Today the church honors the person who is largely considered the “creator of the English hymn”: St. Isaac Watts, Hymnwriter and Inspirer.
St. Isaac was the first-born of nine children whose father was a nonconformist minister who was twice jailed for “heretical ideas.” He was an excellent student, particularly astute at rhyming, and many pushed him toward the priesthood.
Isaac wasn’t interested in a clergy life, though, and after a few years in higher education, set his brain to writing. He was not happy with what he considered to be “poorly arranged psalms,” and attempted to do better for the church. It was during this time in his early twenties that the majority of what would be published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs was written.
At the age of twenty-four, Isaac began informally preaching and, though he had rejected the offer to enter the priesthood, found a home as an independent minister. He assumed the pulpit of an independent congregation in Mark Lane, Britain, and soon after he began to lead the congregation his health began to fail.
He was forced to live his last thirty-six years of life in the home of Sir Thomas Abney, preaching and teaching only occasionally.
Despite his illness, his fame, as well as theological, and philosophical writings flourished abroad. Having read parts of these books in my University years, I can attest to his brilliance. His work Logic and Speculations on the Human Nature of the Logos come to mind.
He fundamentally changed the course of hymnody as well. Horae Lyricae and Psalms of David, as well as the afore mentioned collection of hymns and songs, became (and continue to be!) staple pieces in the liturgy of the church.
He even made an appearance in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as his book of children’s songs was parodied in those pages.
But the reason you know St. Isaac the best is because you sing him every year when you shout loudly, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” He penned that now famous Advent/Christmas hymn and our Decembers have never been the same.
St. Isaac finally succumbed to his illness and suffering, and was buried on this date in 1748. He never married, and is still called the Melanchthon of his day (a high honor in Lutheran circles!) for his learning, gentleness, and devotion.
St. Isaac Watts is a reminder for me, and for the whole church, sometimes the most brilliant minds are found in what many would consider challenging bodies. Watts spent much of his life ill, but the fruits of his relentlessly engaged intellect remain quite healthy.
Today the church remembers a 20th Century Mexican priest, St. Miguel Agustin Pro, Martyr of the Faith.
St. Miguel was born in 1891 in Zacatecas, Mexico, and was known as a happy, cheerful, and privileged child. Despite his relatively high-born status, he developed a deep love and kinship for the working class families around him, and began to spend all of his time and energy working alongside the poor.
He eventually became a Jesuit novice at the age of twenty, and was exiled during the Mexican Revolution. He went to Belgium, where he was ordained, and eventually returned to Mexico in the wake of the war. He found churches closed, priests hiding, and being a Catholic now illegal. Fr. Miguel would regularly dress up in disguises to conduct secret and underground ministry, especially offering pastoral care, comfort, and the sacraments to the afflicted.
In 1927 St. Miguel was accused of being a part of a failed bombing attempt, though it is widely believed that the charges were false. He was handed over to the police and sentenced to death without so much as a trial.
As he was put in front of the firing squad he cried out, “Long live Christ the King!”
Though the government forbade a public funeral, people poured out of their homes to line the streets as his body passed by.
St. Miguel is a reminder to me, and should be for the whole church in the United States, that it was not so long ago that real religious persecution so close to home was a thing, so we should be very hesitant to claim it over baking cakes, serving pizza, and performing weddings and whatnot today.
-historical pieces from Pfatteicher’s _New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
Today the church honors an apostolic pillar whose writings almost (and should have!) made it into the Biblical canon: St. Clement, Theologian and Bishop of Rome.
Little is known about the life of St. Clement, who was probably the fourth Bishop of Rome. He lived and died right around the year 100, and may be the same Clement written about in the book of Philippians (4:3). He was certainly the writer, though, of the Epistle of Clement I (though probably not the Epistle of Clement II).
Ordained by St. Peter, Clement was said to be banished to Crimea during the reign of Trajan, forced to work in the mines. It was there, it is said, that he was tied to an anchor and thrown into the Black Sea (the anchor is his saintly symbol).
But though so little is known about Clement, we certainly know much about his thoughts and his voice. In the year 96 Clement authored a letter from the Church at Rome to the Church at Corinth. This letter is the earliest Christian document we have in existence, with the exception of some New Testament writings, and was written to encourage the Church at Corinth to avoid a schism and remain steadfast to one another. It’s a letter of pastoral advice.
This letter was so widely known, and so widely revered, early manuscripts of the New Testament include it in the canon.
St. Clement is a reminder for you, and should be for the whole church, that not all that is holy is contained in the canon, Beloved.
