Month: September 2018

The 17th Week After Trinity

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Collect: Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always both precede and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Saints & Feast Days: September 24 (Transferred): St. Theodore of Tarsus Born in 602, St. Theodore was from Tarsus (St. Paul’s home as well) and educated in Tarsus and Athens. At 66 years old, he was an Eastern monk living in Rome, still a layman. Out of need (England had been devastated by the plague) he was appointed the seventh Archbishop of Canterbury, skipping the usual progression of priestly office. He was loved and respected as archbishop– bringing into order many issues with a no-nonsense approach. The Venerable Bede reflected, “Theodore was the first archbishop whom the entire Church of the English consented to obey. . . Never had there been such happy times as these since the English settled in Britain; for the Christian kings were so strong that they daunted all the barbarous tribes. The people eagerly sought the new-found joys of …

The 16th Week After Trinity

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Collect: “O Lord, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Saints and Feasts of the Week: September 17 (Monday, transferred from the 16th): St. Ninian St. Ninian of Galloway, the missionary to Scotland, lived from around 350-432, almost at the same time as St. Augustine. He was the son of a chieftain who had become a Christian. His father allowed him to make a pilgramage to Rome as a young man and he walked the 1500 miles in 6 months. He spent several years in Rome in a monastic community, meeting St. Ambrose and St. Jerome and then was sent as a missionary back to the Scottish wilderness. On his way home, he encountered the monastery of Martin of Tours– which essentially was a wooden cell with others clustered around it. The simplicity and austerity of this life seemed to have impressed him. When he returned, he …

The 15th Week after Trinity

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Collect: Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy; and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Saints and Feast Days: September 12 (Wednesday): John Henry Hobart Born in Philadelphia in 1775, John Henry Hobart played a vital role in building the Episcopal church in America after the Revolutionary War. At that point, many Americans viewed the Anglican church as an entity to be done away with, along with English rule. John Hobart was part of the new generation that rebuilt the Episcopal order and made it a living church, rather than a dying establishment.  Because he defended apostolic succession, he caused a great amount of controversy in his day. He wrote several books — including A Companion for the Altar, the first devotional manual in the American Church — and founded the Bible and Prayer Book Society, among many other societies. His life work …

The 14th Week of Trinity

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Collect for the Week:  Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love which thou dost command; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen Saints and Other Feast Days: September 2: The Martyrs of Papua New Guinea On this day, we remember the two martyrdom events that took place in Papua New Guinea in the 20th century. In 1901, two missionaries and their companions, James Chalmers and Oliver Tomkins, met their death by martyrdom. Then, during WWII, the Japanese invaded Papua New Guinea and killed 333 church workers, which included twelve Anglicans. When they knew the Japanese invasion was impending, the Bishop Philip Strong broadcasted a message to his fellow workers: “We could never hold up our faces again, if for our own safety, we all forsook him and fled when the shadows of the passion began to gather around him in his spiritual body, the Church in Papua.  . . God will not forsake us. He …