, astronomy, and ancient calendars and chronology. His account of extrabiblical historical events, such as the dates of the deaths of Alexander the Great and of Julius Caesar, is usually in close agreement with the findings of later historical research.

More the conciliator than the controversialist, Ussher sought to achieve in his Reduction of the Episcopacy unto the Form of Synodical Government (1641) a common ground or via media between presbyterians and episcopalians, whereby presbyters would be involved in a synodical government of the church and the central role of the episcopacy would be preserved. While it was rejected in its day both by the High Church episcopalians and the Puritan presbyterians, Ussher’s rationale, grounded in the theology of the Ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer and in the Scriptures, turned out to contain the essence of the form of church government that has evolved in most Anglican Churches around the world.

Ussher died on March 21, 1656. So great was his reputation for scholarship, tolerance, and sincerity that on his death he was given a state funeral and burial in the chapel of Saint Paul in Westminster Abbey by Oliver Cromwell, despite his earlier support for the royalist cause and his writings in support of episcopacy. His funeral is thought to have been the only time that the burial office of the Book of Common Prayer was publicly read in the Abbey during the Commonwealth period. His gravestone, placed in 1904 by the Provost of Trinity College, bears a Latin inscription, the English translation of which reads:

“In pious memory of JAMES USSHER who was born in Dublin in 1581, entered among the first students of Trinity College, promoted to the archiepiscopal see of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the hundredth heir of Saint Patrick the apostle of Ireland, historian, critic, theologian, most learned among the holy, most holy among the learned, exiled from his own in this city of Westminster, he fell asleep in Christ in 1656. He was expelled from his sacred see and country by those same seditions which went on to grant him burial in this church among the most honoured….”

prepared from various sources

The Collect

Almighty God, you gave your servant James Ussher 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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Archbishop James Ussher is not included in any Anglican calendar with which I am familiar. I propose his inclusion in an Anglican sanctorale because of his scholarship, his work for reconciliation between factions of Christians in the Church of the day, and his support for synodical government under the authority and leadership of bishops. He is well described as “most learned among the holy, most holy among the learned.”

Gregory the Illuminator, Bishop and Missionary to Armenia, c. 332

Armenia was the first state to become officially Christian, and this set a precedent for the adoption of Christianity in the Roman Empire in the fourth century (beginning with the emperor Constantine, and becoming more thoroughly so under the emperor Theodosius). As a buffer state between the empires of Rome and Persia, Armenia endured many shifts of policy, as first one and then the other empire became the kingdom’s “protector”.

Gregory, known as the Illuminator and as the Apostle to the Armenians, was born about 257. According to legend his father was an Armenian or Parthian of noble birth who assassinated the Persian king Chosroes the First. As an infant Gregory was rescued and taken to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he was brought up as a Christian. There he married a woman named Mary, who bore him two sons. About 280, he returned to Armenia as a missionary, eventually converting the Armenian king, Tiridates the Great (Armenian Trdat), to the Christian faith. With the king’s help, the country became Christian, and paganism was rooted out. About 300, Gregory was ordained a bishop at Caesarea. He established his cathedral at Vagharshapat, which came in time to be known as Echmiadzin (Ejmiadzin) and which remains to this day the seat of the Catholicos of the Armenian Church.

There is no record that Gregory attended the Council of Nicaea in 325, but according to tradition he sent his younger son Aristages in his stead, whom he had ordained as his successor as the catholicos (bishop) of the Armenian Church. Gregory spent his last years in ascetic solitude, and he died around the year 332.

adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

The Collect

Almighty God, whose will it is to be glorified in your saints, and who raised up your servant Gregory the Illuminator to be a light in the world, and to preach the Gospel to the people of Armenia: Shine, we pray, in our hearts, that we also in our generation may show forth your praise, who called us out of darkness into your marvelous light; 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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Among the works written by the late Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness is his Prayer of St Gregory, written in honor of St. Gregory the Illuminator.

James DeKoven, Presbyter, 1879

James DeKoven was born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1831, ordained by Jackson Kemper (the first missionary bishop in the United States) in 1855, and appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at Nashotah House. In addition, he administered a preparatory school and assisted at the Church of St. John Chrysostom in Delafield, Wisconsin.

From the time of its foundation, Nashotah House was associated with many of the principles of the Oxford Movement, above all in its emphasis on the sacramental life of the Church and the expression of devotion to the Eucharist—including such practices that the Tractarians shared with High Churchmen, such as bowing to the Holy Table, at the Name of Jesus, and before receiving communion. In 1859, DeKoven became Warden of the Church college at Racine, Wisconsin, where he emphasized the life of worship. He died there in 1879.

