St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

At St. Paul’s Parish This Week:

In Church News:

Find news of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion at Episcopal Life Online.

The March 2010 issue of St. Paul’s Epistle, our monthly newsletter, is available on line as a .PDF file readable with Abobe Reader by PC users and with Preview by Mac users.

On the Liturgical Calendar –
St. Gregory of Rome

Today on the Calendar we commemorate St. Gregory the Great, 6th & 7th Century Bishop of Rome remembered for, among other things, the Gregorian Calendar and the regularizing of church music in the form known as “Gregorian Chant”. Anglicans (of which Episcopalians are the American sort) remember Gregory for sending St. Augustine of Canterbury to missionize the Angles. James Kiefers’ hagiography of St. Gregory begins:

Only two popes, Leo I and Gregory I, have been given the popular title of “the Great.” Both served during difficult times of barbarian invasions in Italy; and during Gregory’s term of office, Rome was also faced with famine and epidemics.

Gregory was born around 540, of a politically influential family, and in 573 he became Prefect of Rome; but shortly afterwards he resigned his office and began to live as a monk. In 579 he was made apocrisiarius (representative of the Pope to the Patriarch of Constantinople). Shortly after his return home, the Pope died of the plague, and in 590 Gregory was elected Pope.

Like Leo before him, he became practical governor of central Italy, because the job needed to be done and there was no one else to do it. When the Lombards invaded, he organized the defense of Rome against them, and the eventual signing of a treaty with them. When there was a shortage of food, he organized the importation and distribution of grain from Sicily.

His influence on the forms of public worship throughout Western Europe was enormous. He founded a school for the training of church musicians, and Gregorian chant (plainchant) is named for him. The schedule of Scripture readings for the various Sundays of the year, and the accompanying prayers (many of them written by him), in use throughout most of Western Christendom for the next thirteen centuries, is largely due to his passion for organization. His treatise, On Pastoral Care, while not a work of creative imagination, shows a dedication to duty, and an understanding of what is required of a minister in charge of a Christian congregation. His sermons are still readable today, and it is not without reason that he is accounted (along with Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine of Hippo) as one of the Four Latin Doctors (=Teachers) of the ancient Church. (Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzen, Basil the Great, and John Chrysostom are the Four Greek Doctors.) (Read the entire article here).

A prayer for today:

A prayer appropriate for remembering St. Gregory is this collect from Lesser Feasts and Fasts – 2006:

Almighty and merciful God, you raised up Gregory of Rome to be a servant of the servants of God, and inspired him to send missionaries to preach the Gospel to the English people: Preserve in your Church the catholic and apostolic faith they taught, that your people, being fruitful in every good work, may receive the crown of glory that never fades away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today is also Thursday in the Third Week of Lent. A Collect for today is found in Lesser Feasts and Fasts:

Grant us, O Lord our Strength, a true love of your holy Name; so that, trusting in your grace, we may fear no earthly evil, nor fix our hearts on earthly goods, but may rejoice in your full salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

At St. Paul’s Parish This Week:

In Church News:

Find news of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion at Episcopal Life Online.

The March 2010 issue of St. Paul’s Epistle, our monthly newsletter, is available on line as a .PDF file readable with Abobe Reader by PC users and with Preview by Mac users.

On the Liturgical Calendar –
St. Sophronius of Jerusalem

No saint is commemorated today on the calendar of the Episcopal Church in the USA. Our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters commemorate St. Sophronius of Jerusalem on this date, the anniversary of his death in 638. An entry in Wikipedia tells us that he:

… was the Patriarch of Jerusalem from 634 until his death, and is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before rising to the primacy of the see of Jerusalem, he was a monk and theologian who was the chief protagonist for orthodox teaching in the doctrinal controversy on the essential nature of Jesus and his volitional acts. Bishop Sophronius was of Arab descent.[1]

A teacher of rhetoric, Sophronius became an ascetic in Egypt about 580 and then entered the monastery of St. Theodosius near Bethlehem. Traveling to monastic centres in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Rome, he accompanied the Byzantine chronicler John Moschus, who dedicated to him his celebrated tract on the religious life, Leimõn ho Leimõnon (Greek: “The Spiritual Meadow”). On the death of Moschus in Rome in 619, Sophronius accompanied the body back to Jerusalem for monastic burial. He traveled to Alexandria, Egypt, and to Constantinople in the year 633 to persuade the respective patriarchs to renounce Monothelitism, a heterodox teaching that espoused a single, divine will in Christ to the exclusion of a human capacity for choice. Sophronius’ extensive writings on this question are all lost.

