My dear friends,
August is generally regarded as rather a quiet month because it falls in the middle of the Summer holiday season. From the point of view of the Church’s liturgical year, August is really rather an exciting month because it is crammed with saints’ days, each speaking to us of the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Christian men and women just like us.
4 August is the feast day of St Jean-Baptiste Vianney, the famous Curé d’Ars, a humble parish priest in mid-nineteenth century France who was used by God to draw people to renewed faith in Christ. 5 August is the feast of St Oswald, the devoutly Christian king of Northumbria who was killed in a battle with the pagans at Maserfield on this day in 642.
The next day, 6 August, is the wonderful feast of the Transfiguration, when we recall Jesus being bathed with divine glory as he was on his way up to Jerusalem, where he would die upon the Cross for our sins and three days later rise from the dead at Easter.
7 August sees the commemoration of the Rev John Mason Neale, who spent much of his ministry at East Grinstead in Sussex until his death in 1866. Neale suffered all his life from poor health, but he crammed an awful lot into his time on earth, founding a religious community, the Society of St Margaret (some of us have met their Sisters at Walsingham) and writing or translating many hymns. 8 August is the feast of St Dominic who founded the Order of Preachers or Dominicans, which specialises in teaching, and who died in 1221. The next day, 9 August, sees the commemoration of Mary Sumner, a remarkable Anglican laywoman who founded the Mothers’ Union and died as recently as 1921.
Sunday 10 August is the feast of St Laurence, a Deacon martyred at Rome on that day in 258 AD. Catsfield Parish Church is dedicated to St Laurence and we shall celebrate our patronal festival that Sunday with a special celebration of the Holy Eucharist at 9.15am. This will be a joint service with Crowhurst, and there will be no service at St George’s Church that day.
11 August sees the feasts of two saints, St Clare of Assisi, friend of St Francis and founder of the Poor Clares who died in 1253, and St John Henry Newman, an Anglican priest who converted to Roman Catholicism and became a Cardinal. Newman was one of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century (he wasn’t, for example, remotely bothered by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which he found entirely reconcilable with Christianity). Newman died in 1890. 13 August has two more commemorations, Jeremy Taylor, a saintly seventeenth century Anglican bishop, and Florence Nightingale, the ‘lady with the lamp’ who revolutionised nursing during and after the Crimean war and died in 1910. 14 August is the feast of St Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar who offered to die at Auschwitz in order to save the life of another prisoner in 1941.
15 August sees a lovely holy day: the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as the Dormition or Falling-asleep of Mary, and which in medieval England was sometimes affectionately known as ‘Our Lady in harvest.’ On this day we recall the death of the Blessed Virgin and her assumption into heaven as the greatest of God’s saints, there to be reunited with her son Jesus Christ, nevermore to be parted from him.
20 August sees a curious pairing in the Church of England calendar (we are nothing if not generous): St Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot and teacher, who died 1153, and William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army who died in 1912 and 1890 respectively. 24 August is the feast of St Bartholomew, apostle, after whom St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London was named. Three days later come the commemorations of a mother and her son: on 27 August we remember St Monica, a wonderful holy Christian mother who died in 387, and the following day we celebrate her famous son, St Augustine of Hippo, a bishop and teacher of the faith, who died in 430. On 29 August the Church remembers the beheading of St John the Baptist. The month draws to a close with another piece of Anglican inclusivity: the commemoration on 31 August of John Bunyan, who fought against the King in the English Civil War and joined an ‘Independent’ congregation at Bedford. He is best known as the author of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress.’
Saints are drawn from all backgrounds and walks of life, as this list of saints from August shows. The common denominator is that they all prayed ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,’ sincerely meant it, and asked God to use them in His service.
We might remind ourselves that we have the same Bible, the same sacraments, the same access to God’s grace as did each of God’s saints. The vocation of all Christians is to be saints. This is a process that begins on earth and continues after death. Some people – the saints – make more progress than others during their time on earth and have their sanctity recognised by their fellow Christians. In Christian art the saints are traditionally depicted with haloes around their heads, indicating that they reflect something of the love of God to all who encounter them.
Let me conclude with a ‘word picture’ about the role of the saints in our lives as Christians. Picture some people swimming in the sea, enthusiastically waving and calling to us ‘Come on in, the water’s lovely.’ The saints do something similar for you and me on our pilgrimage of faith. ‘Come and follow Jesus,’ the saints call to us, ‘let him be your guide, you’ll never regret it – we never did.’
With my love and prayers,
Father Robert.