September, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Use one of the votive masses (BCP - Various Occasions) or a common of
saints from Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Or these lessons, "22. For Social
Service"
Zechariah 8:3-12, 16-17 boys and girls playing in the streets
Psalm 146 Lauda, anima mea or 22:22-27 Praise the Lord ye that fear him
1 Peter 4:7-11 Maintain constant love for one another
Mark 10:42-52 Servanthood, mercy, and vision
The old Dutch name for "September" was Herst-maand (autumn month); the old Saxon, Gerst-manath (barley month) and Christianity named it Halig-month (holy month), for its having the Nativity of the Virgin, Holy Cross Day, and Michaelmas. The French Republic called it Fructidor (fruit month), 18 August to 16 September. To Quakers, it's Ninth Month, though it's called Sept for being the 7th month from March, which used to begin the year on Lady Day, the 25th, nine months gestation before Christmas. It is also a fruitful month for its harvest of sanctity. An eclectic calendar:
1 Saint Giles, One of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. 6th century
David Pendleton Okerhater, Deacon and Missionary, 1931
2 The Martyrs of New Guinea, 1942,
Stephen of Hungary
Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, 1872, bishop, renewer of the church
3 Labor Day
4 Paul Jones, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1941
5 Albert Schweitzer, Missionary to Africa, 1965,
8 Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
9 Constance, Nun, and her Companions, 1878, Memphis Martyrs
10 Alexander Crummell, Priest & Missionary, 1898
11 Sebastian Mendoza, catechist, martyr in Guatemala 1961
Nagarjuna Dragon Tree - Bodhisattva's birthday
12 John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, 1830
13 Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr of Carthage, 258
14 HOLY CROSS DAY
San Jacinto Day Nicaragua 1856
15 Dante Alighieri, Poet, 1321
Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Grito de Dolores, Mexico. Central America Independence Day
16 Ninian, Bishop in Galloway, c. 430
Guadalupe Carney, Jesuit, martyr in Honduras 1983
17 John David Troyer, Mennonite missionary, martyr, Guatemala, 1981
Hildegard of Bingen, Visionary, 1179
[Sept 18 - Oct 16: Radhik Maas (Hindu holiday)]
Sept 18 - lst day Rosh Hashanah (New Year)
18 Dag Hammarskjöld, Peacemaker, 1961
Edward Bouverie Pusey, Reformer, 1882
Joseph of Cupertino, Ecstatic, 1663
19 Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690
20 John Coleridge Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions,
Martyrs, 1871
21 SAINT MATTHEW, APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST
22 Maurice and his companions, Patron of Austria, 3rd century
U.S. slaves liberated 1862
23 Thecla, lst century, Death of Pablo Neruda, Poet, 1973
24 Our Lady of Ransom
25 Sergius of Radonezh, Abbot of Holy Trinity, Moscow, 1391
26 Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, 1626
27 Cosmas and Damian (c.303)
Sept 27 Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)
28 Wenceslaus, 10th century, patron of Czechs
Confucius born in China 551 BC
29 SAINT MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS
30 Jerome, Translator, and Monk of Bethlehem, 420
Saint Giles of unknown date introduces September saints--and himself is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, bundled together in the calendar in the middle ages in Germany. Giles was originally from Arles, where he may have been a hermit in the 9th century. He had a pet deer that was one day hunted by a Visigoth king, Wamba, but the arrow pierced the saint instead, who sat there wounded when the king arrived, protecting the deer in his arms. The King, grateful he had not slain a man, set him up for life in his own monastery. Then after his death for his troubles he was also made patron of cripples and the indigent. He is the only one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers who was not a martyr, and the rest are all associated with the fourth century and maybe with the Black Death. Each has a specific area of help to which he or she is assigned. But prayers with all fourteen will probably provide full coverage. A church in Munich was dedicated to them in 1348. In the U.S. there is only one parish dedicated to them, in Gardenville, New York. Their names are George, Blase, Erasmus, Vitus, Pantaleon, Christophere, Denis, Cyriacus, Achatius, Eustace, Giles, Margaret, Catherine and Barbara. "Fourteen Holy Helpers, Pray For Us."
