Christmas Every Day

1201 Murder of a Pilgrim Saint

According to CatholicSaints Info, the Scotsman William of Perth (aka William of Rochester) led a wild and misspent youth, but as an adult he had a complete conversion, devoting himself to God, caring especially for poor and neglected children. He worked as a baker, and gave every tenth loaf to the poor. He attended Mass daily, and one morning on his way to church he found an infant abandoned on the threshold. He named the baby David, and adopted him, and taught him his trade.

Years later he and David set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. During a stop-over in Rochester, England, the boy David turned on William, clubbed him, cut his throat, robbed the body, and fled. Because he was on a holy journey, and because of the miraculous cures later reported at his tomb, he is considered a martyr.

A local insane woman found William’s body, and plaited a garland of honeysuckle flowers for it; she placed the garland on William, and then on herself whereupon her madness was cured. Local monks, seeing this as a sign from God, interred William in the local cathedral and began work on his shrine. His tomb and a chapel at his murder scene, called Palmersdene, soon became sites of pilgrimage, second only to the tomb of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Remains of the chapel can be seen near the present Saint William’s Hospital.

The stained-glass portrait in Rochester Cathedral above shows William with the traditional pilgrims’s hat, staff, purse, and cockleshell emblem. He is the patron saint of adopted children.

1982 A priest attempts to murder the pope

Pope John Paul II was the most well-travelled pope in history, visiting 129 countries, journeying over a million kilometres and speaking to crowds of millions of the faithful. Sometimes his close proximity to large crowds brought him into peril, despite the armoured pope-mobile in which he often rode. In 1981 a Turkish militant, Mehmet Ali Agca, shot the pope twice with an automatic pistol, wounding him severely. Bullets perforated John Paul’s abdomen and he lost three-quarters of his blood; drastic surgery was undertaken but the pope credited the Virgin Mary with saving his life.

A year later, John Paul was visiting one of the Virgin’s most famous shrines, at Fátima in Portugal, when he was again attacked. This time the weapon was  a bayonet and his attacker was not a fascist in the pay of the Soviet bloc, as it had been in 1981, but a Catholic priest who shouted “Down with the Pope, down with the Second Vatican Council”. Juan Maria Fernández y Krohn was a traditionalist cleric who had been ordained by renegade Cardinal Marcel Lefebvre of the ultra-conservative St Pius X Society. The wound he inflicted was not a serious one and the pope continued his visit.

Krohn believed that the pope was a Communist out to corrupt the Church. His radicalism was demonstrated by the fact that he accused his own mentor Lefebvre of being too moderate and by his actions after being expelled from the priesthood. He moved to Belgium where he became a lawyer, famous for slapping a judge in the face and spreading antisemitic propaganda. He was acquitted of an arson attack on a Basque separatist headquarters and accused Spanish King Juan Carlos of murdering his brother Alfonso.

760 Death of St. Gengulphus

Gengulphus of Burgundy (aka Gengoux, Gengoult, Gangolf, or Gingolph) was a decent sort of fellow. Born into Burgundian nobility (such as it was in that dark age) he served King Pepin the Short at court and on the battlefield. He was known to be a pious Christian, a generous donor to the Church, charitable to the poor, and a good lord to the peasants on his estate. 

It was his misfortune to marry a woman of easy virtue. While Gengulphus was absent on a military campaign, she committed adultery with a priest. When the nobleman was informed of this on his return, his wife protested her innocence but Gengulphus put her claim to the test. He commanded that his wife dip her hand in a spring of water he had miraculously found and, to her horror, the hand was instantly scalded. Being of a merciful disposition Gengulphus merely banned his wife from further relations with him, banished the priest, and proceeded to live a life of charity and chastity.

Alas for the poor husband. The unfaithful wife contrived to have the criminous priest return and carry out a murderous plot against her spouse. The priest attacked Gengulphus as he slept and dealt him a wound which proved fatal, whereupon he and the hussy escaped, only to meet a suitably grisly end elsewhere. (One splendid account of the guilty couple’s fate reveals that the wife was cursed with bouts of uncontrollable farting.)

The Church considered him a martyr and his relics were widely distributed. He is the patron saint of betrayed husbands and unhappy marriages. 

