Christmas Every Day

793

Vikings attack the monastery at Lindisfarne

Off the eastern coast of Northumbria is the island of Lindisfarne. In the 600s Celtic monks established a priory there which became a centre of Christian learning and evangelism in Anglo-Saxon England. Its calligraphers and illuminators produced one of the ornaments of civilization, the Lindisfarne Gospels, (See the title page of the Book of Matthew below.)

In 793 the island saw the first ever Viking attack on the British Isles. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of the Northumbrians, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive whirlwinds, lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on [June 8th], the ravaging of wretched heathen people destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne.

The ease with which the raid on Lindisfarne had yielded slaves and loot soon spread through Scandinavia and prompted centuries of Viking incursions across Europe. Possessed of the remarkable technology of the longboat, a craft which enabled them to penetrate foreign countries through river systems or challenge the North Atlantic, raiders from Denmark, Norway and Sweden soon appeared everywhere from the Black Sea to the coast of Newfoundland. They raped, looted and pillaged wherever they could or traded when they encountered superior forces. They destroyed kingdoms, established new cities like Dublin, and created new states like Normandy, Norman England, Sicily, or the Duchy of Apuleia. Though Christianity helped to bring an end to the Viking Age, the creative destruction of these northern barbarians was a great engine of change in medieval Europe.

Spiritual Baptist/Shouter Liberation Day

The holiday in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago commemorates the repeal on March 30, 1951, of the 1917 Shouter Prohibition Ordinance that prohibited the activities of the Shouter or Spiritual Baptist faith.

When West African slaves were imported to the American hemisphere, they often clung to many of their traditional religious practices. Sometimes these customs were kept alive in secret, and sometimes by grafting them on to Christian elements. In Catholic countries hybrid folk religions called candomble, orisha or santeria developed. In Protestant countries African ecstatic dancing, prophecy and reception of the Holy Spirit in extravagant ways resembled certain Methodist or Shaker devotions. The Spiritual Baptist sect arose on some British West Indian islands and included “catching” of the Spirit, sanctified shouting, elaborate costumes and wonderfully catchy music.

Colonial officials were worried about the potential for unrest in these services and banned them in 1917, saying: “It is not only the inconvenience caused by the noise which they make that has given rise to this legislation, but also the fact that from the information that has been received, the practices which are indulged in are not such as should be tolerated in a well-conducted community”.

The abolition of this act which allowed the sect, whose followers probably number in the hundreds of thousands, to flourish again, is celebrated on this day on Tobago.

459 St Simeon Stylites dies. Simeon was an ultra-ascetic Syrian monk, famous for having spent decades living atop a pillar, praying and preaching to the crowds who came to the desert to hear him. His example was widely-imitated for a time.

1192 Treaty of Jaffa between Richard and Saladin ends Third Crusade. Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem in 1187 sparked the Third Crusade which was to have been a joint venture led by the three great leaders of western Christendom: Frederick I Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor; wily Philip Augustus of France; and Europe’s greatest warrior, Richard the Lionheart of England. Frederick died en route to the Holy Land and most of the German contingent turned for home. Philip weaseled out of his commitment early and returned to France to undermine Richard’s holdings in that country, leaving the English king with a much reduced force. He was able to defeat Saladin in open battle but lacked the resources to recapture Jerusalem. The treaty allowed for access of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem and confirmed crusader holdings along the Mediterranean coast.

1415 Furious at the execution of Czech reformer John Hus by the Council of Constance, despite an imperial safe-conduct, an assembly of Bohemian and Moravian nobles sent the Protestatio Bohemorum, a letter of protest to the  Council, vowing they would fight to maintain their religious rights. This would lead to the great Hussite Rebellion which raged from 1419 to 1433. The Czech reforming factions would defeat five Catholic crusades sent against them before agreeing to the Compacta of Prague which allowed some moderate ritual changes, especially the administration of both bread and wine to the congregation during the Mass.

1666 Great Fire of London starts. Among its architectural victims was Old St Paul’s Cathedral, a Gothic structure built from the 11^th to the 13^th century with a spire almost 490’ (149 m) tall. Its destruction led to the construction of a replacement designed by Sir Christopher Wren in the neoclassical style with a massive dome. Wren’s building was completed on Christmas Day 1711 and survived the German aerial Blitz during World War II.

