These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968), person of prayer

The life and writings of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton mark him as one of the great prophetic spiritual writers and teachers of the twentieth century. Merton integrated his life and writing by embracing wholeheartedly contradiction and paradox while expressing his passionate beliefs as a Christian through the voice of the mystic and poet. The greatness of Merton’s legacy lies largely in his capacity to record with searing transparency both his personal spiritual journey and his observations on the spiritual, political, economic, social and environmental issues of his day.

He was above all open to experience and not afraid of it: “Suspended entirely from God’s mercy, I am content for anything to happen” (Journal, November 29, 1952).

Merton was born on 31 January 1915 in Prades, France. Perhaps, classically, his was an unhappy childhood. Merton’s mother died when he was six. His father was an artist who, having moved around constantly, often leaving his son alone, died when Merton was fifteen. For several years Merton lived freely following his desires but also accompanied by personal angst and intense searching. In his mid-twenties, as a student at Columbia University, he experienced a religious conversion and joined the Catholic Church. In 1941 he entered the Trappist Monastery at Gethsemane in Kentucky and spent the rest of his life as a member of that community.

His tragic and premature death from an accidental electrocution on 10 December 1968, while at an international conference of monks in Bangkok, was noted with a front-page obituary in The New York Times. He was 58 years old.

A man who loved silence yet felt compelled to write about silence. A man who craved solitude yet chose to disclose himself to the world and become fully engaged with it in order to discover more about God for himself and for others. A man who shunned public acclaim yet was read and admired by millions. What is the key to this great spiritual teacher? The key is in the remarkable gift of his writing and what it communicates to us. Writing was literally Merton’s life. “To write is to think and to live—even to pray” (Journal, September, 1958).

Merton’s first memoir, The Seven Story Mountain, the story of his journey from self-absorbed youth to novice monk, became a best-seller and has remained in print since 1948. Merton’s personal journals run to seven volumes. He writes in many different genres: devotional and philosophical meditations (e.g. New Seeds of Contemplation and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander); social criticism and commentary (e.g. The Seeds of Destruction); explorations in Eastern spirituality (e.g. Zen and The Birds of Appetite); biblical studies (e.g. Bread in the Wilderness); and wrote several collections of poetry and essays.

Merton is always evocative and his insights illuminating on the nature of being human and on our ability to perceive God at work in our selves, each other and the world. And so he wrote:

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me now that I realise what we all are. If only everybody could realise this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Merton was profoundly interested in the East and especially in how the ways Eastern thought, particularly Buddhism, might illuminate aspects of the Western tradition:

If I can unite in myself, in my own spiritual life, the thought of the East and the West, of the Greek and Latin fathers, I will create in myself a reunion of the divided Church, and from that unity in myself can come the exterior and visible unity of the Church. For, if we want to bring together East and West, we cannot do it by imposing one upon the other. We must contain both in ourselves and transcend them both in Christ (28 April 1957).

Merton was a radical inclusivist and thoroughly post-modern. Yet ultimately, his is the voice of the mystic and poet: “By the reading of Scripture I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed round me and with me. The sky seems to be more pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green, light is sharper on the outlines of the forests and the hills, and the whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music in the earth under my feet.” (8 August 1949)

(Quotations from Merton are from The Intimate Merton, His Life from His Journals. Edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo. Lion Publishing: Oxford, 1999.)

Carolyn Craig-Emilsen

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Nicholas of Myra, bishop, faithful servant, pioneer

Few have spoken to power as memorably and effectively as St Nicholas of Myra: ‘I will stir up an uncontrollable revolt against you’, he is said to have threatened the Emperor Constantine, ‘and hand over your carcass and your entrails to the wild beasts for food, bearing witness against you before the celestial king, Christ’. In another account, he apparently biffed the heretic Arius on the nose at the Council of Nicea, receiving a copy of the gospels from Jesus for his trouble. This ‘brightest dawn of piety’, ‘light of justice’ and ‘lover of the poor’ is revered by Christians around the world. He was a fourth-century bishop of Myra, a city in Asia Minor. His relics were translated to Bari (in southern Italy) in 1087.