-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
Today the church remembers a masterful storyteller who wove a tapestry of tales that continue to teach: Clive Staples Lewis, Writer and Dream Maker.
St. Lewis (you know him better as C.S. Lewis, no doubt) was born in Northern Ireland to a barrister father and mathematician mother. After years of boarding schools, he attended University College, Oxford and, after graduation, was appointed as a Tutor and Fellow there, and eventually as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature a Cambridge.
At his heart, he was a writer. Scholarly works, fictional works, essays regarding the state of humanity, C.S. Lewis was born with one pen in his hand and another in his mouth.
As a youth he had rejected Christianity, probably as a rebellion around the death of his mother when he was ten years old. In 1929 he had a conversion experience that eventually led him back to the church in 1931. This journey from atheism to theism to the church was recounted in Surprised by Joy, published in 1955.
As it is with many converts, C.S. Lewis spilled a lot of ink defending the faith. The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, and The Screwtape Letters. In these works for art…which they are…he eloquently and imaginatively honors various human realities through the lens of faith.
Most of the world, though, knows him not for his essays, but for his works of fiction and science-fiction. The seven book Chronicles of Narnia and his lesser known Space Trilogy present for humanity a fanciful retelling of Christian faith and morals through a lion who dies yet lives, children who are awake and yet dreaming, honorable mice pirates, witches, and distant planet explorations that are right in your backyard.
It’s widely known that he and his fellow writer, JRR Tolkien, often met to discuss their works over a pint or three. He thought Tolkien was too verbose (he was), and Tolkien thought Lewis was too “on the nose” with his allegories (he was). And yet we’re all better for it all, right?
The works of Lewis that most affected me, though, weren’t any of the above, but two works separated by time yet linked in theme: The Four Loves and A Grief Observed.
In The Four Loves Lewis mines the realities of human love, seeking to make a connection between these loves and the deep feelings of the heart. English is such a limiting language. We only have one word for “love,” and yet many ways of feeling it. Lewis goes deep into analysis around this, offering some clarity to what we feel when we say “I love you.”
In A Grief Observed, though, Lewis is at his most vulnerable, most bare, most thoughtful (at least in my opinion). He wrote this reflection on grief after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman Gresham, after they had only been married four years. Here St. Lewis is less apologist for the faith and more barrister with faith and fairness of life put on slow, subtle trial. Gone is the idealism of the new convert, and in its place we find an honest conversation between C.S. Lewis and a faith that he considered an old friend that kind of let him down (though the work does end on a hopeful note).
It is real. It is honest. And, in my opinion, is required reading.
St. Lewis died on this day in 1963 at his home in Oxford.
One of my favorite notions of his, which I believe to be totally true, is found in The Screwtape Letters where the young demon being tutored by penpal is told that “God only coaxes, and cannot coerce.”
God only coaxes, and cannot coerce.
St. C.S. Lewis is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that story has always been a way that we learn about the Divine.
And always will be.
-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
In a little break from the traditional calendar, though still well within the bounds of convention, I’d propose that we honor a saint on this day that is normally honored tomorrow (but because of tomorrow’s more modern saint, this one deserves a slight adjustment I think): Saint Cecilia, Martyr and Patron Saint of Musicians.
Born sometime in the early third century, even before Christianity had really started to come into its own, the history and lore around Saint Cecilia is very suspect save for the fact that we do think there was a Cecilia in the very early church, and we do think that she died.
Everything else is really unknown, except that we are certainly sure that she broke Paul Simon’s heart at some point and definitely shook his confidence, daily.
I digress…
Some lore claims that Saint Cecilia was born into nobility and died in one of the early purges of Christians in Rome around the year 230 AD under Emperor Severus. Other sources claim that she may have lived much earlier and died under the purge in the late second century by Marcus Aurelius.
Regardless, it is considered history that this dear saint did at one time live in the early church, and did at one time die along with her husband and a host of other early martyrs.
It is said that Saint Cecilia took a vow of virginity in her youth and, despite her arranged marriage, kept that vow the enirity of her short life. To convince her husband that she was to keep her vow, she told him that an angel was watching over her. He asked to see this angel, and she said that his eyes would be open if he received the sacrament of baptism.
He agreed to be baptized, and indeed claimed to see this protecting angel that Saint Cecilia claimed was there. He respected her vow their entire marriage.
Saint Cecilia’s martyrdom became the stuff of lore not only because, well, martyrdom is notable in and of itself, but because it was said that she lived three days post-execution, evoking images of the Christ himself. She was buried by the Pope in the Catacomb of Callixtus, and in 1599 it was said that her body was found and that she had experienced no passage of time at all…a supposed miracle.