Although unsuccessful in this mission, Sophronius was elected patriarch of Jerusalem in 634. Soon after his enthronement he forwarded his noted synodical letter to Pope Honorius I and to the Eastern patriarchs, explaining the orthodox belief in the two natures, human and divine, of Christ, as opposed to Monothelitism, which he viewed as a subtle form of heretical Monophysitism (which posited a single [divine] nature for Christ). Moreover, he composed a Florilegium (“Anthology”) of some 600 texts from the Greek Church Fathers in favour of the orthodox tenet of Dyothelitism (positing both human and divine wills in Christ). This document also is lost. (Read the entire Wikipedia entry here.)

A prayer for today:

A prayer appropriate for remembering St. Sophronius is this collect for commemoration of a theologian from The Book of Common Prayer – 1979:

Almighty God, you gave to your servant Sophronius special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth as it is in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today is also Thursday in the Third Week of Lent. A Collect for today is found in Lesser Feasts and Fasts:

Keep watch over your Church, O Lord, with your unfailing love; and, since it is grounded in human weakness and cannot maintain itself without your aid, protect it from all danger, and keep it in the way of salvation; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

At St. Paul’s Parish This Week:

In Church News:

Find news of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion at Episcopal Life Online.

The March 2010 issue of St. Paul’s Epistle, our monthly newsletter, is available on line as a .PDF file readable with Abobe Reader by PC users and with Preview by Mac users.

On the Liturgical Calendar –
St. Kessog of Loch Lomond

No saint is commemorated today on the calendar of the Episcopal Church in the USA, so turning to the calendar of the Scottish Episcopal Church we remember Saint Kessog, a 6th or 7th Century monk, bishop, and martyr. Exciting Holiness – 2007 tells us:

The memory of many of the missionaries who brought the Christian faith to Scotland during the Dark Ages is preserved mainly in the dedications of churches in their honour. The name of Kessog (or Mackessock) is thus preserved as a missionary bishop who laboured in the lands of Lennox among the Picts towards the end of the seventh century. He lived in a cell on Monk’s Island, Loch Lomond. According to tradition, he was born of Irish royal descent in Cashel, capital of Munster, and is said to have been martyred near Luss on Loch Lomondside around the year 700. [Note: Alternative sources place the date of his martyrdom around 520 AD.]

A prayer for today:

A prayer appropriate for today is this collect from Exciting Holiness – 2007:

Almighty God, by whose grace and power your holy martyr Kessog triumphed over suffering and was faithful unto death: strengthen us with your grace, that we may endure reproach and persecution and faithfully bear witness to the name of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.

Today is also Wednesday in the Third Week of Lent. A Collect for today is found in Lesser Feasts and Fasts:

Give ear to our prayers, O Lord, and direct the way of your servants in safety under your protection, that, amid all the changes of our earthly pilgrimage, we may be guarded by your mighty aid; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

At St. Paul’s Parish This Week:

In Church News:

Find news of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion at Episcopal Life Online.

The March 2010 issue of St. Paul’s Epistle, our monthly newsletter, is available on line as a .PDF file readable with Abobe Reader by PC users and with Preview by Mac users.

On the Liturgical Calendar –
St. Gregory of Nyssa

Today on the calendar of the Episcopal Church we commemorate the 4th Century bishop and theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Fathers. The introduction to The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on St. Gregory Nyssan provides this information:

Gregory of Nyssa spent his life in Cappadocia, a region in central Asia Minor. He was the most philosophically adept of the three so-called Cappadocians, who included brother Basil the Great and friend Gregory of Nazianzus. Together, the Cappadocians are credited with defining Christian orthodoxy in the Eastern Roman Empire, as Augustine (354 – 430 CE) was to do in the West. Gregory was a highly original thinker, drawing inspiration from the pagan Greek philosophical schools, as well as from the Jewish and Eastern Christian traditions, and formulating an original synthesis that was to influence later Byzantine, and possibly even modern European, thought. A central idea in Gregory’s writing is the distinction between the transcendent nature and immanent energies of God, and much of his thought is a working out of the implications of that idea in other areas – notably, the world, humanity, history, knowledge, and virtue. This leads him to expand the nature-energies distinction into a general cosmological principle, to apply it particularly to human nature, which he conceives as having been created in God’s image, and to rear a theory of unending intellectual and moral perfectibility on the premise that the purpose of human life is literally to become like the infinite nature of God. (Read the Encyclopedia’s entire article here.)

A prayer for today:

A prayer appropriate for commemoration of St. Gregory Nyssan is this collect from Lesser Feasts and Fasts – 2006:

Almighty God, you have revealed to your Church your eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like your bishop Gregory of Nyssa, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of you, Father, son, and Holy Spirit; for you live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.

Today is also Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent. A Collect for today is found in Lesser Feasts and Fasts:

O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom you have given a fervent desire to pray, may, by your mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.