David Pendleton Oakerhater was a Cheyenne warrior in Oklahoma, taken prisoner by the U.S. government and imprisoned in Florida. There he learned English, and Christianity and taught archery and art. Baptized in Syracuse, NY, he was ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1881, returned to Oklahoma nd founded schools and missions amongst his people, serving as a deacon until his death in 1931..
The breadth of Anglicanism, as well as the extent of the British Empire, on which it piggy-backed its way, is illustrated by our having martyrs in New Guinea--eight missionaries and two Papuans, slaughtered by Japanese invaders in 1942, who had not been taught to distinguish western imperialists from Episcopal missionaries. Tobias Schneebaum, a Jewish anthropologist from Manhattan, spent four years living with the Asmat people in New Guinea, and writes of the loving gentle people there who freely accepted him as a gay man. His odyssey is called "Where the Spirits Dwell," and makes you want to call your travel agent.
The crown of Hungary is called by his name, since Stephen was its first King (998-1038), Baptized as a child with his father, a Duke, in 985, he set out to convert the nation, so he married the emperor's sister, succeeded his father as Duke and in 1001 was crowned king of Hungary. He established many bishopricks and monasteries, and Donald Attwater says that "his methods with recalcitrant pagans were marked by the roughness of the age and place, and at times there was lively resistance". He was killed in a hunting accident. Canonized in 1083.
Nikolai Grundtvig joins us from the Lutheran calendar, with Soren Kierkegaard, a giant of 19th century Danish theology. Devoted to poetry as superior to prose, his preaching nevertheless was severe and got him sacked. He did better as chaplain to a home for aged women, and stayed there for the rest of his life, writing a thousand hymns and a version of Beowulf. He also led in the movement for free schools and parliamentary government, and was made a bishop without a see in 1861. Pro-Grundtvig immigrant Lutherans were known as "Happy Danes" and formed the ALC, while the "Gloomy Danes" formed the United Lutheran Church--both now united as the ELCA, and in communion with the Episcopal Church.
Labor Day is everywhere May 1st, except in the U.S., where it has been pried loose from its socialist origins and taught to behave without general strikes and rallies in September. It has long since ceased to be a reminder of the class struggle, or of solidarity with the working class. Nothing in the Prayer Book directs its timid observance on this date, and the propers may be used on May 1st or on Karl Marx's birthday, as you please.
Paul Jones was an outspoken pacifist and a bishop--a miracle mix in itself. He attended Yale and the Episcopal Divinity School, was ordained and served a mission in Utah, where he was made Bishop in 1914. He opposed World War I, in those days nearly treasonous, and was forced to resign as bishop. He continued to be a peacemonger until his death in 1941. He was added to the Episcopal church's calendar in 1994, with apologies for pacifist abuse.
Albert Schweitzer was born in 1875 in Alsace. A Lutheran pastor, organist, philosopher, physician, and missionary. He wrote The Quest of the Historical Jesus to prove Jesus was an eschatologicl prophet who thought the end of the world was nigh. (Jesus Seminar scholars dissent.) He decided to go to Africa as a missionary, so quit his professorship to study medicine, and went to Lambarene in Gabon with his wife. He urged reverence for all life, established a leper colony, and wrote Out of My Life and Thought. In 1952 he was given the Nobel Peace Prize, and he died in 1965, at the edges of theological orthodoxy but in the center of gospel truth.
Mary's birthday was celebrated as early as the sixth century in Syria and Palestine. St. Romanus (457) wrote a hymn in honor of her nativity. Andrew of Crete preached on the feast (740) as did John Damascene. By the 12th century it was observed among all Christian nations as a major Marian feast, and was a holy day of obligation till modern times. Sept 8 is taken from the day of consecration of a church in her honor in Jerusalem, also kept by the Syrians in honor of her parents, Joachim and Anna. In France, it was a harvest festival, and the feast was called Our Lady of the Grape Harvest, which helped to popularize it. The swallows of northern Europe leave for the South today.
