Today the church honors the start of an ancient feast, Martinmas, named in honor of St. Martin of Tours, Conscientious Objector, and Gentle Bishop.

St. Martin was born in the early 4th Century in modern day Hungary. His family was not Christian, and his father was a distinguished Roman legionnaire.

In his childhood he came under Christian influence, and at the age of ten he took it upon himself to sign up for Catechism classes (imagine that happening today!).

As a young teen, though, his catechumenal exploration was put on pause as he was drafted into the Roman army, a common practice for children of Roman soldiers. He was a good soldier. Very good, in fact, and well-liked by his comrades.

This is a nice tie-in to Veterans Day, no?

But, as the legend goes, one winter night he was stationed in Amiens, and on night watch he saw a poor old beggar at the city gates shivering in the cold. St. Martin had nothing to give him, so he cut his cavalryman’s cloak, and gave the old man half to wrap himself in. That night St. Martin dreamt that he saw Christ wrapped in his cloak, saying, “Martin, still a catechumen, has covered me with his cloak.”

Well, this sent St. Martin into an existential crisis. Over a period of time he became convinced he could no longer be a soldier because he could no longer justify killing.

He decided to be baptized and asked to leave the army. He was twenty years old.

St. Martin went off to seek Bishop Hilary of Poitiers (see Jan 13th for his feast day) to learn from him. He met with him and decided he wanted to join him in his work in Poitiers, but first wanted to say goodbye (and convert) his family back in Hungary. While St. Martin was journeying back to Hilary after hanging with his family, he learned that Bishop Hilary had been exiled. St. Martin decided then that he, too, would seek a solitary life for a while, and lived a hermits life in a hut outside Poitiers.

The thing is, St. Martin was becoming famous for not wanting to be famous. And so his little hut grew into two, three, thirty…a thriving humble monastery had formed that was providing charitable work all over the French countryside. In 371 the Bishopric of Tours became vacant. St. Martin’s followers tricked him into entering the city, and then would not let him leave until he agreed to be their Bishop.

“Fine,” he said. “But I’m going to do it my way…” (cue Frank Sinatra).

St. Martin, now Bishop, set up his home in a cave on the cliffs of Marmoutier, two miles from Tours. The office for his Bishopric was a hut just outside the cave. And though he had an unusual lifestyle, and an unusual approach, he was unusually effective in reaching the poor countryside people of France with charitable love, good works, and the Gospel message.

He fought for the rights of peasants in front of Emperors, not afraid to advocate on behalf of the poor. He established centers of charity and teaching in places no one else cared about. And when the Church first used capital punishment as the sentence of heresy, as they did in 386, St. Martin strongly opposed the sentence and began to ask tough questions about mixing the church and state.

He thought government and the church should not hold hands too tightly.

St. Martin died in 397. Interestingly enough, his work set much of the foundational work for the Celtic Christian Church, as missionaries trained in his little outposts traveled to the British Isles.

Martinmas, much like Michaelmas, became a festival time in much of Christendom, perhaps even spanning ten days originally. After the Reformation, many Lutherans continued to celebrate Martinmas, but did so to honor both St. Martin of Tours and Blessed Martin Luther (whose birthday is November 10th).

St. Martin’s motto, “Non recus laborem” or “I do not turn back from work” has been the motto of many of the faithful throughout the centuries.

St. Martin is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that catechetical study has been known to significantly alter how people live and work. It has been formative…and could still be.

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

-icon written by Aiden Hart depicting St. Martin’s formative experience

Today the church honors an important leader in the church that most church-goers have never even heard of, St. Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome and Mediator of the Church.

Long before the church was arguing about the nature of humans and their race and sexuality, the church set about arguing about the nature of Jesus. In the 5th Century, when Pope Leo was consecrated as the Bishop of Rome, the Catholic faith was being torn asunder by schisms over who Jesus was and how Jesus was.

Yes, you read that correctly: how Jesus was.

How was Jesus both Divine and human?

