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.

First Christian service in  Australia, Christian pioneers

This was held in what is now Martin Place, Sydney, at 10am on 3 February, 1788. The Rev Richard Johnson led the service from under a large tree. Attendance was compulsory for the convicts. They were guarded by soldiers to ensure that they did not misbehave or try to slip away. For some, it may well have been the first service they had attended.  Phillip was pleased with the tone of the service and the attention given to the sermon on Psalm 116:12.  Johnson also performed the first baptism. The first service of Holy Communion was held on 17 February, 1788.

Unfortunately, the text of Johnson’s sermon has not survived. It was reported that he proclaimed a Gospel which gave generous pardon to the guilty, cleansing to the polluted, healing to the sick, happiness to the miserable and life to the dying. There were common themes in Evangelical preaching. Though Phillip suspected Johnson of Methodist leanings, he respected the devoted pastoral care Johnson gave the troubled, sick and dying.

Johnson disliked being an open-air preacher, but had no choice for there was no church building provided for a decade, until he built one at his own expense in 1798. It was burnt down on 1 October, possibly by disgruntled convicts. In addition to his ministry in Sydney, Johnson regularly travelled by boat to Parramatta to take services there. His preaching was complemented by catechizing and the distribution of simple Christian literature.

by Rev Dr Ian Breward

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.

John Chrysostom, faithful servant

In Antioch in about 371, the 22-year old John was already well-known, both as the most outstanding pupil ever of Libanios, the most famous orator of the day, and as a devout Christian, a reader in the church.  But when he heard of plans to ordain him, John, painfully aware of his immaturity and weakness, hid and then embraced the monastic life.  He was not running away (he always condemned the monk who did not serve his neighbour) but running to his only source of help.  In the harsh discipline of the Syrian monks, John sought not so much to subjugate the body as to free the desires, the imagination and the will, so that they could be focussed on God; and so the fasts and sleepless nights in prayer were accompanied by a deep immersion in the Old and New Testaments.  After four intense years, physically weakened but spiritually stronger, he returned to Antioch and the service of Bishop Meletios.  The outward forms of monasticism may have gone, but inward zeal for God remained.

John was soon ordained deacon (about 382) , and priest (387).  In the pulpit he used the eloquence he had acquired from the pagan Libanios to expound the Scriptures he loved and knew so deeply, delivering series of homilies on many of the major books, constantly exhorting the people to a more Christian way of life, and especially urging concern for the poor.  He is particularly known for his interpretations of Paul, revealing to us not only the meaning of his teaching, but how the text at hand was a pastoral response in love to the situation faced by the community to whom Paul was writing.  He was loved by the people, and was a great source of calm and consolation in times of major civil disturbance, but, as he often complained, he could not wean the majority of them away from the theatre and the races.

John’s reputation grew, and in 397 the Emperor summoned him to the capital and he was made bishop of Constantinople, a choice that angered factions who favoured another candidate.  He set about reforming the clergy, improving the Church’s help for the poor, and providing pastoral care for the city’s Gothic minority.  Although loved by the people and initially popular with the imperial household, his reforming zeal and his intense personality also made enemies.  His uncompromising insistence on Gospel teachings and values was accompanied by a quickness to act that was at times perhaps imprudent, insensitive or liable to arouse suspicion.  Through times of political intrigue and demonstrations of loyalty by the populace, his favour with the Emperor ebbed and flowed, but in 404 he was given his second and definitve sentence into exile.  Realising that all the earth belonged to God, he bore it patiently, even if he did complain in his letters.  The conditions became harsher as he was sent further towards the frontiers, and eventually the forced travel overcame him.  He died on 14^th September 407, saying, “Glory be to God for all things.”

Contributed by Joseph Vnuk

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.

Agnes of Rome, martyr

A calendar of martyrs that dates from the mid-4^th century includes Agnes’s name and the location of her grave near Via Nomentana, in Rome. A church built on this site in 350 commemorates her. She is thought to have been killed in the persecution under Diocletian (304), but other traditions bring the date forward to the time of Decian. All the sources agree that she was young, barely thirteen years old, and was already determined not to marry but to dedicate her life to Christ and the work of the church, when persecution broke out. She left home and offered herself for martyrdom. Resisting all threats (and various sources include various elaborations of fire, brothel, public shaming) she was put to death by the Roman practice of being stabbed in the throat.  Brutal and horrifying as all martyrdom stories are, Agnes’s death reminded the Christian community that the faith and autonomy of young women were not to be under-estimated.