1886 Birth of Karl Barth 

Karl Barth (1886-1968) was the leading Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, still the subject of intense study and discussion today.

Barth was born to the family of a Swiss Reformed preacher and adhered to the Reformed tradition all his life. He was educated at university by liberal professors such as Rudolf von Harnack and the neo-Kantian Wilhelm Herrmann but turned against such theology. Barth was particularly upset when at the beginning of World War I a number of leading German thinkers, including some of his professors, signed a manifesto supporting the war and the Kaiser. Barth would say of this moment:

An entire world of theological exegesis, ethics, dogmatics, and preaching, which up to that point I had accepted as basically credible, was thereby shaken to the foundations, and with it everything which flowed at that time from the pens of the German theologians.

He would always, henceforth, be alert to any signs of Christianity selling out to contemporary culture, especially nationalism. His Epistle to the Romans, published in 1919 and reworked in 1920, attracted the attention of like-minded intellectuals such as Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich who became proponents of what was known as “dialectical theology”. A website dedicated to his work sums up his views in this way:

Barth believed that Christian theology should derive its entire thinking about God, man, sin, ethics, and society from what can actually be seen in Jesus Christ as witnessed by the Old and New Testaments rather than from sources independent of this revelation. 

In his study Karl Barth kept a copy of the crucifixion painting of the Isenheim altar of Matthias Gruenwald with John the Baptist. Barth often used this painting as an example of how a theologian should work: He should look at the finger of John with which he points toward Christ, and he should remain true to the mission of proclaiming Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth was not a fundamentalist who believed that the Bible was the actual word of God and that every word of the Bible was “true.” Instead, he saw the Bible as a human book, written by people with human failings. But he did believe that the Bible was the source of revelation and the place where people may meet God, because God has chosen to meet them there. (Readers interested in learning more about him may visit http://kbarth.org.)

In the 1920s Barth’s career prospered at German universities, first as a Professor of Dogmatics and New Testament Exegesis in Münster, and from 1930-1935 as a Professor of Systematic Theology in Bonn, but the election of Hitler’s National Socialists in 1933 forced him onto a path that would lead to his leaving his adopted country. He was a leader in the group of pastors and theologians who signed the 1934 Barmen Declaration which condemned the racist “German Christian” movement aligned with Nazi religious policies and which became one of the founding documents of the dissident Confessing Church. In 1935 he refused to take an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and was expelled from his university teaching post and from Germany.

Back in Switzerland at the University of Basel, Barth continued his monumental work of systematic theology called Church Dogmatics which would run to 6,000,000 words in thirteen volumes  but remain unfinished at his death. His fame as a theologian was enormous but he also encountered controversy when he adopted political positions that seemed at times pacifist and insufficiently anti-Communist.

St James the Lesser

Saint James, as “the son of Alphaeus” appears four times in Scripture in lists of the Twelve Apostles. There are, however, a number  of other appearances by a figure named James and sorting them out has been a challenge. He was clearly not James “son of Zebedee”, but was he the James “son of Mary”, or perhaps the James “brother of the Lord”, mentioned in Galatians? Catholic tradition has it that he was son of Alphaeus and Mary and brother (which is to say “cousin”) of Jesus.

James appears to have been prominent in the Christian community in Jerusalem. He met with Paul on a number of occasions and agreed with the decision that Gentile converts need not adhere to Jewish ritual law. Whether he was martyred by being thrown off the Temple and beaten with clubs or crucified in Egypt is uncertain but a club has long been used in art as his symbol. He is the patron saint of druggists and fullers (both professions use clubs), milliners, and Uruguay.

Today is Easter. In my home church of St Margaret’s Anglican in Winnipeg, and in many other churches, they are preaching this homily of St John Chrysostom as they do annually.

