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.

Philip and James, apostles

Philip
The Apostle Philip was one of the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus (Matt 10:1–4; Mark 3:13–19; Luke 6:12–16). He should not be mistaken for the other two biblical figures also called Philip: Philip the Deacon, also known as Philip the Evangelist, a deacon appointed by the apostles to serve in the early church (Acts 8:5–40; 21:8–9); and Philip the Tetrarch, also known as Herod Philip II, a son of Herod the Great, whose wife remarried his half-brother, Herod Antipas (Mark 6:17–19).

The Apostle Philip came from the north east region of Galilee, from a town called Bethsaida, the same town where the other two apostles, Andrew and Peter, lived. He was called by Jesus in the early days of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee (John 1: 43–44).

The name Philip was common in the Greco-Roman world, a compound noun consisting of two Greek words, φίλος (philos) and ἵππος (hippos). The name literally meant a friendly horse. Unlike most of the apostles whose family names were Hellenistic proper nouns derived from Semitic roots, Philip was a Greek name. This may indicate a Greek background which might explain why, when some Greeks wanted to meet Jesus, they sought out Philip to be their intermediary (John 12:20–21).

Philip is portrayed in the Gospel of John as a friendly agent, a go-between person. He introduced Nathanael to Jesus (John 1:44–48) and acted as an intermediary between the Greeks and Jesus. Furthermore, in the story of feeding the five thousand, Philip was asked by Jesus where to buy bread for the crowd (John 6:5–7). This could allude to Philip being the person who was in charge of providing food for Jesus and the disciples. In a way it conjures up a picture of Philip, resembling a horse, always on the move to acquire and transport food for the Lord.

Contrary to his fellow townsman, Peter, Philip is rarely mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels or in the rest of the New Testament. Outside the four gospels he is mentioned only once in Acts, in the story of Christ’s ascension (Acts 1:12–14), where he and other followers of Christ were in Jerusalem, devoting themselves to prayer. Subsequent accounts of the apostle’s later life and ministry are absent in the New Testament.

Based on disputed extra biblical sources, Philip might have gone to Phrygia in Asia Minor (the southern region in modern Turkey) to proclaim the gospel, a region that was also twice visited by Paul (Acts 16:6; 18:23). It is believed that Philip died in Hierapolis, an ancient Roman spa city in Phrygia (neighboring the famous Pamukkale in modern Turkey). Regardless of those traditional accounts being authentic or not, from the gospels we get a picture of an apostle who reminds us of the importance and the beauty of being a friendly agent for the Lord, an intermediary for other people, and a faithful servant of Christ.

James
(‘the brother of Jesus’, ‘the Just’, ‘Adelphotheos’
— brother of God, and first ‘Bishop of Jerusalem’)
(Greek: Iakobos, a variant of the Hebrew name Ya’akov, Jacob = supplanter, heel)
There are 42 mentions of the name James (Iakobos) in the New Testament — referring to as many as 7 different people — and a further 27 uses of Jacob (Iakob), referring to the Hebrew patriarch. It is sometimes difficult, therefore, to sort out which James is meant: one of the two disciples with that name; the ‘brother of the Lord’ and leader of the church in Jerusalem; or the author of the ‘letter’ of James — apart from other minor characters carrying the same name.

There are many suggestions about how the identities of the Jameses might overlap or be clarified, but the most commonly accepted position is that James the Just, ‘the brother of the Lord’ (Acts; Gal 1:19; 2:2,9), is the one who became the leader of the Jerusalem church and the most likely source of the Epistle of James. The other main James — the Apostle, brother of John and son of Zebedee — was the first and only member of the Twelve martyred in the New Testament record (Acts 12:1–2, around 44CE), but James the Just himself suffered the same fate later on in 62CE.

Indeed, the Jewish historian Josephus tells us more about the death of James the Just than he does about the death of Jesus, and attributes the dismissal of the High Priest Ananus the Younger to his blatant opportunism in having James clubbed and stoned while the Romans were absent (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, chapter 19).

We can see from the references in Acts (12:17; 15:13ff; 21:18) that in his own time, James had an authority and reputation in Jerusalem that exceeded that of Peter and Paul. James was the one who settled divisive issues in Jerusalem, and to whom Peter and Paul returned to maintain their good standing with the earliest Jesus-followers. The reputation of James (also known in the tradition as ‘camel knees’ due to the time he spent on his knees praying in the Temple), extends well beyond the Biblical canon. The Gospel of Thomas (logion 12) reads:

The disciples said to Jesus. “We know that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?” Jesus said to them, “Wherever you have come, you will go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.”