Agnes’s choices were constrained, of course, compared, for example, to her brothers if she had any. Thirteen was not only part of childhood but also the age at which most Roman girls of good family were married. Christian resistance to the civic duty of marriage and children was a serious challenge to the Empire. The whole edifice of Imperial power, was built on slavey, the trade of people whose bodies were not their own. As Peter Brown commenting on the most recent scholarship affirms, Christianity argued for ‘freedom’ from the sexual assumptions of the Roman world (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/dec/19/rome-sex-freedom/). Agnes was part of that argument, and was nderstood by her community to be claiming freedom.

Ambrose of Milan reflected on Agnes as a model in a series of letters for his sister Manellia and other Christians who were thinking of dedicating their lives in community. The letters, collected as the treatise On Virgins, date from 377.   (https://librivox.org/concerning-virgins-by-saint-ambrose/)

Saint Agnes… is said to have borne witness at the age of twelve. Detestable cruelty, indeed, that did not spare such tender years! Yet all the greater the faith that found a witness in so young a child!

Was her little body really large enough to receive the sword’s thrust? She was hardly big enough to be struck, yet was great enough to overcome – and that at an age when little girls cannot bear a mother’s stern look and think a needle’s jab a mortal wound!

…Others wept, but not she. Many marvelled that she should be so spendthrift with a life hardly begun. All were amazed that one too young to manage her own life could be a witness to God. She would prove that God could give what people cannot – for what transcends nature must be from nature’s Author!

A hymn in her honour, Agnes beatae virginis, is also attributed to Ambrose of Milan. It praised her courage and purity, making the ancient link between virginity and purity of commitment to Christ, between idolatry and adultery. All the martyrs carried this link between faith and chastity for the community, but it is especially prominent in the way the women have been remembered.

Agnes is one of seven women and girls, all martyrs, whose names are remembered alongside Mary the mother of Jesus in the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving of the Roman rite. The others are Cecilia, Felicity, Perpetua, Lucy, and Agatha.  Her connection to Rome is underlined in the blessing of two lambs on her feastday 21 January. When they are shorn at Easter time, the wool is used to weave the narrow shoulder bands of the pallium that is given by the Pope and worn by Catholic metropolitan archbishops as a symbol of their unity.

 Dr Katharine Massam

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.

Monica Furlong, Christian thinker

Monica Furlong was a Christian feminist who began as a journalist and went on to a prolific late-twentieth-century output of books. She published poetry, a couple of novels, stories for children, biographies of remarkable Christians, collected volumes of primary and secondary texts, works on spirituality, and especially analysis of women’s relations with Christianity in general and the Anglican Church in particular, both before and after female ordination became a reality.

But she was always on the lookout for good causes to espouse, and once she had thrown in her lot with the Movement for the Ordination of Women, and with the aims of secular feminism in general, she became to many women – and to many men as well, especially homosexuals – not just a beacon of light, more a flaming torch.

Like many intellectuals, her life was, in some ways, a protracted search for truth, accompanied by frequent disillusionment, most notably with the organised structures of society. In her book With Love To The Church (1965), she wrote, more in sorrow than in anger, of her disillusion with the apparent inability of the established Church to touch the hearts and minds of men and women of goodwill.

Born and brought up in Kenton, Middlesex, Furlong was particularly close to her father, who was a devout Roman Catholic. Monica was a second daughter, and her mother made no secret of the fact that she wanted a boy; Monica attributed the onset of a fairly disabling stammer. She was baptised as an Anglican but became, at an early age, a potential outsider; even as a child, she felt herself instinctively in sympathy with non-churchgoers. After education at Harrow county girls’ school and University College, London, she enrolled at Pitmans, and seemed destined for a dreary career as a shorthand typist.

In an attempt to break into journalism, Furlong sought a position with the Church Times but became instead secretary to a BBC talks producer, an employment for which she could not have been less well suited. In 1956, she joined Truth magazine as a feature writer and from 1958-60, she was the Spectator’s religious correspondent. Following her time with the Spectator she wrote for the Daily Mail for the next eight years.

As a freelance journalist, Furlong worked for the Guardian between 1956 and 1961, where her contributions covered a variety of emotional and socio-sexual issues – as they had done at the Mail. They dealt, too, with her preoccupation and personal commitment to the Christian faith, a vocation she had gained the self-confidence to express from her parish priest, Joost de Blank, later bishop of Stepney and Archbishop of Cape Town.