Pope Leo refocused the question on faith rather than nitty-gritty explanation. He affirmed the idea that Christ had two natures and, as he was enlarging the influence of the Papacy around the known world, issued his famous (at least to churchy-people) Tome to Flavian, the Patriarch of Constantinople that had the clearest articulation of Christ as human and yet Divine.

You still talk about this idea, by the way, every time you say the Nicene Creed.

At the time all sorts of schisms were going on inside the church, there were tons of wars being fought in real-time, too. St. Leo kept Rome safe from Attila the Hun in 452, and a legion of Vandals, whom he persuaded not to destroy Rome, in 455. He put restrictions on who (under what training) could enter the priesthood, and affirmed the goodness of “all matter,” rejecting the idea that the created world is evil and we need only wait for some heaven, lightyears away.

He was a devoted liturgist, and further developed the words of the Mass, shaping the words we say yet today.

St. Leo was wise, if not particularly brilliant. He understood how to use power effectively and for twenty-two years led with theological ability and personal resolve.

St. Leo is a reminder for me that wisdom and brilliance don’t always hold hands, and you can certainly be one without the other.

But of all the things that Pope Leo the Great is remembered for, the thing that struck me is how he looked at creation and without hesitation affirmed what Genesis had already said: “this is good.”

Why does it matter?

Because, Beloved, it articulates clearly that everything that is created, matters, and therefore we can’t just do what we want with it…

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

-editorials by me

Today the church remembers an Irish saint said to have been baptized by Saint Patrick himself: Saint Benen the Gentle, Psalm-Singer and Friend of the Emerald Isle.

St. Benen was the son of clan chief, born in the early 5th Century. When Saint Patrick visited his clan with Celtic Christian teachings, young Benen was baptized and tutored by Patrick in language and theology.

As St. Benen grew he went on trips with Patrick and, while on the road with him, became known for his musical acumen and compositions, making him part of the Irish bardic tradition with Celtic-Christian flavor.

In adulthood St. Benen took a leadership position within the growing Celtic-Christian church, becoming the first rector at the Cathedral School of Armagh.

As it is with all Irish saints, St. Benen has some fun tales surrounding his life. One such tale was that, when tested by a clan chief arguing over religion, St. Benen was put in a flaming house and, like something out of the Hebrew scriptures, was able to sit in that “blazing furnace” with no problem (and he was probably singing).

He died in the year 467, having resigned his rectorship so that a younger generation could take the mantle.

St. Benen is a reminder to me, especially in these lingering pandemic days, of how central song, music, and the arts are to human spirituality. The church is one of the local conservatories of these things. The only place you sing in public is the church and the local bar (unless you’re in a choir).

If public singing is lost, we will be less whole.

-stained glass icon written for Kilbennan St. Benin’s Church Window

Today is a special day in the church that deserves a nod: The Feast of St. Martin de Porres, Defender of the Poor and Renewer of Society.

St. Martin was born in the late 16th Century in Lima, Peru. His mother was an herbal healer, and his father was a Spanish knight (Don Juan de Porres…I kid you not). Since Don Juan had not married Martin’s mother, Ana, he refused to acknowledge that Martin was his son.

St. Martin, raised by his mother, became well versed in both herbal healing and the teachings of the spreading Catholic faith in Peru. He married the two together in his head, heart, and practice, and became a physician-monk, continuing to heal people using herbal remedies and folk-magic while living in the Dominican friary (he entered the order at 15).

He was known for caring for the poor and the sick who came seeking him at the friary gates, especially those who were refused medical help because they were black, too poor to pay, or seriously ill. He became known as a friend of those everyone else forgot and laughed at.

He also became known for his delicate care for animals, both domesticated and wild. There are many wild tales of how he befriended rats and rodents, much to the dismay of those around him.

Finally, St. Martin was a congenial and wise mediator, helping to solve marriage problems, finding ways to help the poor pay dowries, and coming to the defense of those without anyone to defend them.

