Today the church celebrates All Saints Day, the day in which the formal saints of the church (those canonized) are recognized and remembered as examples of the faith.

This celebration is very old, perhaps dating back to the 4th Century, though it is clear that earlier commemorations of this feast day were held in the spring, sometime between Easter and Pentecost. It was originally intended to celebrate not just any saints, but the martyrs of the faith.

The focus and the date of the day shifted sometime just before or in the early 7th Century. In the British Isles it had already been honored on November 1st, probably in response to the pagan autumn festivals that culminated at the end of October (which many of you participated in last night with ghosts and goblins at your door!). The date stuck for the whole church within the century, and came to have a deeper connection not only with the seasonal cycle on display in the northern hemisphere, but also with pre-Christian sensibilities. One example is this Celtic idea that the arrival of mists and frosts around this time were examples of ghostly/faery visitors, so it made sense to have a day remembering them when they started to make their presence known again.

In the 7th Century the date came to commemorate non-martyrs as well, probably in response to the fact that Christianity became dominant and was less-oppressed…resulting in fewer martyrs of the faith. The faithful who died both naturally and by martyrdom were recognized on this date every year, especially if they had died in that calendar year.

Today Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican branches of liturgical Christianity still keep this day to honor those canonized saints of the church, reserving the non-canonized dead to be remembered tomorrow on All Souls Day (more on that tomorrow). Lutherans, with our penchant for comingling the idea of “sinner and saint,” usually don’t make such a distinction, and just honor all those who have died in the faith, regardless of status, on this day.

Whatever your proclivity, today is a powerful day when honored with intention, even for those of you who don’t find yourself in any faith tradition. Honoring our ancestors, learning from their stories, embracing their goodness and foibles, is an important part of the human experience in my estimation. We all are, after all, an unwilling product of those who came before us, but we continually have a choice in deciding what we’re going to carry with us from those past ancestors, and what we’re not going to let continue into the next generation.

All Saints Day is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that those who came before still speak into our present, and that the Divine who seems in love with continual creation also seems in love with some measure of continual, constant, though hidden and obscure (like through a mirror darkly?) preservation.

-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

-icon from St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco

-opinions and Celtic reflections mine

Churches around the world are honoring Reformation Sunday this Sabbath, a rare treat in that the Sunday and the actual Festival Day almost align.

It’s important to note that each liturgical denomination has a day that honors a formative experience in the life of their particular vein of Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox church celebrates “The Triumph of Orthodoxy” to usher in Lent. The Roman Catholic Church has the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter (February 22nd), emphasizing the founding of the church on Peter’s shoulders. The Anglican Church honors the day the Book of Common Prayer was published, uniting the communion into one.

For Lutherans, it is Reformation Day, when we sing “A Mighty Fortress” and “Lord Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word” and dress in red, the color of both the martyrs and the fire of the Holy Spirit.

At its worst the Reformation is celebrated as a triumph. At its best it is a feast day that is simply a continuation of the perpetual change and shift that must happen in a church that is wedded to a God who is known and revealed inside of time.

Historically it does mark a time in history when a break, for better and for worse, happened in the church. This break deserves an autopsy every year in an effort to remember, reaffirm, and repair as much as a possible the schisms that arose from it.

The date of the Reformation, the 31st of October, comes from the lore that Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, intending for it to be widely read by everyone who attended the All Saints Sunday mass the following day. We’re not sure this is historically accurate, but because it is so much a part of the narrative around the events of autumn in 1517, we give a nod to its church-changing truth, if not its actual veracity.

A better date to honor the Reformation might actually be June 25th, the date that the Augsburg Confession was presented. Like the Anglican Church with the Book of Common Prayer, the Confession is the binding document of all the reformation churches.

Regardless, tradition compels us to keep the date, to wear red, to remember, and to continue to reform.

-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

-opinions mine

Today the church honors two unsung, and largely unknown, first Apostles: St. Simon and St. Jude, Companions of Jesus.

St. Simon the Zealot (sometimes called “Simon the Less” to distinguish him from Simon-Peter) and St. Jude (sometimes called “Jude the Obscure” because he is largely known for not being Judas Iscariot) were numbered in those first twelve apostles, saw Jesus post-resurrection, ate with him, and were sent out to preach the Gospel.

But that’s all we really know about them.

Luke is the writer who calls Simon a “Zealot,” which could mean that he was a member of the Zealot party in ancient Palestine, a radically “anti-Roman rule” faction. It’s worth highlighting that, if Simon was a Zealot, then it meant he walked with Matthew the Tax Collector in shared mission…an anti-Roman activist and pro-Roman bureaucrat working together in Jesus’ inner-circle.

Let that sink in…Jesus’ inner circle had people with diametrically opposing viewpoints…

St. Jude (who some think wrote the epistle of Jude) is sometimes called Thaddaeus or Lebbaeus in Matthew, perhaps to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot.

There is a little-known apocryphal book called “The Passion of Simon and Jude” that says that St. Jude preached for a decade in Mesopotamia and that he and Simon labored in Persia together where they were martyred in tandem (hence why they are commemorated together today).

St. Simon is rumored to have been sawn in half…which is why he’s often depicted with a saw. St. Jude is often depicted with an ax because…well…you get the picture.

There is also a little fun legend about St. Jude healing the King of Edessa, and other stories about them fighting against Zoroastrianism in the ancient world.

Today, St. Jude is probably best known as being the namesake of hospitals and organizations that provide care to the most critical causes. In fact, in Roman Catholicism St. Jude is the patron saint of “hopeless causes.”

Why, you might ask?

Well, because St. Jude is so obscure and had no cultic following, Roman Catholic theologians thought that perhaps he might welcome and be attentive to the most desperate prayers.

St. Simon the Zealot is a reminder for me that the church has always had radicals within its walls, and was political from its very inception.

St. Jude is a reminder for me that sometimes the people who seem forgettable and least important become the ones we lean on the most in our most desperate hours.

-Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations helped with the historical pieces of the saints

-icons by Nowitzki Tramonto