Christmas Every Day

1968  Pope Paul VI issues the “Credo of the People of God”

To commemorate the 1900th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, Pope Paul VI (1897-1978) issued the papal letter Solemni Hac Liturgia, known as “The Credo of the People of God.” It is an explication of the Roman Catholic understanding of the traditional Christian creeds. Its contents would be found largely uncontroversial by Protestants and Eastern Christians, but Articles 22-26 would cause them trouble.

One Shepherd

22. Recognizing also the existence, outside the organism of the Church of Christ, of numerous elements of truth and sanctification which belong to her as her own and tend to Catholic unity, and believing in the action of the Holy Spirit who stirs up in the heart of the disciples of Christ love of this unity, we entertain the hope that the Christians who are not yet in the full communion of the one only Church will one day be reunited in one flock with one only shepherd.
23. We believe that the Church is necessary for salvation, because Christ, who is the sole mediator and way of salvation, renders Himself present for us in His body which is the Church. But the divine design of salvation embraces all men; and those who without fault on their part do not know the Gospel of Christ and His Church, but seek God sincerely, and under the influence of grace endeavor to do His will as recognized through the promptings of their conscience, they, in a number known only to God, can obtain salvation.

Sacrifice of Calvary

24. We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ by virtue of the power received through the Sacrament of Orders, and offered by him in the name of Christ and the members of His Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered sacramentally present on our altars. We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven, and we believe that the mysterious presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses as before, is a true, real and substantial presence.

Transubstantiation

25. Christ cannot be thus present in this sacrament except by the change into His body of the reality itself of the bread and the change into His blood of the reality itself of the wine, leaving unchanged only the properties of the bread and wine which our senses perceive. This mysterious change is very appropriately called by the Church transubstantiation. Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery must, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the Consecration, so that it is the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus that from then on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine, as the Lord willed it, in order to give Himself to us as food and to associate us with the unity of His Mystical Body.(37)
26. The unique and indivisible existence of the Lord glorious in heaven is not multiplied, but is rendered present by the sacrament in the many places on earth where Mass is celebrated. And this existence remains present, after the sacrifice, in the Blessed Sacrament which is, in the tabernacle, the living heart of each of our churches. And it is our very sweet duty to honour and adore in the blessed Host which our eyes see, the Incarnate Word whom they cannot see, and who, without leaving heaven, is made present before us.

1914  Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated

On June 28, 1914 a gang of teenage terrorists, set in motion by the Serbian secret police, attacked a motorcade in Sarajevo, Bosnia. After much tragicomic bungling, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were murdered by the gunfire of Gavrilo Princip, a young fanatic who sought independence for Bosnia from Austria. A little over a month later, Princip’s action would result in the start of the Great War, an act, as Pope Benedict XV lamented, of civilizational suicide. Millions upon millions would die, empires would fall, new nations would arise with the basic quarrels unsettled, leading to another global war. The consequences of the deed performed by a teenager named after the archangel Gabriel had untold consequences for Christianity.

Almost immediately the war assumed the shape of a holy conflict with all sides claiming to be on the side of God (German troops wore belt buckles proclaiming “Gott Mit Uns”) and their enemies the servants of the devil. For the Turks it was an anti-Christian jihad against the French and British empires; for American evangelist Billy Sunday the struggle was “Germany against America, hell against heaven.” Germans saw themselves as beleaguered Davids surrounded by bestial Goliaths. Kaiser Wilhelm’s court chaplain preached a sermon  proclaiming “We are going into battle for our culture against the uncultured, for the free German personality bound to God against the instincts of the undisciplined masses. And God will be with our just weapons! For German faith and German piety are ultimately bound up with German faith and civilization.” (Karl Barth was among the few German theologians who was appalled by such an attitude.) Meanwhile the British portrayed the Kaiser as Antichrist leading a horde of church burners and nun rapists. On the national level church leaders, aside from Quakers and Mennonites, wholeheartedly supported their countries’ participation while in the trenches, troops were told the dead were Christian martyrs and the living were crusaders.

At the war’s end, thousands of churches had been levelled, most notably St Martin’s cathedral of Ypres which became a symbol of the conflict’s destruction of civility. Thousands of priests and ministers had been killed serving as chaplains or executed by occupying powers. The faith of many was shaken by the horror of the war and returning veterans were notable for their distaste for the churches whose Sunday parades they had been forced to attend in the trenches. The Orthodox Church was shattered by the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution. New secular messiahs were sought and found in Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini.