All of this is, of course, story. But stories shape us. It’s why “story” is the most important part of the word “history.”
Oh, and I know you’re wondering why Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of music, right? Never in any of the lore does it have any suggestion that she had a musical bone in her body, but in one account of her life (an apocryphal account of course) it is noted that on her wedding day, despite having taken a vow of virginity and despite being forced to marry and despite the difficulty of that day, she “sang to the Lord in her heart.”
Because of this Saint Cecilia is said to be the embodiment of the musical cadence of the liturgy, reminding the faithful that despite what is going on in their lives (or even because of it?!) a song still festers inside of all of us, encouraging us to sing a Divine note.
Because Saint Cecilia’s story is so muddled and riddled with so much lore, I think that while she still deserves a feast day, moving it a day up does no harm (and makes space for tomorrow’s saint). This is especially true because while some stories claim she died on November 22nd, others are unclear on the date…so there seems to be some flexibility here.
Regardless, Saint Cecilia is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church (and world?), that each of us has a song to sing, by God. No matter how we find ourselves.
On November 19th three 13th Century German mystics are honored by the church, two Matildas and a Gert: Mechtild of Magdeburg, Mechtild of Hackeborn, and Gertrude the Great, Visionaries of the Church.
Mechtild of Magdeburg (“Matilda” is the Anglicized version of the name) was descended from nobility. She left home in her 20’s to join a Beguine community (a lay sisterhood leading religiously pious lives), and adopted a rigid austerity. She spoke harshly against the excesses of the church and the clergy, believing that greed was corrupting the message of the Gospel. She also believed the clergy were poorly trained and advocated for stricter requirements for the priesthood.
She began having visions and dreams, and wrote them down in a poetic work entitled The Flowing Light of the Godhead, one of the best examples of female authorship to survive the Middle Ages.
Mechtild of Hackeborn was the sister of the Baroness of Hackeborn, and in charge of the monastery school in the area. She was a fabulous instructor (and would instruct Gertrude the Great, mentioned below), who shared her spiritual insight, teachings, and experiences with her students. The work The Book of Special Grace, made public after her death, records these mystical visions as remembered by her beloved students. She loved to sing her visions, being called a “nightingale of Christ.”
Gertrude the Great was entrusted to the Cistercian foundation at Helfta a the age of five, and came under the tutelage of Mechtild of Hackeborn there. She quickly became fluent in Latin, was well educated in the liberal arts, and well read in literature and the sciences of the times. At the age of twenty-five she, too, began having mystical visions and dreams which continued throughout the whole of her life. At their onset she began to study Augustine, Bernard, and Hugh of Clairvaux (interestingly enough, our own Blessed Martin Luther favored these scholars as well). She went on to compose the Legatus Divinae Pietatis, widely considered one of the best products of Christian mysticism.
Gertrude the Great’s mystical visions almost all happened during the liturgy, and she felt that worship was the spring that fed her spirituality.
These three great mystics of the church are a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that sometimes the most obscure individuals hold the grandest insights. I’ve long said that the best sermons preached on any given Sunday are preached to less than fifty people.
It’s true.
-historical bits by Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
Today the church celebrates the brief life of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia, Princess of Hungary and Friend of the Outcast.
You’ve never heard of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia? That’s not surprising. Nestled in the middle days of November, she’s not widely known. But this 13th Century royal made a great impact to those she cared for in her short twenty four years of life.
She was the daughter of King Andrew of Hungary, and was betrothed at the age of one to the son of a local noble whose name was Ludwig. This sealed the political alliance between the king and the count.
She was known to be serious and generous, and even at an early age showed a devout faith. Ludwig was fond of her, despite the forced marriage.
They were married when Elizabeth was fourteen (Ludwig was twenty one) and had three children. Their marriage, by all accounts, was a happy one, and Ludwig supported St. Elizabeth in her increasing generosity. For instance, during a regional famine, Elizabeth gave away most of her own fortune and grain to the local poor. She was heavily criticized by other nobles for this, but Ludwig approved.
St. Elizabeth founded two hospitals during her time as Duchess. She regularly tended the sick and the lame herself, and gave money for the specific care of the ill children, particularly orphans. Ludwig followed Elizabeth’s lead, and tried his best to find jobs for those in the area who had trouble earning a living.
In 1221 Franciscan monks came to town, and Elizabeth was immediately drawn to these kind, poor preachers. She came under the tutelage of Brother Rodeger who taught her the way of St. Francis. She took the example so seriously that she ended up taking a leper into her own home to stay the night when he was wandering aimlessly. Ludwig found him in their bed and, though at first startled, understood that Elizabeth was fulfilling her calling.
