Category Archives: liturgical calendar

What’s a Saint?

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Someone asked me to explain the place of the saints in the Episcopal Church. First, a little background. In the New Testament, “saints” was a generic term, used to refer to Christians, members of the body of Christ. Quickly though, some Christians began to receive particular honor, especially after their death, and especially if they were martyred. In the Early Church and in the Middle Ages, whether someone became a saint or not was largely a product of the initiative of those who were devoted to them. Over time, however, the Catholic Church began to develop a process for determining whether someone was a saint. Now that process involves a fairly rigorous investigation that includes medical and scientific analysis of alleged miracles.

In the sixteenth century, the saints came under fire. Most Protestants saw devotion to the saints as misguided or as downright idolatry. In the English Reformation, many of the local and obscure saints were removed from the calendar. The Roman Catholic Church elevated no one to sainthood for most of the sixteenth century.

In Anglicanism, “sainthood” isn’t really an official label. We call people saints, like the Twelve Disciples, or Mary, or prominent church figures from the Early Church and Middle Ages, like St. Francis. We tend not to call people “saints” who have been elevated to sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church since the sixteenth century unless we are very Anglo-Catholic.

The Episcopal Church, and indeed the Anglican Communion, no longer elevates people to sainthood. However, in the Book of Common Prayer, there is a calendar that provides dates to commemorate not only the saints of the New Testament and Church History, but also people who have led exemplary lives in more recent times. The daily office calendar provides biographies of these people. You can find it here. Additions to the calendar are made by General Convention.

The colors of Advent

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Some of you may have noticed that mysteriously one of the blue candles on the advent wreath at St. James became pink last week, and that it was lit on Sunday with two of the blue candles. Some controversy ensued. Before the change was made all of the clergy were consulted and were comfortable with the change. Little did we expect passions to be aroused.

Fr. Tom said in conversation this afternoon that the advent wreath was a recent liturgical innovation, so I decided to do a little research. While one must approach information on the internet with considerable caution, wikipedia above all, I did find it interesting that according to that source, the modern advent wreath became a common custom in Germany only around 1900, and then only among Protestants. It probably arrived in the US in the 1930s or so.

The color of the candles is dependent on the liturgical color of Advent. Traditionally among Roman Catholics, because Advent was seen as a penitential season, the liturgical color was purple, the same as in the season of Lent. But like Lent, which had a Sunday “off”–Laetare Sunday–when the liturgical color was rose (pink), it became the custom to use pink on the third Sunday of Advent, known as Gaudete Sunday.

As a result of the liturgical changes in the twentieth century that sought to de-emphasize Advent’s penitential nature and to distinguish it clearly from Lent, blue became a popular liturgical color, especially among Protestants. Anglicans could appeal to the Medieval traditions of Salisbury (the “Sarum” rite) which used blue during Advent. In most Episcopal churches, whatever the color of the other candles on the wreath, there is one pink or rose candle, which is usually lit on the third Sunday (though according to some traditions on the fourth).

I suppose that the most “liturgically correct” thing to do would be to get a set of vestments to match the pink candle. But remember, the color of the candles doesn’t matter a great deal; what does matter is what the season of Advent is about, to help us prepare for the coming of Christ.

Reflections on Holy Week

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This was my first Holy Week as a priest, but my sixth since I’ve been in the ordination process and working in churches. I noticed in the days and weeks leading up to it that I was approaching Holy Week with a different frame of mind than in the past. On the liturgical side of things there was an intense bustle of activity as we tried to make sure in advance that all of the services went off without a hitch. On the personal side, I sensed a new burden. One part of being a priest is that we are partly responsible for shaping the spiritual lives of our parishioners.

I suspect that the reason I felt that burden so strongly this year was because of the role Holy Week played in my becoming an Episcopalian. I remember the awe that I experienced the first time I participated in the Triduum: the spectacle of Maundy Thursday with the stripping of the altar, the solemnity of Good Friday, and the wondrous drama of the Easter Vigil. That first experience proved to me the power of liturgical worship and exposed depths of my soul I hardly knew existed.

To participate in creating such experiences for others is humbling and challenging. At the end of Easter Sunday, I felt little more than exhaustion and relief that it was all over. Thankfully, Monday was a holiday at Furman so I could have an extra day to recover.

And now, O Father, mindful of the love

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One of the legacies my father left me was a love of Church hymnody. I grew up singing hymns unaccompanied, in four-part harmony. My dad had a beautiful voice and for many years led the singing and directed the choir in his church. But he didn’t sing only on Sundays. As I remember, he was almost always whistling or humming, or even singing hymns as he worked during the week. In fact, it was one of the things that annoyed me when I was a teenager. He was a carpenter and I grew up spending time with him on the jobsite. As soon as I was big enough, I began working with him. Every summer from junior high through high school, and on into college, the day after school was over, he would wake me up and put me to work.

That was bad enough; but usually from Monday through Friday, as he worked, he would be whistling, or humming, or singing, one of the hymns that had been sung in church on Sunday. And more often than not, it was a catchy tune, with words that seemed to me less than adequate theologically (yes, I became a critic quite early in life). I would get so annoyed by this, that by the middle of the week I would try to think of an alternative, more suitable hymn, and try to outsing him, or at least get him to make a change.

I thought of that today. On Sunday, as we were preparing the altar, Karen played variations on one of my favorite hymns, and then at the 11:00 service, we sang it as one of the communion hymns. It’s a text by William Bright and the title is “And now,O Father, mindful of the love.” The tune is beautiful, but on Sunday I had the opportunity to sing the words and to look closely at them during the service. I especially love the second verse:

Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
and only look on us as found in him;
look not on our misusings of thy grace,
our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim:
for lo, between our sins and their reward
we set the Passion of thy Son our Lord.

Bright’s words evoke the concluding collect of the Good Friday liturgy:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.

I suspect that for my father singing hymns throughout the week wasn’t just about the music; it was a form of prayer. It is a real gift to my spiritual life and to my journey toward Holy Week, that since Sunday, the tune of that hymn has been going through my mind, becoming my prayer of preparation for this most holy of seasons.