1886 The preacher meets some bandits

According to the splendid Christianity.com site:

Isaac Barton (I. B.) Kimbrough was one of those many tough 19th-century pastors who appeared on the United States frontier. Born in Tennessee in 1826, he was orphaned at seven and acquired little education. When he married in 1846, having just turned 21, he could scarcely read. Three years later he was converted to Christianity.

Immediately he set out to master reading, so that he could study the Bible and theology. He had a family to maintain, so he made a frame on his plow on which to prop a book as he worked. At night, he studied by candle or at the fire side.

The upshot was that he became something of a homespun Christian scholar, evangelist and Baptist pastor in his native Tennessee. He converted and baptized over 1,000 people and organized eight new churches. Built like a football linebacker, possessing a strong voice, and definite in his aims, he commanded considerable attention.

When Tennessee Baptists appointed him to raise money for Carson and Newman College, Kimbrough, who was already 50 years old, went to work with a will, and became known as “the beggar” because he pleaded so assiduously for funds. A fascinating episode shows him as the ultimate salesman.

A pair of highwaymen pulled a gun on him and ordered him to hand over his money. According to Kimbrough, who told the tale at the Texas State Convention on this day, June 26, 1886, he asked for a little time to comply, got off his horse, pulled out the money and laid it in two distinct piles, one of them quite small. He then told the robbers that the little pile was his. They could take that. But the larger pile was the Lord’s, and he dared them to touch that. “I collected it for the young preachers of the state who are struggling for an education at Carson and Newman College.”

The highwaymen questioned him. After learning he was a preacher and the nature of his mission, they said they’d not touch either pile of money. Kimbrough then warned them they were in a bad line of business and urged them to turn from it. He then asked them to donate something to the school! Both robbers did.

A few years later, Kimbrough moved to Texas, where he spent his remaining years in the work of Christ, founding numerous churches in the less-established regions of Texas. In 1890, he was simultaneously pastor at three churches: Hale City, Plainview (where he oversaw the building of the first Baptist church in a 120 mile radius) and Floyd City. He died at Plano, Texas in 1902.

St John’s Eve

The feast of John the Baptist takes place on June 24, a date so close to mid-summer that many popular pre-Christian customs are associated with it and, as is usual, the eve of the saint’s day is when celebrations take place.

At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights shortest. From then until December 21, daylight wanes. It is natural, therefore, that fertility, light and heat are the focus of the paganesque carryings-on. In Sweden it remains a major occasion for gaiety and hospitality with the erection of festive poles, decorated with flowers, dancing and late-night drinking. The Polish festival is called “sobótki” and traditionally involves a kind of courtship ritual of young men, and women who wear flower crowns. In Latvia, it was traditional to call the day Herbal Eve and to hold flower and herb markets (see above.)

Bonfires are the order of the day everywhere. In Quebec the day was celebrated in 1636 by cannon shots and a fire; in Turin they dance around a bonfire in the public square; in Denmark an effigy of a witch is burnt; and in Estonia old fishing boats are burnt.

St Paulinus of Nola

Butler’s Lives of the Saints gives us this account of Meropius Anicius Paulinus (354-431), a Roman bishop ministering as the empire collapsed under barbarian invasions.

PAULINUS was of a family which boasted of a long line of senators, prefects, and consuls. He was educated with great care, and his genius and eloquence, in prose and verse, were the admiration of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. He had more than doubled his wealth by marriage, and was one of the foremost men of his time. Though he was the chosen friend of Saints, and had a great devotion to St. Felix of Nola, he was still only a catechumen, trying to serve two masters. But God drew him to Himself along the way of sorrows and trials. He received baptism, withdrew into Spain to be alone, and then, in consort with his holy wife, sold all their vast estates in various parts of the empire, distributing their proceeds so prudently that St. Jerome says East and West were filled with his alms. He was then ordained priest, and retired to Nola in Campania. There he rebuilt the Church of St. Felix with great magnificence, and served it night and day, living a life of extreme abstinence and toil. In 409 he was chosen bishop, and for more than thirty years so ruled as to be conspicuous in an age blessed with many great and wise bishops. St. Gregory the Great tells us that when the Vandals of Africa had made a descent on Campania, Paulinus spent all he had in relieving the distress of his people and redeeming them from slavery. At last there came a poor widow; her only son had been carried off by the son-in-law of the Vandal king. “Such as I have I give thee,” said the Saint to her; “we will go to Africa, and I will give myself for your son.” Having overborne her resistance, they went, and Paulinus was accepted in place of the widow’s son, and employed as gardener. After a time the king found out, by divine interposition, that his son-in-law’s slave was the great Bishop of Nola. He at once set him free, granting him also the freedom of all the townsmen of Nola who were in slavery. One who knew him well says he was meek as Moses, priestlike as Aaron, innocent as Samuel, tender as David, wise as Solomon, apostolic as Peter, loving as John, cautious as Thomas, keen-sighted as Stephen, fervent as Apollos. He died in 431.