Many say he had magical powers, but in reading about him, I’d suggest that his real magic was being the embodied Divine for people and animals the world tried to throw away.

He once wrote, “Compassion, my dear Brothers, is preferable to cleanliness. Reflect that with a little soap I can easily clean my bed covers, but even with a torrent of tears I would never wash from my soul the stain that my harshness toward the unfortunate would create.”

He was canonized in 1962 as the patron saint of racial justice and harmony, and good grief if that doesn’t speak loudly on this day, this year.

St. Martin is a reminder to me, and should be for the church, that healing comes in many forms and through many people, and that the ailments of the physical body and the body politic both need attending to by people of faith.

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

-icon written by Britta Prinzivalli

-opinions mine

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 is “Sister Death” in the Dancing Monk series written by Marty Hall of Rabbit Room Arts (created for Abbey of the Arts) and can be purchased from Rabbit Room Arts

-opinions and Celtic reflections 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

Today I would lobby hard for the church to remember and honor a modern saint who was able to stand tall while still being seated: Rosa Parks, Activist and Inspiration.

Rosa Parks was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to a teacher and a carpenter, and at a young age learned how to work well with her hands, making quilts and dresses on her own. She attended some secondary school, but primarily worked to help care for ill family members. One of her earliest memories was having to walk to school, because the school bus was reserved for white children, and how when the KKK marched down her street in front of her house, her grandfather took up post at the front door with a shotgun.

These memories left a mark.

Rosa married Raymond, a barber and NAACP member in 1932. At her husband’s urging, she finished her High School studies, and in 1943 was elected secretary of their local NAACP chapter, having become an active member herself. Even within the NAACP chapter in Alabama she was a trailblazer, being the only woman in active leadership. In her work there she aided investigations on rape, unlawful incarceration, and discrimination. She eventually was trained at the famous Highlander Folk School on Monteagle, Tennessee, and was able to successfully register to vote on her third attempt.

Her third attempt.

Louder for folx in the back because we continue to see voter intimidation and racially-tinged roadblocks put in place still today…the issue has morphed, it hasn’t disappeared.

To get around Montgomery, Parks walked or took the bus. Now, in 1900 Alabama had passed a law that bus segregation was up to the discretion of the driver. They could assign certain rows as “colored” rows, and increase or decrease the rows depending on their whims.

They could even just remove the sign altogether, making the whole bus for white people only.

Rosa boarded a bus one day, paid the same as the rest of the passengers, but was told by the driver, a James F. Blake, that she had to exit and enter from the rear door. When she exited to enter from the rear door, Blake put the bus in gear and took off before she could board, robbing her of her fare and leaving her in a downpour.

He could take her fare, but she vowed that he would never again rob her of her dignity.

On December 1st in 1955 after working a full day, Rosa Parks got on a bus at 6pm and sat in the first row reserved for people of color. It was the 11th row in a long bus, the first ten rows being reserved for white passengers. As the bus went on its route, the first ten rows began to fill. The driver that day was familiar to Rosa…it was James F. Blake, and at the third stop he moved the segregation sign three rows back, telling a number of passengers that they had to give up their seats for white patrons.

Three of her fellow passengers moved, but Rosa just scooted toward the window, freeing up space but refusing to relocate toward the back of the bus. Blake noticed Rosa refused to stand and relocate and said that, if she did not, he would call the authorities to have her arrested.

“You may do that,” Rosa said plainly.

Now, some try to soften this story by saying that Rosa was “tired,” and didn’t want to give up her seat due to fatigue. But in her own account she refutes that softening noting that she wasn’t physically tired, but rather that she was tired of being treated as a second class citizen, and tired of having her humanity stripped away.

“I was tired of giving in,” she said.

Parks was arrested, and the incident effectively kicked off the Montgomery bus boycott. In rain or shine, the black community banded together and refused to give a nickel to the unjust system for 381 days as the official case slowly worked through a cumbersome courts system. It was eventually deemed unconstitutional to segregate the buses in this way.