Nicholas demonstrated his holiness from birth. On Wednesdays and Fridays, the baby Nicholas suckled only once at the appointed hour, demonstrating the ascetic and priestly virtue that would characterise his life. He was cast as an image of John the Baptist, who was born to a women previously barren, whereas Nicholas’ mother was physically barren after his birth, becoming instead fertile in spirit, filled with all Christ-like virtues. Celebrating Nicholas’ saint day on the sixth of December in the lead up to Christmas, we celebrate a holy man whose life, like the Baptist’s, pointed to Christ.

Many of the stories associated with the saint highlight his justice and merciful equity. Born to wealthy parents, he gave up his possessions for the good of the poor, avoiding political and economic corruption (alongside women and the delights of the theatre). The earliest account of his life has him acting to correct a potentially disastrous and murderous miscarriage of justice, when he saves three people about to be executed by a corrupt official. (The fame of this deed makes another prisoner similarly falsely accused call for St Nicholas’ aid, resulting in the warning to the emperor quoted above). Tyrants, we are told, could not endure his just and equitable rebuke.

Throughout, he is depicted as a ‘just tree of life’ who nourishes his flock by his deeds, orthodoxy and holiness. He gave alms to the poor, and famously (and secretly) gave bags of gold to a father so impoverished he was contemplating selling his daughters into prostitution. On one occasion, he multiplied from an imperial consignment sufficient grain to feed his people for two years during a famine, leaving the original consignment undiminished. He cared for the outcast as ‘champion of widows’, ‘father of orphans’ and ‘comforter of the poor’. Dramatically, he cast out Greco-Roman demons, and destroyed their temples. We hear that he went to the Temple of Artemis, that ‘most foul building’, and ‘overthrew not only its upper parts to the ground but also dug up its very foundations and rendered the demons who dwelt there exiles’, thereby securing the inhabitants from the evils of paganism.

Nicholas’ body, always a sweet-smelling sign of divinity, became the source after his death of a perfume or holy manna that wards off all dangers, to the glory of God.

Antiphon: Nicholas, friend of God, when invested with the episcopal insignia, showed himself a friend to all.
Versicle: Pray for us, blessed Nicholas.
Response: That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Oratio: O God, you adorned the pious blessed Bishop Nicholas with countless miracles; grant, we beseech you, that through his merits and prayers, we may be delivered from the flames of hell. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Hours of Henry VIII, fol. 182v: http://www.themorgan.org/collection/hours-of-henry-viii/45; For these and other stories about St Nicholas, see the sources at http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/home/)

Dr Michael Champion

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Dorothy Day, faithful servant

Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, USA, in 1897, but was brought up in Chicago. Her family were nominal Anglicans – religion was not a feature of her up bringing. She became a journalist after leaving university and involved herself heavily in left wing radical causes. During this time, she had two love affairs. The first culminated in an abortion, and the second in the birth of an illegitimate child.

“By little and by little” she felt called to join the Catholic Church. She had read the Bible during a brief stint in jail earlier in her life, and the Gospel had attracted her. She occasionally dropped into the local Catholic Church and was taken with the atmosphere and the devotion of the worshippers there. A local nun befriended her and taught her about the faith and the Catholic Church. When her daughter was born, Dorothy arranged for her to be baptised by the local Catholic priest, and shortly after she herself became a member of the Catholic Church. This amazed her friends and caused a rift with her de facto husband. Being an atheist and an anarchist, he refused to be married by either Church or State, so they made the painful decision to separate.

Dorothy Day recognised that the Catholic Church was rich, but she felt that it welcomed the poor and genuinely tried to help them, and this attracted her. She and some friends founded a religious newspaper – The Catholic Worker. This paper concentrated on social issues and ran on a shoestring. The staff received no salaries and worked for their keep. The paper was sold on the streets for one cent a copy and they never knew where the money for the next printer’s bill was coming from. The Catholic Worker advocated the establishment of Houses of Hospitality – refuges for the poor and destitute. The idea took on, and these Houses sprang up in parishes all over the USA. These Houses proved to be a godsend, especially during the Depression years of the 1930’s. For the rest of her life, Dorothy Day lived in one of them.