St James the Greater

James, the son of Zebedee, was a fisherman called, along with his brother John, to be “fishers of men”. He and his sibling were known as “Sons of Thunders”, perhaps for their fiery tempers; the two wanted Jesus to rain down fire on Samaria and quarrelled about who would be greater in Heaven. He was one of three disciples to witness the Transfiguration and saw other of Christ’s miracles.  He is reputed to be the first of the apostles to have been martyred, murdered in 44 by the orders of Herod Agrippa (though some say Herod himself did the dirty deed.)

His relics have a fabled history of their own. Legend says they were taken to Spain in a rudderless boat guided by angels. There they were discovered at Compostela in 813 by a shepherd who reported his findings to the local bishop; a cathedral was built over the tomb. Spanish Christians believe that in a medieval battle with the Muslims occupying the country, the spirit of James appeared, riding a white horse, to lead his coreligionists to victory. As a consequence, the saint became known as Santiago Matamoros, “Saint James the Moor-Slayer” (see the image above). Compostela became one of the great pilgrim destinations.

James is the patron saint of Spain, pilgrims (who wear his cockleshell badge), those suffering from rheumatism and arthritis, soldiers, druggists and Seattle.

St Maria Goretti

How does an 11-year-old peasant girl get to be a saint? Consider the life of Maria Goretti, an illiterate Italian peasant child born in 1890. The Goretti family was poor and lived as agricultural labourers, sharing their house with another family, the Serenellis. One of the Serenelli boys, 20-year-old Alessandro, had fixated on Maria and on July 5, 1902 threatened her with a knife and tried to rape her. When she resisted he stabbed her fourteen times. In hospital the next day, before she died, she forgave Alessandro and expressed the wish that they would meet in heaven. Alessandro was convicted of her murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison; he was spared a harsher penalty only after the pleading of Maria’s widowed mother. In prison he had a religious conversion and dreamt that he was visited by the spirit of Maria who gave him lilies (symbol of her purity) which burned in his hands. On his release he was reconciled with Maria’s mother [see photo below] and became a lay Franciscan brother, living to a ripe old age.

The story of Maria’s martyrdom and miracles procured when she was prayed to led to Pope Pius XII declaring her a saint in 1950. 500,000 people filled Rome on the day of her canonization. Her mother was there — the first mother to attend the canonization of a daughter — as was the repentant Alessandro. Maria Goretti is the patron saint of chastity, rape victims, girls, youth, teenage girls, poverty, purity and forgiveness.

Serenelli wrote the following in his old age:

I’m nearly 80 years old. I’m about to depart.

Looking back at my past, I can see that in my early youth, I chose a bad path which led me to ruin myself.

My behavior was influenced by print, mass-media and bad examples which are followed by the majority of young people without even thinking. And I did the same. I was not worried.

There were a lot of generous and devoted people who surrounded me, but I paid no attention to them because a violent force blinded me and pushed me toward a wrong way of life.

When I was 20 years-old, I committed a crime of passion. Now, that memory represents something horrible for me. Maria Goretti, now a Saint, was my good Angel, sent to me through Providence to guide and save me. I still have impressed upon my heart her words of rebuke and of pardon. She prayed for me, she interceded for her murderer. Thirty years of prison followed.

If I had been of age, I would have spent all my life in prison. I accepted to be condemned because it was my own fault.

Little Maria was really my light, my protectress; with her help, I behaved well during the 27 years of prison and tried to live honestly when I was again accepted among the members of society. The Brothers of St. Francis, Capuchins from Marche, welcomed me with angelic charity into their monastery as a brother, not as a servant. I’ve been living with their community for 24 years, and now I am serenely waiting to witness the vision of God, to hug my loved ones again, and to be next to my Guardian Angel and her dear mother, Assunta.

I hope this letter that I wrote can teach others the happy lesson of avoiding evil and of always following the right path, like little children. I feel that religion with its precepts is not something we can live without, but rather it is the real comfort, the real strength in life and the only safe way in every circumstance, even the most painful ones of life.

Alessandro Serenelli, May 5, 1961

1187

The True Cross is lost

The knights of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099 and went on to establish four states on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. The County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were precarious Roman Catholic, feudal outposts in an alien landscape. Their subjects were mainly Eastern Christians of one sort or another and Muslims; their neighbours were hostile Islamic powers. The First Crusade had arrived at a time of Muslim disunity but would soon face a stronger and more united set of enemies. Edessa fell in 1144 and the Second Crusade failed to recover it. By the 1180s the great Saladin was the sultan of a great swath of territory surrounding the crusader states and he was determined to bring them down.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was an elective monarchy, dependent on the armies of quarrelling barons and the fighting monks of the Knights Templar and Hospitallers. In 1186 the hapless Guy de Lusignan (1150-94) became King. A weak man, he was bullied into leading an army against Saladin the following year rather than relying on the strength of the crusader castles to sap the sultan’s strength. Trapped in the desert, far from water, at a location known as the Horns of Hattin the Christian army was soundly defeated by Saladin. Though Guy was spared, most of the prisoners, including all of the Templars and Hospitallers were massacred. A Muslim observer described the scene:

Saladin ordered that they should be beheaded, choosing to have them dead rather than in prison. With him was a whole band of scholars and sufis and a certain number of devout men and ascetics, each begged to be allowed to kill one of them, and drew his sword and rolled back his sleeve. Saladin, his face joyful, was sitting on his dais, the unbelievers showed black despair.

Guy was taken in golden chains as prisoner to Damascus. The True Cross, Christendom’s holiest relic which was always carried in front of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s armies, was paraded before jubilant Muslim crowds and then disappears from history. Many crusader castles which had been stripped of troops for Guy’s armies soon fell to Saladin and Jerusalem itself was captured. This calamity promoted the Third Crusade which, though it recovered some of the lost territory, was never able to retake Jerusalem.

Guy, after being released by Saladin, was given Cyprus as a consolation prize — the island had been captured from the Byzantines by Richard Coeur de Lion of England. The Kingdom of Jerusalem continued to cling to a strip of coastal cities until the last stronghold fell in 1291. The title of King of Jerusalem continued to be claimed by many European royal houses in France, Spain, Germany and Italy and today the strongest claimant is likely Philip VI of Spain.

The Visitation

On this day Western churches celebrate the meeting of the Virgin Mary and her elderly relative Elizabeth, both women having miraculously become pregnant. The encounter between the future mothers of Jesus and John the Baptist became the subject of a church feast in the Middle Ages and the inspiration of countless beautiful works of art.

 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.  And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.  And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.  And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house. (Luke 1: 39-56)

1939

Election of Pope Pius XII 

Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacell (1876-1958)

The Feast of St Gregory Nazianzus

Gregory (329-390) was archbishop of Constantinople and one of the great theologians of his age. Along with Saints Basil and Gregory of Nyssa who were also born in central Asia Minor, he is known as one of the Cappadocian Fathers. Gregory defended Christianity against the revived paganism of the emperor Julian the Apostate and argued against the Arian form of Christianity which denied the divinity of Christ and which was supported by powerful politicians and churchmen in Constantinople. His brilliant oratory and writings in favour of the Trinitarian position helped that view of Christ to become orthodoxy.

533

Mercurius is elected pope and instead of using his own name becomes the first pontiff to choose a regnal name, styling himself John II. He felt it inappropriate that the Bishop of Rome should be named after the pagan god Mercury.

1492

The Christian reconquest of Spain ends with the fall of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian peninsula. In 711 an Arab and Berber army from North Africa had swept into Spain, conquering all but a corner of the northwest. From there Christian princes waged centuries of the Reconquista, gradually pushing the Muslim occupiers south until finally eradicating the Islamic presence in 1492.

The Circumcision of Jesus

This feast commemorates the traditional date for the ritual circumcision of Jesus on his eighth day. The festival was known by the 400s in the West; in the Eastern church it coincides with St Basil’s Day. Legends grew up around the child’s foreskin and its preservation as a sacred relic which could perform miracles. Charlemagne was said to have given it to Pope Leo III in 800 but as many as 18 different churches have claimed to possess it. Protestants abandoned interest in the feast and recent Roman Catholic decrees have renamed January 1 “The Octave of the Nativity”.

January 1 also saw a number of other remarkable moments in church history:

404 The monk Telemachus is torn apart by a Roman mob for trying to prevent a gladiator fight.

1431 The birth of one of the Bad Popes of the Renaissance, Rodrigo Borgia, who went on to become the notorious Pope Alexander VI.

1484 The birth of Huldreich Zwingli, a Catholic priest who led the Protestant Reformation in Zurich.

1773 The first performance of the hymn “Amazing Grace”, sung to accompany a sermon by its author John Newton.

1795 French churches, which had been closed during the worst moments of the French Revolution, are allowed to reopen.

1814 The birth of Hong Xiuchuan. Influenced by reading the tracts of some Christian missionaries to China, Hong is led to proclaim himself the Little Brother of Jesus Christ, establish the Heavenly Kingdom and provoke the worst civil war in history, the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the death of 20,000,000 people.

1927 The official outbreak of the Cristero War, a rebellion of Mexican Christians against the anti-religious regime of President Calles.