On September 11th Ludwig died of the plague while on the crusade. Elizabeth left the castle and went to live in Eisenbach where she found a cold welcome from the townspeople. She was eventually taken under the wing of her uncle the Bishop of Bamberg, and on Good Friday in 1228 she officially took her monastic vows, devoting herself to the way of St. Francis. She secured the safety of her children, built a small house near Marburg, and set up a hospice center for the sick, the aged, and the poor.
St. Elizabeth’s life ended in isolation and austerity. Her confessor, Conrad of Marburg, was not a kindly monk, and seemed to take pleasure in forcing Elizabeth to live in harsh conditions. Her health began to fail, and she died not having yet seen her twenty fifth birthday.
So many hospitals around the world are named for this saint.
The Wartburg castle, in which Elizabeth lived for most of her life, would later have a new resident. our own Blessed Martin Luther, who would pen his German translation of the New Testament there.
St. Elizabeth is a reminder for me, and should be for the church, that time is of the essence. We do not have to wait until tomorrow to make an impact, because we’re never confident how many tomorrows we will have.
So, make an impact.
-historical tidbits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
Today the church remembers an 11th Century pillar of piety who is often overlooked, but deserves some attention: Saint Margaret, Queen of Scotland.
Born of German stock in Hungary because her father had been a victim of political exile, Saint Margaret was of royal lineage as her grandfather had been Edmund Ironside, King of England. In 1057 she was brought back to England in the court of Edward the Confessor, leaning back into her heritage apart from her family of origin.
In 1067 the whole family fled after the Battle of Hastings and were shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland. There King Malcolm III welcomed the family and took romantic interest in Saint Margaret.
They were married, and she effectively became a bridge between two royal lines.
Here’s the thing, though: Margaret didn’t want to be married to anyone but the Church. She longed to be a nun.
Nevertheless, despite this inner desire, all accounts show their marriage a happy one, and they had eight children together who would, for better or for worse, be released into the royal spheres of the world.
The Church of Scotland as Saint Margaret found it was an amalgamation of ancient Celtic ways and Christian ideas (as it still rightly is). Saint Margaret worked hard to reform some of the rougher edges of their practice in order to more seamlessly match the practices of the rest of the Western Church. She took to founding new churches and new monasteries, and was keenly concerned for the welfare of the poor, the sick, and the underclass in Scotland.
Her piety was legendary, and she helped curb her husband the king’s baser instincts, resulting in relatively good rule for the people of Scotland.
Saint Margaret died in Edinburgh Castle on this day in 1093. Some say she died of a broken heart because she had just recently learned that both her husband and her eldest son had been killed on the battlefield. She is buried alongside her husband and son in Dumfermline Abbey.
Saint Margaret is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that appropriate piety is not a bad thing as long as it is focused not on the scoffing and “shalt-nots” too often found in the overly pious, but rather in taking care of the “least of these” in this world.
-historical bits gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
Today I would urge the church to remember with affection and curiosity a 16th Century astronomer and deep thinker: Johannes Kepler, Seeker of the Divine and Gazer of Stars.
Kepler was born in what is now Germany to a family of fading fortunes. He was technically nobility, but didn’t have the bank account to match the title. While he was sick as a child (having been born premature), he was intellectually curious and showed his obvious genius with numbers at an early age. As a young adult he attended University at Tubingen, studying theology under Jacob Heerbrand (who was, himself, a student of Melanchthon), but while his theological scores were so-so, his mathematical scores were off the (planetary) charts. This was back in the day when astronomy and astrology held hands, and while his numbers were solid, he would pass the time creating horoscopes for his fellow classmates based off of star charts he created himself.
A little side-show is always fun in college.
He would go on to teach mathematics in Graz, and took a fancy in a young widow, Barbara Muller. She was quite wealthy and, though he was of noble stock, was deemed unacceptable to her family. So what did Kepler do? He published a book on mathematics to woo her family into seeing him as worth something.
It worked.
Kepler than began to plot out his life’s publications, much like you might plot out planetary motion (because that would be his main subject). He drew connections between planetary motion and the nature of created order itself, and though through today’s scientific lenses we see many of his connections were nothing more than wishes and guesses, it should be noted that this is one of the ways that science moves forward: by making guesses and testing them.
It does not, however, move forward by ignoring data and replacing it with wishes…as many are wont to do today.