Parks became an icon in the Civil Rights movement working to elect black leaders (John Conyers), fought for women’s rights (serving on the board of Planned Parenthood), and lobbying for those unjustly incarcerated. All the while she received death threats and continual persecution, even having to leave Montgomery directly after her arrest because she could not find work due to her national standing.

Yet, she persisted.

In 1987 she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development (note the name order!) which helps to teach young people about the importance of Black history and the Civil Rights movement (which continues on).

She died on this day in 2005 at the age of 92.

Rosa Parks is a reminder for me, and should be for everyone, that the fact that something is legal does not make it just, and sometimes you have to stand tall in a situation even if it means keeping your seat.

-historical bits from public sources

-icon “Rosa Parks Iron Man” written by Bart Cooper, an ode to her fortitude

On this day the church honors a saint with a familiar name, but one who is often confused with other similarly-named apostles. Today is the feast day of St. James of Jerusalem, Brother of Our Lord.

St. James is noted in the books of Matthew and Mark as one of the brothers of Jesus. In the book of Galatians, St. Paul wrote that he met St. James on his first visit to the city.

In the same way that St. Peter led the church in Rome, St. James was the leader of the church in Jerusalem and, with such a distinct role, you’d think we’d hear more about him in the scriptures…but we just don’t.

At question is his actual kinship with Jesus. In trying to highlight how singularly significant Jesus is in history, many Christian writers have struggled to let any siblings be a part of the story. But it’s worth noting that it would have been quite unusual for Mary and Joseph to have only had one child. In the ancient world that was not common family-planning. At the heart of this speculation, though, is not even really Jesus, but rather Mary. In an effort to keep her singularly virginal, all sorts of stories cropped up about a first marriage for Joseph in which he sired other children, making St. James the step-sibling of Jesus.

This is all fancy family footwork without any substance.

To add to the confusion, some historians of the early church suggest that this James is the same “James the Less” who was one of Jesus’ disciples with a different parentage altogether. The thought is that St. James was the son of Mary of Clopas, the younger sister of Mary, Mother of Our Lord. While it is true that the same word for “brother” can also mean “cousin” in the ancient world, this, too, seems far fetched and an attempt to solve a problem that is not really there.

Jesus had siblings. It’s OK. We can all get over it.

St. James of Jerusalem really first comes on the scene post-resurrection when he is met by the risen Jesus. The early church considered him an important piece in the first stories of the church, perhaps as a replacement for St. James, Son of Zebedee (who was martyred early on).

In the same way that St. Paul felt a special calling to the Gentile-Christians, St. James of Jerusalem spent his ministry with the Jewish-Christians. It is believed he was martyred sometime in the early 60’s, right around the composition of the first Gospels. Some early church historians even claim it was the priest Annas who ordered his stoning, though this is more lore than anything.

Today is an especially appropriate day to lift up prayers for the church in Jerusalem.

St. James of Jerusalem is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, of two important things:

First, when we attempt to make Jesus so “special” we actually rob him of the most relatable parts of his being. The idea that he had siblings is kind of neat to me because, as someone who knows what it’s like to juggle family relationships, he knows a bit of my experience…our human experience. I mean, isn’t a central thought of the church that we are all the siblings of Jesus? Why must it be correct theologically, but not biologically?

Religious folks struggle with biology…

Secondly, the church has always struggled with niche ministry, worried that it would rub too much against the norm. St. Paul felt a calling to the Gentiles, and St. James of Jerusalem to the Jewish-Christians. Today some pastors feel a call to ministry on the streets, or to marginalized communities, or even to Wall Street Brokers. Some pastors don’t feel a call to the pulpit, but rather to the pavement. Some leaders don’t even feel a call to the priesthood, but are feeling a push to live as prophets.

From the early church, specialized ministry was already happening, and yet we still struggle so much with those who want to “do something different” with their call or want to start communities that don’t look a lot like conventional “church” communities.

Why?

-most historical bits, with the exception of some of the commentary around controversies, aided by Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

-Icon by Tobias Haller, BSG