Returning to the BBC in 1974, Furlong worked as a religious programmes producer, and, by 1978, had gained the self-confidence to write a biography of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Later books included novels both for adults and children, and biographies of John Bunyan and Thérèse of Lisieux.

In the 1980s she campaigned for the ordination of women and, served as moderator of the Movement for the Ordination of Woman. Furlong’s reputation for reasoned debate and determination gave that movement considerable moral authority. When that goal was reached she called for the appointment of women to senior Church positions.

In 1987, she became a founder of the St Hilda Community (named after St Hilda of Whitby). She described it as “a body which tried to model a form of cooperation between men and women in liturgy, which used inclusive language, and which invited ordained women from other countries to come and celebrate openly, rather than, as was usual at the time, clandestinely.”

She has been called the Church of England‘s “most influential and creative layperson of the post-war period”

Monica Furlong died January 14 2003

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.

George Fox, renewer of society

1624-1691  

George Fox was first amongst Quakers, a weaver’s son, a revolutionary in his time, who lived in the power of the Spirit of Christ without compromise even to his personal harm. A man who suffered with gladness the often violent retribution of those who saw him as a devil intent on destroying their livelihood, the established church and by extension the state. Irascible for the truth and justice as he saw it, never loosing an argument, yet deeply empathetic to those who recognised the error of their ways. A charismatic figure, with a gift for debate and an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible much loved by his friends and followers.

Born in The small village of Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire, little is known of his early life except that he worked as a shepherd and that he was of a more serious nature amongst his siblings and contemporaries. He particularly stood out in religious matters.

At the age of 19 he went away seeking himself, wisdom and the calling God had laid out for him. He found no comfort from any he turned to, particularly priests and ministers, recognising that they did not possess what they professed. In his searching he became a man of sorrows, often alone and despairing until he realised that all his hopes in men were gone and he had nothing outwardly to help him. Then he had a revelation from his own experience “Oh then, I heard a voice which said ‘ There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’, and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy”[1]. This was the turning point of his life and also the kernel from which Quakerism would grow. He listened to his inward teacher and gained in truth and power that none could gainsay him. He lived and worked among ordinary people for several years after this gaining a small following.

In 1652 while alone in prayer on Pendle Hill in Lancashire, he had a vision of a great people gathered as sheep under the one shepherd and from this point onwards where ever he went he began to preach as the Lord commanded. Slowly but surely the ‘Friends of the Truth’, later simply Friends, began to evolve. There was however much opposition and consequently much suffering with assaults, estrangements of goods, imprisonment and even death common amongst these gathering people. George Fox was imprisoned 8 times during his life and he was beaten unconscious on more than one occasion, but he was fearless in these situations and would challenge his attackers to hit him again.

Later in 1652, while preaching in Ulverston in Cumbria, Margaret Fell, wife of the local Judge Thomas Fell became a convert and under her patronage and Thomas’s protection, the Society of Friends began to grow.

In 1661 George met with Charles II and repeated his declaration to Oliver Cromwell of 1651 that he and all Quakers ‘utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatever’[2]. He was attempting to halt the persecution of Friends and this happened eventually. This was the foundation of the Quaker peace testimony.

In 1669, 11 years after Judge Fell’s death Margaret married George though they spent little time living together as they were constantly traveling and labouring in the Ministry when they were not in prison.

William Penn said of him “He had an extraordinary gift in opening the scriptures…. But above all he excelled in prayer….. And truly it was a testimony that he knew and lived nearer to the Lord than other men”[3]

Anthony Buxton, Society of Friends

 

[1] Journal of George Fox. Edited John.L. Nickalls 1997 page 11.

[2] Quaker Faith  & Practice fifth edition 2013 Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain 24.04

[3] Op City 2.72.

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.

Gladys Aylward, Christian pioneer

 Gladys Aylward was born in London in 1904 and through attending revival meetings dedicated her life to the service of God becoming convinced that she was called to preach the Gospel in China. At the age of 26, she travelled to China by the Trans-Siberian Railway and eventually met up a 73 year old missionary, Mrs Lawson in the inland city of Yangchen.