Paulinus is sometimes credited with inventing the custom of ringing church bells and was a great patron of art in churches.

St Silverius, son of a pope, pope, ex-pope

Few men who have attained the office of Bishop of Rome can have had such a roller-coaster career as Silverius (d. 537 or 538). Italy at this time was in the throes of the Gothic Wars, a generation of battles between the Ostrogothic occupiers who were Arian Christians and the Byzantine Empire under the great Justinian. It was Justinian’s dream to reconquer the western part of the Roman empire which had been lost to the Germanic barbarians. He succeeded in retaking North Africa, Sicily, and part of Spain but was drawn into a conflict that devastated Italy. It was also a time when the imperial court in Constantinople was tangled in the lingering controversies about the number of Christ’s natures.

Silverius was son of Pope Hormisdas (d. 523) who fathered him before he began his priestly career. Hormisdas had to deal with the heresies springing from those in the East who rejected Trinitarianism and the Council of Chalcedon’s definition of the Godhead, a situation made worse by the fact that the powers occupying Rome were antitrinitarian themselves. Silverius was elected pope in 536 with the support of the Gothic court but later that year imperial forces under Belisarius took Rome. Some say that the empress Theodora caused Belisarius to depose Silverius and send him into exile because of his opposition to the Monophysite schism (which Theodora always supported) but it may simply have been a political coup to remove someone who did not owe his position to those in the capital, Constantinople. Silverius is said to have died of starvation in captivity. He was widely recognized as a saint and is still venerated on southern Italian islands (and in the Italian community in New York, as shown above) as San Silverio.

Vitus, saint of the dance

Legend tales us that Vitus was the son of a Sicilian pagan in the days of the Roman Empire, perhaps in the early 300s during the general persecutions. His conversion to Christianity led to his arrest along with his nurse who had proselytized him, and her husband. They were scourged, thrown to the lions (who politely refused the meal) and were finally cast into boiling oil.

Over the centuries Vitus attracted a host of patronages; he is called upon by those afflicted by animal attacks, wild beasts, dog bites, epilepsy, lightning, snake bites, and storms. When he was placed in the vat of oil, a rooster was thrown in along with him. This has led to Vitus being the patron saint of early rising and a protection against oversleeping. In the Middle Ages it was believed that dancing in front of a statue of Vitus would bring favour; thus, his name was attached to a kind of chorea which produces uncoordinated jerking movements — St Vitus’ Dance. From this comes also his patronage of dancers and entertainers in general.

He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Visitors to Prague can see a magnificent Gothic cathedral dedicated to him.

1525 Marriage of Martin Luther

One of the constant demands of medieval church reformers and heretic groups was the permission for clergy to marry. The mandating of an all-celibate priesthood led, such voices said, to both sodomy inside the monasteries and the preying on wives and daughters by secular clergy. Had not some of the apostles been married men? Did not the Eastern Church permit priests to have wives and families? Moreover, the Church recognized that clergy did contract illicit unions regardless of canon law and that such priests were welcomed by their congregations knowing that their sons and daughters were safer as a result. Many bishops seemed rather to welcome the revenue from fines for such cohabiting than crack down on such priests.

When the Protestant Reformation began, these cries for married clergy were heard again. One of the first priests to marry was the Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli and while Martin Luther was in hiding after the Diet of Worms, his replacement in Wittenberg, the 35-year-old priest Andreas Karlstadt married a 15-year-old girl. Luther himself was in favour of married clergy and had famously helped some nuns escape their convents and vows of celibacy. These women, smuggled out in a pickle barrel, were mentored by Luther who was able to find husbands or places for them all but one, Katharina von Bora, whose family refused to have anything to do with her. Luther himself had always been reluctant to marry and start a family, believing, with some justification, that his life was under threat, but when Katharina informed him that she was willing to marry him he accepted. They were wed in 1525 and Luther’s life immediately improved, to his astonishment. “There is a lot to get used to in the first year of marriage,” he said. “One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pigtails that were not there before.” Luther’s personal hygiene, diet, and financial situation were all taken in hand by Katharina. The marriage was a famous success.