Constance was an Anglican nun, head of the Community of St. Mary, who along with other nuns, Roman Catholic and Anglican, stayed in Memphis during an epidemic of yellow fever in 1878, to minister to victims. Thirty eight of them were killed by the fever. All of the martyrs of Memphis are hereby canonized with her.
Alexander Crummell, born Black in New York in 1819, was ordained in the diocese of Massachusetts but excluded from a meeting of Episcopal priests there, whereupon he went to England. After graduating from Cambridge, he went to Liberia where he sought to establish a republic for freed slaves. Failing that, he returned to the U.S. and undertook founding Black congregations; he opposed a Jim Crow district for Blacks and founded what is now known as the Union of Black Episcopalians. Although non Black, I was a member of it for years.
Ordained priest by Bishop William White in 1801, John Henry Hobart found the Episcopal Church after the Revolution to be in a state of "suspended animation". He administered CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and brought it back to vibrant life, serving parishes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Long Island. When he became Bishop of New York, he doubled the number of clergy and quadrupled its missionaries. He began missionary work among the Oneida, helped found the General Seminary and revived the college named for him. He established the Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, and wrote "tracts"in the tradition of the Oxford movement, arguing his High Church views. He died Sept 12, 1830 and is buried beneath the chancel of Trinity Church in New York City. Revive your Church, O God, whenever it falls low and slothful.
Cyprian, a convert in 246, in two years was Bishop of Carthage. Persecution sent him into hiding, but he kept in touch by letters, in which he recommended moderation in restoring those lapsed during persecution, against the rigorists under Novatian, who led a schism. In another persecution under Emperor Valerian, he was arrested and on September 14, 258, was beheaded. His Letter No. 63 is one of the earliest declarations that the priest at the eucharist acts in the place of Christ. He held the episcopate to be a single whole, and each bishop responsible for the whole. My favorite saying of his: "You cannot have God for your Father unless you have the Church for your Mother."
HOLY CROSS DAY. During the empress Helena's excavations for a Church in honor of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, a relic was found that was believed to be that of the true cross on which Jesus was crucified. Constantine entrusted his mother with the construction project, and the dedication of the buildings was done on September 14, 335, where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands. The Patriarch of Jerusalem permits Anglicans to share a chapel perched on the roof. It's shabby, so send the Anglican bishop some money for its maintenance.
In Nicaragua, San Jacinto day commemorates the beginning of resistance to Yankee occupation of the country, when Andres Castro, a youth, like David the shepherd, took up a stone and threw it at Goliath--the U.S. mercenary army. A guerrilla group now active in the mountains is named for him.
Dante Alighieri, Poet, whom W. H. Auden called "the chief imagination of Christendom", deserves not a day, but a season to himself. Born in Florence in 1265, he was exiled in a civil war and spent his life away from Florence. He wrote his masterpiece, which we know as the Divine Comedy, and finished it before his death on 14 September 1321. Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso could provide readings for liturgical seasons or life stages.
The Seven Sorrows of the B.V.M. was popular in the middle ages in western Germany, and in 1727 Benedict XIII made it universal. Latin Americans are specially devoted to the Sorrowful Mother, reflecting the anguish of women in Hispanic cultures over the cruelty and machismo of their societies.
The Venerable Bede gives an account of Ninian, a Romanized Briton, born in Scotland in the fourth century. Martin of Tours was his mentor in monasticism, and on his death Ninian founded Casa Candida, White House, in Galloway, dedicated to Martin. Along with Patrick, he is one of the vital links between the ancient Roman-British church and the growing Celtic churches of Ireland and Scotland.
James Guadalupe Carney was an American Jesuit priest, disappeared (probably thrown from a helicopter) by a U.S. sponsored death squad in Honduras in 1963. CIA-trained unit #316 killed at least 180 others in the 80's, when the U.S. used Honduras as staging area to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Republicans have consistently killed efforts to release U.S. government documents on the era. Joe Mulligan, a Jesuit friend stationed here in Nicaragua, has been fasting and struggling for years to uncover the truth of the murders. (More information from epica@igc.apc.org.)