If any be devout and God-loving, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumph. If any be a good and wise servant, let him enter rejoicing into the joy of his Lord. If any be weary of fasting, let him now receive his reward. If any have labored from the first hour, let him receive today his rightful due. If any have come at the third hour, let him feast with thankfulness. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him in no wise be in doubt, for in no wise shall he suffer loss. If any be delayed even until the ninth hour, let him draw near, doubting nothing, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him not be fearful on account of his lateness; for the Master, Who is jealous of His honor, receiveth the last even as the first. He giveth rest to him that cometh at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that hath labored from the first hour; and to the last He is merciful, and the first He pleaseth; to the one He giveth, and to the other He bestoweth; and He receiveth the works, and welcometh the intention; and the deed He honoureth, and the offering He praiseth. Wherefore, then, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord; both the first and the second, receive ye your reward. Ye rich and ye poor, with one another exult.

Ye sober and ye slothful, honor the day. Ye that have kept the fast and ye that have not, be glad today. The table is full-laden, delight ye all. The calf is fatted; let none go forth hungry. Let all enjoy the feast of faith, receive all ye the riches of goodness. Let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom hath been revealed. Let no one weep for his transgressions, for forgiveness hath dawned from the tomb. Let no one fear death, for the death of the Saviour hath set us free. He hath quench by it, He hath led hades captive, He Who descended into hades. He embittered it, when it tasted of His flesh. And foretelling this, Isaiah cried: “Hades,” he saith, “was embittered when it encountered Thee below.” It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered. It received a body and encountered God. It received earth, and met heaven. It received that which it saw, and fell to what it did not see. O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art cast down.

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.

Christ is risen, and life flourisheth.

Christ is risen, and there is none dead in the tombs.

For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of them that have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.

428

Nestorius becomes Patriarch of Constantinople

Nestorius (c. 386-c. 450) was a leading Christian theologian at a time when the defining of Christ’s nature became a blood sport in the eastern Roman church. He reached the pinnacle of being named to the see of the empire’s capital and then was branded a heretic, deposed, and exiled.

Born in Asia Minor and educated in Syria, Nestorius attracted the attention of Emperor Theodosius II (founder of the University of Constantinople and builder of the city’s great land walls) who named him archbishop. His appointment was resented by many local clergy and his writings on the human/divine nature of Jesus drew criticism. Nestorius, for example, was uncomfortable with the notion of the Virgin Mary being called Theotokos — “God-Bearer”; for him Jesus had not been born a god, but a man. He preferred the term Christokos, “Christ-Bearer”. To his opponents, led by Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria, this seemed to deny the hypostatic union of humanity and divinity and to posit a dual, separate set of natures. Worse, it seemed to imply that the human aspect predominated. Cyril, rather a nasty character in many ways and not one to back down from using violence, wrote this rather measured admonition to Nestorius:

We, therefore, confess one Christ and Lord, not as worshipping. a man with the Word (lest this expression “with the Word” should suggest to the mind the idea of division), but worshipping him as one and the same, forasmuch as the body of the Word, with which he sits with the Father, is not separated from the Word himself, not as if two sons were sitting with him, but one by the union with the flesh. If, however, we reject the personal union as impossible or unbecoming, we fall into the error of speaking of two sons, for it will be necessary to distinguish, and to say, that he who was properly man was honoured with the appellation of Son, and that he who is properly the Word of God, has by nature both the name and the reality of Sonship. We must not, therefore, divide the one Lord Jesus Christ into two Sons. Neither will it at all avail to a sound faith to hold, as some do, an union of persons; for the Scripture has not said that the Word united to himself the person of man, butthat he was made flesh. This expression, however, “the Word was made flesh,” can mean nothing else but that he partook of flesh and blood like to us; he made our body his own, and came forth man from a woman, not casting off his existence as God, or his generation of God the Father, but even in taking to himself flesh remaining what he was. This the declaration of the correct faith proclaims everywhere. This was the sentiment of the holy Fathers; therefore they ventured to call the holy Virgin, the Mother of God, not as if the nature of the Word or his divinity had its beginning from the holy Virgin, but because of her was born that holy body with a rational soul, to which the Word being personally united is said to be born according to the flesh.

Nestorius would repudiate the hostile characterizations of his teachings, but the 431 First Council of Ephesus (held in the city with a near-maniacal devotion to the Virgin, who was said to have spent her final years there) condemned Nestorius as a heretic and ordered him deposed. After much more theological wrangling and imperial maneuvering, Nestorius was exiled to a remote monastery far up the Nile where he eventually died.