She was a great communicator, especially through her writing. She embraced all the great social issues of the time and gave them a Christian perspective. Alleviation of poverty, peace, unionism, civil rights and the Anti-Vietnam movement all attracted her support. She was an enthusiastic demonstrator and picketer, and on several occasions was jailed for her efforts. She was much in demand as a speaker, both in the USA and overseas. Her guiding vision was that she wanted to help create a world in which it was easier to be good.

Her writings reveal her as a humble, compassionate person, for whom Christianity and life were the same thing. She was a very human person. When things got too noisy for her, she would open the door of her room and call for Holy Silence and, late in life, after a supper of baked potatoes and over-spiced cabbage, she wrote that she was in favour of becoming a vegetarian only if the vegetables were cooked right.

Dorothy Day died on the 29th November 1980, aged 83.

God of surprises,

We remember before you

the life and warmth of Dorothy Day.

For her boundless enthusiasm,

for her pioneering spirit,

for her work among the poor, we thank you.

God our God, grant us the grace to follow her example.   

Rev Ross Mackinnon

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

G.F. Handel, faithful servant

George Frederick Handel  (1685-1759)

Born in Halle, Germany on 23^rd February 1685 (the same year as J. S. Bach), Handel’s surname was originally Händel. His Christian names had a variety of spellings, but the English forms George Frederick eventually predominated. Handel first studied law, but following the death of his father he concentrated on music. He soon became a brilliant performer on violin and keyboard instruments. At the age of 25 he was appointed court conductor at Hanover, having already composed four operas.

After visits to England he settled there permanently in 1712 and became a British subject in 1726. Queen Anne gave him a permanent salary of £200 per year, which was raised to £600 by King George II.

Between 1720 and 1730 Handel wrote 15 operas but several opera houses founded between 1719 and 1734 ran into financial trouble, leaving him in considerable debt.

From 1737 his major choral works were limited to oratorios, the most famous being Messiah, first performed in Dublin in 1742. In recent times Messiah has usually been shortened by the omission of several items, but the original was quite long and was composed in the remarkably short time of less than four weeks. It is undoubtedly the most popular of all oratorios, being performed by many choirs across the world each year. It appeals both to regular concert-goers and to people who attend concerts only rarely.

Handel’s compositions include 32 oratorios, 46 operas, 28 solo-cantatas, 72 cantatas of other kinds as well as a great number of orchestral works, solo works for various instruments, anthems and songs. Of his orchestral works the most famous is probably the Water Music, composed about 1715 for a royal “progress” on the Thames.

In 1737 Handel had a stroke, which left him partially paralysed, and by 1752 he was completely blind. Despite these disabilities he continued composing, with the help of a copyist, and he even directed some performances of his oratorios. His last performance of Messiah was on 6^th April 1759, only eight days before his death.

Many people say they cannot read the Scripture passages used in Messiah without hearing Handel’s music in their heads. This applies particularly to passages from Isaiah (e.g. “He shall feed his flock”, Is.40:11) and Revelation (e.g. “Worthy is the Lamb”, Rev.5: 12-13).

Handel composed only three hymn-tunes but the tune MACCABAEUS, sung in many languages to the Easter hymn “Thine be the glory”, was adapted from one of his oratorios.

Rev D’Arcy Wood

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

J.S.Bach, faithful servant

Johann Sebastian Bach  (1685-1750)

There were evidently 53 members of the Bach family, between 1520 and 1809, who were distinguished musicians. The most famous by far was Johann Sebastian, born on 21^st March 1685 at Eisenach in Thuringia, Germany.

His massive output as a composer is often classified into the three periods of his working life as organist, choirmaster and composer, the first at Weimar (1708-17), then Kőthen (1718-23) and finally Leipzig (1723-50). Most of his greatest works were composed during the last  –  and longest  – of these periods, when he held the prestigious post of Kantor at St Thomas’. In this appointment he was in charge of the music at the school, at St Thomas’ Church and in neighbouring churches.