Hildegard of Bingen, Seer. Born in 1098, daughter of a knight, was sent when eight years old to the Benedictines to be educated, in a double monastery of both sexes. At 18, she became a nun and 20 years later was their abbess. She began to have visions and for ten years wrote them down, drawing pictures and commenting on them. Pope Eugenius III investigated, his inspectors found her orthodox, and he wrote his approval. She wrote back to the Pope to work harder to reform the church. She moved her nuns to Bingen, over the abbot's objections. She preached sermons widely in Germany and Switzerland, wrote letters of advice to popes and prelates, nuns and nobles. She wrote medical books and 72 songs, and the music can be produced today. A CD of her music performed by Richard Souther has been released by Angel Records: D 106215. She is a saint for our time, calling us to reverence Creation.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Peacemaker. Born in 1905, the son of the Prime Minister of Sweden, he became an economist and rose to be Secretary General of the United Nations. In 1960 he went to negotiate a cease-fire in the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) and was killed in a plane crash in Zambia 18 September 1961. His journal, "Markings", with a foreword by W. H. Auden, who also helped with the translation, has become a classic of devotional literature Auden writes that "Certainly both mystic monk or nun and pious bishop would be startled by Hammarskjöld's statement: 'In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.' "
Edward Bouverie Pusey, born near Oxford on August 22, 1800, he died September 16, 1882, and in between these dates became so identified with the Oxford Movement for the restoration of a Catholic shape to Anglicanism, that some of us still rejoice to be called Puseyites. He and John Keble stayed home when J.H. Newman swam the Tiber, and their combination of evangelical zeal and catholic faith restored the foundations which had been shaken by the protestant revolt, puritan desecration, and Latitudinarian lethargy.. Pusey established sisterhoods, preached the Real Presence in the Eucharist, revived private confession in Anglicanism, and still speaks to us today with erudition and sanctity. Pusey House of studies in Oxford memorializes him.
Our night watchman (cuidador) at the Casa is named José Cupertino Guido, but everyone calls him Cupertino, after his saint, who was a stable-boy at a Franciscan house in Italy. Although slow-witted he was ordained in 1628 and went through a series of ecstasies, healings, levitations and flights, which embarrassed his superiors. His order stifled him for the interruptions his raptures and flights caused them. On one occasion, he saw a workman fall from a scaffold high on a construction site, and ordered him to Stay! in mid-air until he could run and get permission to work one of his forbidden miracles. Permission granted, the faithful Franciscan hastily returned and bade the falling workman descend slowly to terra firma. Our own Cupertino levitates quietly about the house at night with his flash light, chuckling to himself.
Theodore of Tarsus was the second Archbishop of Canterbury (668-690) although born in St. Paul's home town in Asia Minor. The English church was divided by strife between Celtic and Roman factions when he was called to calm its bosom. Not yet a priest, and over 60 years old, he had to fill the shoes of Wighard, who had been elected but died before consecration. He brought unity out of chaos, set up dioceses to replace the monastic government of the church, laid the foundations of parish organization and canon law which survive today and inform the life of the entire Anglican communion. Bede says he was the first archbishop whom all the English obeyed. He was buried with Augustine at Canterbury. .
John Coleridge Patteson, born in 1827, odained in 1853, and in 1855 responded to a call for missionaries in New Zealand, where he established a school for boys on Norfolk Island. He learned some 23 languages of the Melanesian people, and was made Bishop of Melanesia in 1861. Ten years later, at the age of 44, on a visit to the island of Napaku, he was stabbed five times in the heart, and several of his company were also killed, all mistaken for slave traders who had brutalized the people.
Maurice and Companions, Patrons of Austria, Piedmont, Savoy, and Sardinia. One of the soldier saints, when the 3rd century emperor Maximian ordered his Theban troops to sacrifice to the gods, they refused. The emperor ordered them decimated--that is, every tenth man beheaded. When they still refused, he slew all 6,600 of them, an entire legion. Likely an exaggerated number over the years, but a martyrdom of some scale has been remembered there for centuries This was done at Agaunum in Switzerland, where Maurice laid his head on a stone when his turn came, and the town is now named Saint Moritz for him, where the stone can still be seen. The 6th century abbey of Saint Maurice survives in Valais. The papal Swiss Guards cherish him as a patron, and so do I.