1311

The dedication of a masterpiece

One of the reasons why the artistic explosion that we call the Italian Renaissance occurred first in the northern part of the peninsula was the flourishing of the city-state. Florence, Venice, Siena, Milan, Pisa, Mantua, etc., etc., all possessed wealthy urban elites with money to spend beautifying their churches, palaces and public places. In 1308 Siena commissioned the artist Duccio di Buoninsegno (c. 1255-1319) to produce a splendid new altarpiece for the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. Three years later Ducccio presented the masterwork known as Maestà (Madonna with Child Enthroned and Twenty Angels and Nineteen Saints). The massive work (16′ x 16′) features the Madonna enthroned in majesty (thus the Italian term “maestà”) and episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary and Christ. It was a landmark in Italian painting and part of the move from a static Byzantine presentation to more natural depictions.

An observer of the work’s dedication remarked:

And on that day when it was brought into the cathedral, all workshops remained closed, and the bishop commanded a great host of devoted priests and monks to file past in solemn procession. This was accompanied by all the high officers of the Commune and by all the people; all honorable citizens of Siena surrounded said panel with candles held in their hands, and women and children followed humbly behind. They accompanied the panel amidst the glorious pealing of bells after a solemn procession on the Pizza del Campo into the very cathedral; and all this out of reverence for the costly panel… The poor received many alms, and we prayed to the Holy Mother of God, our patron saint, that she might in her infinite mercy preserve this our city of Siena from every misfortune, traitor or enemy.

St Paul of Constantinople

During the middle of the fourth century when the theological battle between the Arians (who believed that Christ was not divine) and the Trinitarians was at its height, choosing the correct side was often a matter of life or death. At this time, the Arians, with the support of the imperial family, were in the ascendant, and we can see in the career of St Paul of Constantinople that theology could be a blood sport.

St Paul was a native of Thessalonica, but from his boyhood he had been secretary to Bishop Alexander by whom he was afterwards promoted to be a deacon in the church of Constantinople. When the aged hierarch lay on his death-bed-apparently in the year 336 — he recommended St Paul as his successor and the electors endorsed his choice. Paul was accordingly consecrated by several orthodox bishops, and practically all that is known of himself and his life is the record of an episcopate made stormy by the heretical Arians, who had supported the candidature of an older deacon called Macedonius. At their instigation the Emperor Constantius summoned a council of Arian bishops, by whom Paul was deposed and banished. The vacant see was bestowed, not upon Macedonius, but upon the neighbouring metropolitan Eusebius of Nicomedia. St Paul took shelter in the west, and could not regain possession of the see until after the death of his powerful antagonist, which, however, took place soon afterwards. He was then reinstated amid popular rejoicings. The Arians, who still refused to acknowledge him, set up a rival bishop in the person of Macedonius, and soon the opposing factions came into open conflict and the city became a prey to violence and tumult. Constantius therefore ordered his general Hermogenes to eject Paul from Constantinople. But the populace, infuriated at the prospect of losing their bishop, set fire to the general’s house, killed him, and dragged his body through the streets. This outrage brought Constantius himself to Constantinople. He pardoned the people, but he sent St Paul into exile. On the other hand he refused to confirm the election of Macedonius which, like that of his rival, had taken place without the imperial sanction.

We find St Paul once more at Constantinople in 344, and Constantius then consented to re-establish him for fear of incurring the hostility of his brother Constans, who with Pope St Julius I supported Paul. But on the death of the Western emperor in 350 Constantius sent the praetorian prefect Philip to Constantinople with instructions to expel Paul and to instal Macedonius in his place. Too astute to risk incurring the fate of Hermogenes, Philip had recourse to a stratagem. He invited St Paul to meet him at the public baths of Zeuxippus and, whilst the people, suspicious of his designs, were gathered outside, he hustled Paul out of a side window and got him away by sea. The unfortunate bishop was exiled to Singara, in Mesopotamia, and from thence was removed to Emesa in Syria and finally to Cucusus in Armenia. There he was left for six days and nights without food in a gloomy dungeon, and then strangled. This, at any rate, was the account given by Philagrius, an official who was stationed at Cucusus at the time.