DeKoven came to national attention at the General Conventions of 1871 and 1874, when the controversy over “ritualism” was at its height. In 1871, he asserted that the use of candles on the altar, incense, and genuflections were lawful, because they symbolized “the real, spiritual presence of Christ” which the Protestant Episcopal Church upheld, along with the Orthodox and the Lutherans. He cited a recent decision of an ecclesiastical court in the Church of England which affirmed as the teaching of the Church that “the spiritual presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord in the Holy Communion is objective and real”.

Because of his advocacy of the “ritualist” cause, consents were not given to his election as Bishop of Wisconsin in 1874, and of Illinois in 1875.

To the General Convention of 1874, DeKoven expressed the religious conviction that underlay his churchmanship: “You may take away from us, if you will, every eternal ceremony; you may take away altars, and super-altars, lights and incense and vestments…and we will submit to you. But, gentlemen…to adore Christ’s Person in his Sacrament – that is the inalienable privilege of every Christian and Catholic heart. How we do it, the way we do it, the ceremonies with which we do it, are utterly, utterly, indifferent. The thing itself is what we plead for.”

adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980)

The Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, the source and perfection of all virtues, you inspired your servant James DeKoven to do what is right and to preach what is true: Grant that all ministers and stewards of your mysteries may impart to your faithful people, by word and example, the knowledge of your grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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Project Canterbury has published online a number of James DeKoven’s writings.

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr, 1556

Thomas Cranmer was the principal figure in the Reformation of the English Church and was primarily responsible both for the first Book of Common Prayer of 1549 and for its first revision in 1552, as well as for the first version of the Articles of Religion.

Cranmer was born at Aslockton, Nottinghamshire on July 2, 1489. At fourteen he entered Jesus College, Cambridge where by 1514 he had obtained his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees and a Fellowship. In 1526 he became a Doctor of Divinity, a lecturer in his college, and examiner in the University. During his years at Cambridge, he diligently studied the Bible and the new doctrines emanating from the Reformation in Germany.

A chance meeting with King Henry the Eighth at Waltham Abbey in 1529 led to Cranmer’s involvement in the “King’s affair” – the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer prepared the defense of the King’s cause and presented it to the universities in England and Germany, and to Rome.

While in Germany, Cranmer became closely associated with the Lutheran reformers, especially with Osiander, whose niece he married. When Archbishop Warham died in 1532, the King obtained a papal confirmation of Cranmer’s appointment to the See of Canterbury, and Cranmer was consecrated on March 30, 1533. Among his earliest acts was to declare the King’s marriage null and void. He then validated the King’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. Her child, the future Queen Elizabeth the First, was Cranmer’s godchild.

Cranmer’s sincere belief in the king’s supremacy in all matters, civil and ecclesiastical, was the mainspring of his political actions. This explains in part his gradualism and his seeming compromises with the king in church reform; and it finally led to his undoing.

The only public liturgical reforms of any consequence in Henry’s reign were the king’s order that an English Bible be placed in every church, and the publication in 1544 of the English Litany, drawn up by Cranmer at the king’s request during wartime. However, as is clear from recent scholarly research, Cranmer’s liturgical ideas were well-formed by the end of Henry’s reign, and he had already done much work in reforming the breviary and the mass.

In the reign of King Edward the Sixth, Cranmer had a free hand in reforming the worship, doctrine, and practice of the Church, leading to the publication of the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, which would come to be the defining text of Anglicanism. At Edward’s death the archbishop unfortunately subscribed to the dying King’s will that the succession should go to Lady Jane Grey, the king’s Protestant cousin, rather than to Mary, his Catholic sister. For this, and for his reforming work, he was arrested, deprived of his archbishopric, and imprisoned on the orders of Queen Mary the First, daughter of Henry the Eighth by Catherine of Aragon, and a staunch Roman Catholic who aimed to restore the English Church to papal obedience and who blamed Cranmer personally for the annulment of her mother’s marriage to Henry.