Thecla is a legendary saint from an apocryphal document, the Acts of Paul, written c. 170, which claims she was his convert. Persecuted, she fled to a cave, and lived piously until at the age of ninety she was again pursued by medical men who resented her healing powers, but she fled to her cave which sealed itself behind her, ending her valiant life. There ought to be a saint named Thecla, and indeed there are several other Theclas in the hagiology, including an English nun who worked with Boniface in Germany.
Our Lady of Ransom is a devotion to Mary invoked by prisoners and captives, originating when captives were held by the Moors. Two religious orders were founded at the end of the 12th century to retrieve captives, and one of them was founded by Peter Nolasco in Spain, where the Virgin appeared to him, the King of Aragon, and Raymond Penafort at the same time, encouraging them to ransom Christians from the Moors. In Latin America, black beans and rice served together are called Moros y Cristianos. She is sometimes styled Our Lady of Liberty as well, so that may be she who is standing on Ellis Island with the torch, inviting in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. She lifts her lamp beside the golden door.
Sergius of Radonezh, born in Rostov c. 1314, with his brother Stephen he took up the life of a hermit at age 20, and their story sounds like early Franciscans. Peasant saints, they founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity, where he stayed the rest of his life, as it became the center of Russian Christianity. Most loved of all Russian saints, he died in 1392 and pilgrims still visit his shrine at Zagorsk, the Vatican of Russian Orthodoxy, where the Patriarch lives. Anglicans know him through the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, a society that promotes Anglican-Orthodox friendship.
Lancelot Andrewes, 1555-1626, Bishop of Winchester, was King James's favorite preacher, author of wonderfully witty sermons, full of the learning that James loved. T. S. Eliot cribbed a chunk of one of his Epiphany sermons for the opening lines of "The Journey of the Magi". "A cold coming we had of it," and so forth. Thomas Fuller wrote of him that "the world wanted learning to know how learned this man was, so skilled in all languages that some conceived he might have served as an interpreter-general at the Confusion of Tongues " He was one of the translators of the Authorized Version, teacher of the mystical poet George Herbert. His Preces Privatae (Private Prayers) are still in print and bearing fruit.
Cosmas and Damian, martyrs whose cultus became widespread from the 5th century; with the story that they suffered death at Cyrrhus in Syria. Legend has it they were twin brothers who practiced medicine without charging fees. No wonder they were martyred. An effort has been made to discredit them as a Christian reprise of the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, the twin sons of Zeus. An adaption of the pagan devotion was called "incubation", wherein the sick person slept in the saints' church, hoping for a healing dream.
Wenceslaus, Patron of Czechs, a/k/a Wenzel. Born in Bohemia 907, died 929. His grandmother Ludmilla became a Christian, but was murdered in 921. Wenceslas took power and sought amity with his German neighbors. His brother Boleslav picked a fight with him and Wenceslas was killed by Boleslav's supporters. Bohemians claimed him and his grandmother as martyrs, her feast day on 16 September, his on the 28th. John Mason Neale's Christmas carol imagines him looking out on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, smooth and deep and even.
Jerome, Monk, Bible Translator, Curmudgeon. His Latin translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek, called the Vulgate (or "common") version, along with his other writings, made him the most formidable intellect in the Church for centuries. Born in Italy in 347, converted as a student in Rome but not baptized until he was 18. He lived with hermits in Syria, learned Hebrew from a rabbi. He was reluctantly ordained, and and went to Constantinople as a student of Gregory Nazianzus. Then aferwards refused to exercise the priestly office. Secretary to Pope Damasus I and mentor to many upperclass Roman ladies. Damasus set him to translating the Vulgate. He went to Bethlehem with St. Paula, who paid his way, and set up the monastery where he lived and argued with nearly everyone until his death in 420, and is buried there in the Church of the Nativity. Not an ambitious man, he was kind to the poor and lowly, while nevertheless a curmudgeon, a potty mouth, and a stickler for orthodoxy when engaging in controversy. Rather likeable.
[Matthew and Michael will have their own Grits]
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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