In Leipzig, and before that period as well, he composed cantatas, which are liturgical works involving choir, a small orchestra and (usually) several vocal soloists. When a new cantata was required, which was almost every week at one stage, Bach would compose the music to suit the forces available that particular week. Most cantatas were based on a hymn-tune, which was already in use in the Lutheran Church at the time. Bach would arrange the tune with new harmonies for the choir and set one or more arias and recitatives for the soloists. These latter would elaborate the Scripture readings for the day. Lutheran pietism was at its height, so the texts would often describe an intimate relationship between the believer and the Lord Jesus. Bach’s own faith was expressed in the intensity of the music.

The chorale preludes for organ had a liturgical function also, being rather like meditations on the main hymn-tune (or tunes) of the day. Still played frequently by organists around the world, the chorale preludes numbered 143 by the end of Bach’s life. Young organists, to this day, cut their teeth on the preludes and fugues, of which 26 survive.

Bach’s St John Passion and St Matthew Passion are monumental works. One commentator has described the St Matthew as one of the greatest, if not the greatest achievement of Western art, in any medium. Other sacred works on a large scale are his Mass in B minor and the Christmas Oratorio.

Bach also composed a great many secular works. It has often been remarked that the style of these is the same as his sacred music, which raises the interesting question of what makes music “sacred”. In Bach’s case the answer is probably the context in which the music was intended to be performed. His orchestral suites and other chamber works such as the famous Brandenburg Concertos were performed at court or in large households. His solo works for harpsichord and clavier, also his unaccompanied works for violin, could be performed in any venue. Thousands of young pianists today are introduced to his Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues, commonly known simply as “the 48”. Not all his keyboard works are short: the  Goldberg Variations and The Art of Fugue are long and extremely demanding.

In the last months of his life Bach became completely blind and he died in Leipzig on 28^th July 1750 at the age of 65.

Although he was famous in his lifetime, Bach’s music was almost neglected in the latter half of the 18^th century and the early part of the 19^th. It was Felix Mendelssohn who was mainly responsible for the revival of interest in  – and performance of  – the works of Bach. The huge circulation of recordings since World War II has meant that millions of people have come to appreciate the genius of Bach. His mastery of composition has exerted great influence on later composers, not only those of the Romantic era but also those regarded as avant-garde.

by Rev D’Arcy Wood

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Isaac Watts, faithful servant

Isaac Watts   (1674 – 1748)

Isaac Watts is sometimes called “the father of English hymnody”, not because there were no hymns in English before him but because of the strength of his theology, his poetic skill and the inspiration he gave to later hymn-writers from Charles Wesley onward.

Isaac’s father (also called Isaac) was in prison when his son was born because the older Isaac was a strong Dissenter, i.e. one of those who would not conform to the Church of England, the Church “established” by law. Until the 19^th century only members of that Church could attend university, so the younger Isaac was educated at a nonconformist academy near London.

In 1699 Watts began his ministry as assistant at Mark Lane Independent Chapel in London and three years later was appointed the senior minister there. In 1712 he became seriously ill and was invited to live with the family of Sir Thomas Abney in Hertfordshire. His health was always fragile and he remained with the Abney household for the rest of his life, becoming the family chaplain. Despite his poor health he was able to continue a limited ministry at the Mark Lane congregation and he also continued writing. His philosophical and theological works were highly regarded.

Watts’s first volume of hymns, many of them based on the psalms, was published in 1707. Another volume published in 1715 went through 95 editions by 1810, a testament to their huge popularity. A 20^th century commentator George Sampson wrote that “Watts shaped out the pattern of the congregational hymn as we know it”. Some of his hymns which are in common use today are “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath” (a paraphrase of Psalm 146), “Our God, our help in ages past” (a paraphrase of Psalm 90) and “When I survey the wondrous cross”, which is regarded by some as the greatest of all hymns in the English language. Twenty-seven of his hymns and paraphrases are included in the hymnal “Together in Song” (1999), a number exceeded only by Charles Wesley.

Very few hymns have demonstrated the staying-power of the hymns of Watts. His profound knowledge of Scripture, his theological scholarship and his poetic ability combined to produce 600 hymns, many of them of outstanding quality. Whether writing about creation, the person of Christ, salvation, the Word of God or Christian living, Watts nearly always goes to the heart of the matter.  The noted writer Brian Wren (born 1936), whose many hymns are sung across the English-speaking world, has acknowledged his considerable debt to Watts.

by Rev D’Arcy Wood