Cranmer was subjected to daily interrogations during his long confinement in the Tower. He wrote two recantations of his supposedly heretical doctrines during his imprisonment, but at the end, during a sermon given immediately prior to his execution, he recanted his recantations. He died heroically, saying, “forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished; for if I may come to the fire, it shall first be burned.” This he did at Oxford on March 21, 1556 when he was burned at the stake.

from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, with amendments

The Collect

Father of all mercies, who through the work of your servant Thomas Cranmer renewed the worship of your Church and through his death revealed your strength in human weakness: by your grace strengthen us to worship you in spirit and in truth and so to come to the joys of your everlasting kingdom: through Jesus Christ our only Mediator and Advocate, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.

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The Collect is adapted from the propers provided for the commemoration of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and Reformation Martyr, in the Church of England’s Common Worship.

Cuthbert, Bishop-Abbot of Lindisfarne and Missionary

The most popular saint of the pre-Conquest English Church, Cuthbert was born of a fairly well-to-do Anglo-Saxon family about the year 625. Bede the Venerable, whose Life of Cuthbert provides most of what we know about the saint, writes that when Cuthbert was away in the hills looking after a flock of sheep, one night after his companions had gone to sleep he was keep watching and praying, he suddenly saw “light streaming from the skies, breaking the long night’s darkness, and the choirs of the heavenly host coming down to earth. They quickly took into their ranks a human soul, marvelously bright, and returned to their home above.” Cuthbert was instantly moved by this vision to give himself to spiritual discipline, and began thanking God and exhorting his companions to praise God as well. The next day, on hearing that Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne had died, Cuthbert committed himself to the monastic life.

Cuthbert entered Melrose Abbey in 651 and was trained in the austere ways of Celtic monasticism. With the abbot Eata he moved to Ripon to start a monastery on estates given by King Oswiu’s son Alcfrith, but Alcfrith insisted on the adoption of Roman customs, and the Melrose monks retired. Cuthbert became prior of Melrose around 661, and during the next few years he undertook missionary journeys of the neighboring lands, preaching the Gospel to those who had gone astray. Bede writes that “such was his skill in teaching, such his power of driving his lessons home, and so gloriously did his angelic countenance shine forth, that none dared keep back from him even the closest secrets of their heart.” Cuthbert “made a point of searching out those steep rugged places in the hills which other preachers dreaded to visit because of their poverty and squalor. This, to him, was a labor of love. He was so keen to preach that sometimes he would be away for a whole week or a fortnight, or even a month, living with the rough hill folk, preaching and calling them heavenwards by his example.”

After the Synod of Whitby in 663 and 664, he submitted to the synod’s decision and adopted Roman customs. At Eata’s direction, he became prior at Lindisfarne, where by his patient persistence he won the monks from Celtic customs to those decided upon at Whitby, becoming a focus of unity for the Church in northern England at a time when its customs were being brought into conformity with those of Rome and the rest of the Western Church. His zeal for prayer was such that sometimes he would keep vigil for three or four nights at a stretch, driving away the heaviness of sleep by doing manual work or by walking about the island, inquiring how everything was getting on. A diligent pastor, Bede writes that “his thirst for righteousness made him quick to reprove wrong-doers, but his gentleness made him speedy to forgive penitents. Often as they were pouring out their sins he would be the first to burst into tears, tears of sympathy with their weakness, and, though he had no need, would show them how to make up for their sins by doing the penance himself.”

Cuthbert lived as a hermit on a little island adjacent to Lindisfarne, cut off from the main island at high tide, and in 676 he relinquished the office of prior, withdrawing to Inner Farne, in order to live in almost complete solitude. By 685, his holiness and other qualities had become so widely known that King Egfrith of Northumbria and Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury chose him as bishop of Hexham. Almost immediately, he exchanged this see with (now Bishop) Eata for that of Lindisfarne. Once again, his pastoral and missionary zeal was expressed in preaching, teaching, and visiting his diocese, and he was also reputed to have the charisms of prophecy and of healing.

He died on Inner Farne on March 20, 687 and was buried at Lindisfarne. Eleven years later, when his body was elevated to a new shrine, its incorruption was discovered, and from that time onwards it was the object of special veneration. After the Danes destroyed Lindisfarne in 875, several members of its monastic community traveled around northern England and southwestern Scotland with the shrine and relics, seeking a safe home for them. Resting for some years in Norham-on-Tweed, Ripon, and Chester-le-Street, their eventual home was Durham, which they reached in 995. A Saxon church was built over the shrine, and the saint’s relics were translated into it in 999. His shrine remains a prominent part of Durham Cathedral to this day.

prepared from The Oxford Dictionary of Saints,
Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980),
and The Life of Cuthbert (Bede the Venerable, trans. J.F. Webb, Penguin Books)

The Collect

Almighty God, you called Cuthbert from following the flock to be a shepherd of your people: Mercifully grant that, as he sought in dangerous and remote places those who had erred and strayed from your ways, so we may seek the indifferent and the lost, and lead them back to you; 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 icon of Saint Cuthbert was written by and is © Aidan Hart, and is reproduced here with his generous permission.