Yangchen was an overnight stop for mule caravans that carried coal, raw cotton, pots, and iron goods on six-week or three-month journeys. The two women decided to set up an inn and alongside caring for t heir travellers and their mules told stories about a man named Jesus. Gladys became fluent in Chinese but suffered a setback when Mrs. Lawson died after a severe fall. Gladys Aylward was left to run the mission alone, with the aid of one Chinese Christian, Yang, the cook.

A few weeks after Mrs. Lawson’s death, the Mandarin of Yangchen arrived in a sedan chair, and told her that the government had decreed an end to the practice of foot-binding. The government needed a foot-inspector, who would patrol the district enforcing the decree, and he offer Gladys the job, realizing that it would give her opportunities to spread the Gospel.

On another occasion Gladys was summoned by the Mandarin to deal with a riot in the men’s prison. The convicts were rampaging in the prison courtyard, and several of them had been killed. The warden of the prison said to Gladys, “Go into the yard and stop the rioting.” She said, “How can I do that?” The warden said, “You have been preaching that those who trust in Christ have nothing to fear.” She walked into the courtyard and shouted: “Quiet! I cannot hear when everyone is shouting at once. Choose one or two spokesmen, and let me talk with them.” The men quieted down and chose a spokesman. Gladys talked with him, and then came out and told the warden: “You have these men cooped up in crowded conditions with absolutely nothing to do. No wonder they are so edgy that a small dispute sets off a riot. You must give them work. Also, I am told that you do not supply food for them, so that they have only what their relatives send them. No wonder they fight over food. We will set up looms so that they can weave cloth and earn enough money to buy their own food.” This was done. There was no money for sweeping reforms, but a few friends of the warden donated old looms, and a grindstone so that the men could work grinding grain. The people began to call Gladys Aylward “Ai-weh-deh,” which means “Virtuous One.” It was her name from then on.

Over the course of her time in China Gladys rescued several children from poverty by adopting them and giving them a home. In 1936, she officially became a Chinese citizen. She lived frugally and dressed like the people around her and this was a major factor in making her preaching effective.

In the spring of 1938, the Japanese bombed Yangcheng, killing many. The Mandarin gathered the survivors and told them to retreat into the mountains. He also announced that he was impressed by the life of Ai-weh-deh and wished to make her faith his own. There remained the question of the convicts at the jail. The traditional policy favoured beheading them all lest they escape. The Mandarin asked Ai-weh-deh for advice, and a plan was made for relatives and friends of the convicts to post a bond guaranteeing their good behaviour. Every man was eventually released on bond.

As the war continued Gladys often found herself behind Japanese lines, and often passed on information, when she had it, to the armies of China, her adopted country.

Gladys eventually gathered up over 100 children and walked with them for twelve days to the government orphanage at Sian, eventually delivering her charges into competent hands at Sian, and then promptly collapsed with typhus fever.

As her health improved, she started a Christian church in Sian, and worked elsewhere, including a settlement for lepers in Szechuan, near the borders of Tibet. Her health was permanently impaired by injuries received during the war, and in 1947 she returned to England for a badly needed operation. She remained in England, preaching there.

Miss Gladys Aylward, died 3 January 1970.

 

PRAYER

Almighty and everlasting God,

we thank you for your servant Gladys Aylward,

whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of China.

Raise up in this and every land heralds and evangelists of your kingdom,

that your Church may make proclaim the unsearchable riches

of our Saviour Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

 

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.

John Geddie & John Paton, Christian pioneers

John Geddie

John and Charlotte Geddie laid the foundations of Presbyterian mission work in the New Hebrides. From 1848 to 1872 they pioneered Christian missions on the small island of Aneityum where they set the patterns for evangelism, church planting and growth, education, and health. John was born in Banff, Scotland 9 April 1815. In 1816 the family moved to Pictou, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Presbyterian Church licensed him as a minister in May 1837 and ordained him in 1838.

He married Charlotte Leonora McDonald in September 1839. During his seven years of ministry on Prince Edward Island, Geddie promoted overseas missions and pressed the Church Assembly to establish an overseas missions committee. The Church chose the New Hebrides as its mission field, and in 1846 it appointed John Geddie as its first missionary.