After the Council of Ephesus, an episcopal cleansing took place, driving out many of the bishops who had supported Nestorius. Some of these men migrated out of the Roman sphere into the Persian empire where they established the Church in the East. For almost a thousand years this church took Christianity throughout Asia and as far as China, before it was eventually wiped out by Tamerlane’s Muslim hordes. Today, the veneration of Nestorius continues in some churches in Syria and Iraq, now sadly under Islamic attack again.

1946

Death of Clemens August von Galen

The life of Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878-1946) illustrates the difficulty of being a good man in an evil state. Born into a family of Westphalian nobility he became a priest in 1904 but was always interested in German politics. He supported his country’s effort in World War I and was suspicious of the Weimar Republic that replaced the monarchy at war’s end. A fierce anti-Communist, he at first welcomed the anti-Bolshevik policies of the Nazi party; swastika-waving storm-troopers attended his installation as Bishop of Münster in 1933.  Very quickly, however, he became an outspoken critic of Hitler’s attacks on the Catholic Church and Christianity; he openly mocked the paganism of the Nazi elite and refused to inject antisemitism into his schools’ curriculum.

In 1937 he backed the papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge which castigated the Nazi regime and, with other bishops, von Galen opposed the “Life Unworthy of Life” program — the euthanisation carried out on the sick and mentally ill by the T-4 program. Despite the arrests of thousands Christian clergy after the beginning of World War II von Galen preached against the excesses of the Gestapo, euthanasia, concentration camps and the disappearance of the rule of law. These sermons, printed and distributed secretly throughout Germany, earned him the title of the “Lion of Münster” and inspired resistance movements. The Nazi government considered having him murdered but decided to wait for revenge until the war had been won.

Von Galen continued his opposition to injustice after the Allied victory, criticizing Russian occupiers for their policy of rape and the British for keeping civilian rations at a starvation level. Nevertheless Pope Pius XII named him a cardinal shortly before his death in 1946. He was beatified in 2003 by Pope John Paul II.

St Patrick and the Trinity

I am reluctant to leave St Patrick behind when there is this brilliant bit of animation to be shown. The good saint was famous for explaining the mystery of the Trinity with a shamrock — three leaves on one plant. That may not be theologically rigorous enough, according to this Lutheran cartoon satire.

St Patrick’s Day

March 17 is sacred to the memory of Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, Nigeria, and Boston. Born in the late 300s to a noble Romano-Briton family, he was kidnapped as a teen and enslaved in Ireland as a swineherd. He escaped, returned to the civilization of Britain, and became a priest with the intention of spreading Christianity to the Irish. In this, he was very successful, becoming the stuff of legends. As we swill our green-dyed beer today and (at least in western Canada, wait for the ice to melt), let us enjoy this particular set of myths retold in the 19th century.

The principal enemies that St. Patrick found to the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, were the Druidical priests of the more ancient faith, who, as might naturally be supposed, were exceedingly adverse to any innovation. These Druids, being great magicians, would have been formidable antagonists to any one of less miraculous and saintly powers than Patrick. Their obstinate antagonism was so great, that, in spite of his benevolent disposition, he was compelled to curse their fertile lands, so that they became dreary bogs: to curse their rivers, so that they produced no fish: to curse their very kettles, so that with no amount of fire and patience could they ever be made to boil; and, as a last resort, to curse the Druids themselves, so that the earth opened and swallowed them up.

A popular legend relates that the saint and his followers found themselves, one cold morning, on a mountain, without a fire to cook their break-fast, or warm their frozen limbs. Unheeding their complaints, Patrick desired them to collect a pile of ice and snow-balls: which having been done, he breathed upon it, and it instantaneously became a pleasant fire—a fire that long after served to point a poet’s conceit in these lines:

Saint Patrick, as in legends told,
The morning being very cold,
In order to assuage the weather,
Collected bits of ice together;
Then gently breathed upon the pyre,
When every fragment blazed on fire.
Oh! if the saint had been so kind,
As to have left the gift behind
To such a lovelorn wretch as me,
Who daily struggles to be free:
I’d be content—content with part,
I’d only ask to thaw the heart,
The frozen heart, of Polly Roe,

With eyes of blue and breast of snow.