Saint Joseph, Husband of the Virgin Mary and Guardian of Jesus

All that we know for certain of Joseph, the foster father of Jesus and the husband of the Mary, the mother of Jesus, is written in the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke. He is called just, or righteous; that is, deeply concerned for living rightly according to the Law of God. He was of Davidic descent, but was not of noble or royal birth. He worked as a carpenter or builder. At the time of Jesus’ virginal conception and his birth, Joseph was betrothed to Mary. His doubts about her conception and the decisions to go to and to return from Egypt were the occasions for angelic admonitions that came to him through dreams. In the face of humiliation and scandal, he accepted the vocation of protecting Mary and being a foster father to Jesus. He provided care and protection for the infant Jesus and his mother in taking them to Egypt to escape Herod’s paranoiac slaughter of the children at Bethlehem, and he reared Jesus as a faithful Jew in their home at Nazareth. Joseph led his family to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover when Jesus was twelve years old, according to contemporary Jewish custom; and “in great distress” he and Mary sought out Jesus when on the return journey they had traveled a day from Jerusalem and could not locate Jesus among the home-going crowd of relatives and acquaintances, finally finding him in the precincts of the Temple, where he was sitting among the rabbis who were amazed at his understanding. Thereafter Joseph disappears from the Gospel accounts, save for a few references to Jesus as Joseph’s son, and later Christian tradition presumes that he died before Jesus began his public ministry.

The pseudepigraphal Protevangelium of James makes him elderly at the time of his betrothal to Mary, and almost all Christian art has depicted him so, but the demands implied in his protection of Mary and Jesus and in the upbringing of Jesus make this unlikely. A fifth or sixth century document known as the History of Joseph the Carpenter was influential in creating a liturgical devotion to Saint Joseph, which probably began in the East but which reached its full development much later in the West. It appears that liturgical devotion in Ireland and Britain preceded a general devotion to the saint, as there are martyrology entries for Joseph from the eighth century in Wales and slightly later in Irish sources, and the feast of Saint Joseph was celebrated at Winchester, Worcester, Ely, and other centers before 1100.

Saint Joseph is the patron of fathers, of laborers (especially carpenters), and of all who desire a holy death. In medieval art he seldom appears alone, but is nearly always depicted with Mary or Jesus. Many churches, hospitals, religious congregations, colleges and towns bears Saint Joseph’s name, and the frequent use of Joseph as a Christian name is some evidence of his widespread popularity.

The little that we know of him for certain is a testimony to a righteous man’s trust in God in the midst of perplexing and distressing circumstances.

prepared from material in Lesser Feasts and Fasts
and The Oxford Dictionary of Saints

The Collect

O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the husband of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson
2 Samuel 7:4,8-16

But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, “Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’”

Psalm 89:1-4, 19-29
Misericordias Domini

My song shall be always of the loving-kindness of the Lord; *

        with my mouth will I ever be proclaiming your faithfulness, from one generation to another.

For I have said, “Mercy shall be built up for ever; *

         your faithfulness shall be established in the heavens.”

I have made a covenant with my chosen one; *

         I have sworn to David my servant:

“Your seed will I establish for ever, *

         and set up your throne from one generation to another.”

You spoke in a vision to your saints, and said, *

         “I have set the crown upon one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people.

I have found David my servant; *

with my holy oil have I anointed him.

My hand shall hold him fast, *

          and my arm shall strengthen him.

The enemy shall not be able to do him violence; *

         the son of wickedness shall not hurt him.

I will smite his foes before his face *

         and strike down those who hate him.

My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him, *

         and in my Name shall his horn be exalted.

I will give him dominion over the sea, *

         and with his right hand shall he rule the rivers.

He shall say to me, ‘You are my Father, *

         my God, and the rock of my salvation.’

And I will make him my firstborn, *

         higher than the kings of the earth.

My mercy will I keep for him for ever, *

         and my covenant shall stand fast with him.

His seed will I make to endure for ever *

         and his throne as the days of heaven.

The Epistle
Romans 4:13-18

For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”

The Gospel
Luke 2:41-52

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

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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).