After six months orientation in Samoa, the Geddies arrived at Anelgauhat, Aneityum on 29 July 1848 aboard the LMS mission ship John Williams. They joined several Samoan and Raratongan teachers who had worked there since 1841. They befriended the local people and learnt the language. The women warmly received Charlotte and her growing number of children. Two of their eight children later married New Hebrides missionaries. Women encouraged their men to attend worship, and to participate in literacy, numeracy, Bible, health, hygiene, agriculture and other courses. Gradually attendance at worship increased. Village schools were established and staffed by Polynesian and Aneityumese teachers. Geddie and colleague John Inglis established a teacher-catechist training institution. The teachers taught literacy and numeracy and conducted daily village prayer, worship and Bible study. Charlotte used her medical knowledge to help the sick. She and John visited the schools and prepared readers and other literature printed on their Mission Press. John encouraged the processing of copra and arrowroot to enable the local Church to become self-supporting. He worked with local Christians to translate the New Testament into Aneityumese. After John’s departure in 1872, Inglis completed the translation of the Old Testament.

For over two decades, Geddie had helped new missionaries from the Pacific Islands, Scotland, Nova Scotia and Victoria to settle in the islands and to develop their own mission programmes. After twenty-four years, on 4 June 1872, Geddie and his missionary colleagues met on Aneityum to constitute the New Hebrides Presbyterian Mission Synod. The next day Geddie suffered a stroke. He returned to Geelong where he died on 14 December 1872 aged 57. He was buried in the Eastern Cemetery. Charlotte established mission support groups in churches in Geelong and Melbourne, and later was a foundation member of the Victorian Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union. She died in Malvern, Victoria, on New Year’s Day 1916, aged 94.

During Geddie’s pioneering ministry, many communities accepted the Christian faith. Solid foundations were laid for locally led Church planting and growth, support, and leadership. John Geddie’s epitaph on the pulpit at Aneityum stated, “When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here and when he left in 1872 there were no heathens”.

 

John Paton

John Gibson Paton was a passionate evangelist, Presbyterian Church leader and advocate for justice. A compelling speaker, he raised the profile of mission work in Australasia and the British Isles. Born on 24 May 1824 in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, he worked at various trades before studying theology at the Free Church Normal Seminary. For ten years he was an evangelist in the Glasgow City Mission. In spare time he studied at the University of Glasgow, the Andersonian (Medical) College and the Reformed Presbyterian Divinity Hall. He was licensed to preach on 1 December 1857 and on 23 March 1858 ordained as a minister and missionary to the southern New Hebrides.

His stay at Port Resolution on Tanna from November 1858 was brief and tragic. In March 1859 his wife Mary Ann (Robson), their infant son and a missionary colleague died of malaria and he was very ill. Tannese opposition to Christianity increased when a measles epidemic caused the deaths of a third of the population and three devastating hurricanes left many starving. In 1861 intertribal fighting broke out and the sickly Paton and colleague Matheson hastily withdrew to Aneityum.

These sad and painful experiences had positive results. An excellent propagandist and story-teller, Paton toured the Australian colonial Churches with graphic descriptions of his experiences in mission work, Over the next forty years he raised thousands of pounds and obtained the permanent support of Sabbath schools and congregations for the mission and its ship Dayspring. When he went to Scotland in 1864 to recruit more missionaries, he was inducted as moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. There he married Margaret Whitecross. In 1865 he stirred up missionary enthusiasm in the newly united Presbyterian Church of Victoria and was appointed as its first missionary to the very small island of Aniwa. Between 1865 and 1872 Aniwa became almost entirely Christian. Margaret’s illness caused their withdrawal in 1872 but John continued regular visits for another thirty years and in 1899 presented them with the complete New Testament in Aniwan.

Paton rapidly became an international figure. From 1881 as Presbyterian Mission Agent, and as Moderator of the Victorian Church in 1886, he continued mission promotion and toured extensively in the Colonies and Britain. He was a political activist, making vigorous representations to Colonial premiers, British Prime Ministers and American Presidents. He opposed the “Melanesian slave trade”, and its recruiting irregularities; He opposed the expansion of French colonial interests and begged Britain to annex the New Hebrides, the Solomons and New Guinea and to ban arms and liquor for “the native races”. In 1891 Edinburgh University conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Divinity.

In 1891 the interdenominational ‘John G. Paton Fund’ was founded in Britain to support some New Hebrides missionaries including John’s son Frank H L Paton at Lenakel. John’s wife Margaret Whitecross Paton was also involved mission support and the PWMU. She died in May 1905. John died in Melbourne on 28 January 1907. Both rest in Boroondara cemetery after lifetimes of dedicated service.

Malcolm Campbell

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