Kepler was using the best data that was available at his time, and he got into a number of discussions with other astronomers and mathematicians, testing one another and prodding each other to do more and do better.
Despite his genius, he wasn’t awesome at making money (probably because he was a teacher and no one was reading planetary physics for fun). He was also wrestling mightily with philosophical questions, particularly around the notion that planets might be “alive” things with souls which imbued them with purpose and reason in their courses.
He thought that the universe was created by a God who wanted to be known through reason, and all we had to do was figure out the logic to figure out the great eternal “why.”
Speaking of the Divine, Kepler refused to convert to Catholicism and, since his teaching appointment at Graz was in a Catholic territory, found his way to Prague (which, though officially Catholic did tolerate some Lutherans who they deemed intellectually valuable) and, through twists and turns and missteps and some crazy theories that didn’t hold water, eventually did find his way into his most productive years as the Imperial Mathematician to the Emperor.
Fortunately this gave him some stability and a place to do his greatest scientific studies. Unfortunately he was basically hired to tell the emperor’s astrological fortune. Regardless, it was a means to a scientific end for him. Through this appointment he came into contact with other great minds, and in 1604 Kepler observed a bright new star (SN 1604) in the sky, a Super Nova. His calculations of the star challenged the assumption that the night sky was essentially “fixed,” noting that new things could happen there all the time. He shrugged off any astrological importance, and leaned into the science encouraging the world to see space not as a tapestry, but as a dynamic system. This emboldened his groundbreaking idea that the planets moved around the sun in elliptical orbits, not straight circular patterns.
He was right about this, and the first to posit it in a way that had mathematical weight.
As a little side-quest, though, he also became obsessed with plotting chronology using the stars as a guide, and attempted to find meaning in the movement of the heavens and the events on Earth (like, oh, how a star just appeared above Bethlehem and was said to appear at the birth of Alexander the Great).
But his ideas weren’t exactly en vogue with a very traditional Lutheranism and Catholicism running around in that day (they thought he might be a secret Calvinist!), and he was eventually excommunicated from the Lutheran church and his mother was brought up on charges of witchcraft, a tactic used back then (and still today!) that tried to mar the reputation of those who disagreed with theological teachings.
Eventually the charges were dropped, though the excommunication stood. He moved to Linz and remarried after the death of Barbara Muller, and fell ill during travel on October 8th in 1630, eventually dying on this day of that year. He was buried in a Protestant churchyard, having been officially rejected by both Lutheranism and Catholicism and, as if to hammer home the reality that the time was politically and religiously fraught, his gravesite was completely destroyed in the 30 Years War.
Kepler was a person on the edge of two worlds. He straddled both imaginative fantasy and mathematical reality. In fact, these two worlds came together in a now lost book Somnium (The Dream) where he wrote about the planets from the perspective of other planets, perhaps the first sci-fi novel of modern history! I hold him with both curiosity and sympathy, with appreciation for his brilliance and a bit of disdain for his tangential side-quests to find the “mind of God” in his work.
In this way, I guess, he’s like most of us: a mix of steps forward, steps side-ways, and blowbacks.
One cool thing about him, though, is that when it came to religion he said very clearly that denominations of every stripe should be able to take communion together. “After all,” he said, “Christ was not a Lutheran, a Calvinist, or a Papist.”
Let those with ears to hear, hear.
Johannes Kepler is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that science moves forward with intelligent guesses that are tested, not ignorant beliefs that are untested. We need to raise up leaders willing to think great thoughts and then test them, not just think untested thoughts and hold them as great.
Tonight as we enter the midway of the month, I’m remembering that in November the ancient Celts found themselves under the Reed Moon.
Each month has a moon, usually named after a tree, corresponding to the attribute that the month brought to the wheel of the year. Now, while reeds are not technically “trees,” November was illumined by the reed moon because reeds, when wound together, created tough blankets that would be used for both floor and roof, for both basket and rope.
They are tough as trees when braided.
Reeds were emblematic of how November was a weaving of worlds, ushered in by Samhain and All Saints, the ancestors and the babies creating a tapestry of existence that was most clearly felt as the shadows lengthened and the hearth blazed. For the ancient Celts life existed far into the past and far into the future, and the cycle of life was always rolling. Reeds reminded them of this: woven together to be one whole, and when wind blew over the open reed they believed they could hear the howling voices of the ancestors calling to them from the other side of the veil.
These, of course, became wind chimes and porch pipes.
The Reed Moon inspires us, with its long night-shine life, to remember those who have gone before, the ache in our bones a reminder of their unseen, but ever-felt, presence.
Reluctant Xtian 