Year: 2021

“These things were our examples”

The Calendar in the Canadian Prayer Book designates August 1st as Lammas Day and as the commemoration of The Maccabean Martyrs. In doing so, it looks back to the calendars of festivals and commemorations of the European medieval developments particularly in their Anglo-Saxon form and the way they have been recalled at different times. St. Peter in the Chains was a third commemoration on August 1st as well,  looking back to the story of Peter in Acts being freed from his chains by an angel while in prison and to the subsequent building of a Cathedral in Rome dedicated to the breaking of his chains in the fifth century. The concept contributes to the centrality of Peter, the Petrine primacy, as it came to be asserted in Rome. It is, perhaps, no surprise that such a commemoration did not continue on in England post-reformation. But what about Lammas Day and The Maccabean Martyrs?

Lammas Day is associated with the harvest. It is one of the four ‘cross-quarter’ days which have to do with a profound sensibility about our connection to creation understood in terms of the celestial and the terrestrial, the heavenly and the earthly, captured artistically and arrestingly, for instance, in the many windows and sculpted stone work of the medieval churches and cathedrals of Europe that depict the labours of the months along with the signs of the zodiac. Such images place human labour in the world as ordered to God and as a form of participation in the life of God; something which we have largely lost in our technocratic world which presumes the mastery of human and non-human nature at the expense of both. August 1st is more or less halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox; likewise, November 1st stands half-way between the fall equinox and the winter solstice; February 2nd or Candlemas roughly half-way between that and the spring equinox; May 1st, May Day, between that and the summer solstice. Such things are reminders of the patterns of nature’s year and what that means for human life seen in terms of the created order.

In one of the wonderful stained glass windows at Chartres Cathedral in north central France, August is associated with the labour of the threshing of the grain or wheat. July’s labour was the harvesting of the wheat; August marks the threshing of the wheat leading to its being transformed into bread; September marks the harvesting of grapes. Lammas derives from Old English, hlaf, loaf, and, maesse, mass, hence loaf-mass; it marks the first harvest and its fruit, as it were. The term, mass, in loaf-mass ties it to the Christian theme of our sacramental participation in the fruits of Christ’s redemptive work as suggested in today’s Epistle.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”

Providentially, The Eighth Sunday after Trinity coincides this year with The Feast of St. James the Apostle. The connecting link is the idea of the Resurrection and the forms of our participation in the redemptive work and life of Christ as the pilgrimage of our souls. The Saints remind us that glorification is intimately intertwined with the concepts of justification and sanctification. St. James, in particular, reminds us of our life in pilgrimage. He is the great saint of pilgrimage which, simply put, is about going up to Jerusalem.

St. James, too, is a Maritime saint. There are so many, many churches in the Maritimes dedicated to the honour and memory of St. James, sometimes more than one in the same community! St. James is one of the disciples whom Jesus calls from fishing to become a fisher of men, as we heard on The Fifth Sunday after Trinity. St. James speaks to our Maritime sea-faring traditions. The Collect alludes to his calling even as the Lesson from Acts points to its radical cost. James is put to death by Herod the king. The Gospel teaches the meaning of that calling. It has altogether to do with our going up to Jerusalem with Jesus. We know this from Quinquagesima Sunday in the preparation for Lent in the Gospel reading, there from Matthew and now here from Mark. It points to the radical meaning of Christian pilgrimage as a form of witness or martyrdom, highlighting the connection between justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Going up to Jerusalem, as Jesus explains, means his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The Saints show that this means our participation in Christ’s redemption of our humanity: drinking of the cup of which Christ drinks; being baptized into Christ’s baptism. We are consecrated to God by virtue of our incorporation into the death and resurrection of Christ. Suffering and glory are all part of that story.  As Paul tells us in the Epistle for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, “we have received a spirit of sonship.” We are “the children of God and fellow-heirs with Christ.” But only “if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” The martyr saints remind us of the suffering and the glory.

To be a martyr means to bear witness. The Saints are more than heroes and more than mere role models. What defines them and what is meant to define us is the calling or vocation which we share with them. What moves in them is the redemptive life of Christ made visible in them. They have found their wills in the will of Christ. It is “not I but Christ who lives in me;” that has to be the constant theme and struggle of Christian witness. It cannot be about calling attention to ourselves. It is not “look at me looking at you looking at me,” the culture of narcissistic self-obsession. It is “look to Jesus.” See Jesus and see yourself in him. This is the point of the liturgy – seeing ourselves and one another in Christ and being with one another in Christ.

(more…)

Print this entry