Again, this provides further evidence from outside the Bible of the considerable reputation of James of Jerusalem.

The ‘Letter’ of James itself shows signs of some very early material and may well be a re-working of the sermons of the first Bishop of Jerusalem. It is a treatise on putting into practice the teachings of Jesus — on God’s bias to the poor, and on faith as action, not just belief (“Faith without works is dead!” James 2:26, a statement in some tension with Paul’s writings).

Traditionally, James the Just has been the patron saint of the dying, of milliners, hatmakers, fullers and pharmacists. Given the distinctive emphases of the James traditions in Acts and the Epistle of James, we might suggest that he also be seen today as the patron saint of the poor, of community development (and ‘practical christianity’), of Jewish-Christian dialogue, of knee and hip replacements, and of any teachers who struggle with their sharp tongues (James 3:1–12)!

By Dr Keith Dyer

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.

Julian of Norwich, person of prayer

(born 1342, died shortly after 1416)

If people knew how useful diseases are for the soul’s discipline, wrote one medieval mystic, they would purchase them in the marketplace. That was certainly the view of the English mystic, theologian and author of the Revelations of Divine Love, St. Julian of Norwich.

While still a young lay woman, Julian asked God for three gifts: a profound experience of the passion of Christ, a physical illness, and the three ‘wounds’ of contrition, compassion, and earnest longing for God.  She was granted them, but the first and the third came to her through physical illness.  In her book, she records that when she was thirty, ‘God sent me a physical illness in which I lay for three days and three nights.  On the fourth night I took all the rites of holy church and did not think that I would live until morning.’  Propped up in bed, losing both feeling and sight, Julian saw the crucifix set before her as surrounded by a ‘universal light’; and in an access of compassion for the dying Jesus had a vision of the ‘red blood trickling down from under the garland, just as I thought it would have done when the garland of thorns was thrust on His blessed head.’ In turn, she understood that ‘both God and man together suffered for me’ and ‘that it was he who showed it to me, without intermediary’. Simultaneously with this ‘bodily sight’ she experienced ‘a spiritual vision of His matchless love’, alone creating and sustaining the whole world.

Julian recovered from her apparently mortal illness, spending the rest of her life reflecting on these  visions, which she gradually recognised as ‘full of deep secrets’ and ‘inner significance’.  For many years an anchoress (an enclosed hermit) at what is now St. Julian’s church in Norwich, she wrote a short and a longer account of her visions and interpretations.  Her theology centred around two principles: the all-embracing and all-powerful love of God, and the perfectly physical nature of the incarnate Christ. The first allows us to see that though sin and evil exist in the fallen world, they have no ultimate reality, having been destroyed by Christ’s death and resurrection—‘Ah wretched sin!…You are nothing.  For I saw that God is everything; I did not see you’. The second enables the complete identification of humans, irrevocably identified in physical bodies, with Christ—‘our saviour is our true Mother, in whom we are endlessly born and out of whom we shall never come.’ Her evocation of God as the Mother who endlessly generates and re-creates us through Her/His own suffering, nourishes us spiritually, and disciplines us for our own training, remains her distinctive contribution to Christian spirituality.

We tend to think of diseases as always and only bad; to be cured if possible and resented if not. Julian and her contemporaries, often beset by illnesses they were powerless to cure, nevertheless succeeded in bringing good out of evil through their identification with both the suffering, and the salvation, of Christ.

Contributed by Phillippa Maddern

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.

Athanasius, Christian thinker

Athanasius of Alexandria was not only one of the great church figures and theologians of the fourth century but also a major symbol for a central teaching of the church even if the historical basis for that significance may be disputed. He was born c. 296CE and died in 371. He was a native son of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the ancient world. Founded by the Greeks, it was the major seat of administration in the province of Egypt, a significant commercial centre for trade between the Empire and Asia and Africa, the granary for Rome, the spiritual home of many of the great ancient schools of philosophy, and identified with figures like Philo, Clement and Origen.

Not a convert like Justin or Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius served the church in Alexandria as deacon, presbyter and bishop. While his formal education was restricted he very early caught the attention of Alexander the bishop of the city and, ordained as deacon, served as secretary to him. This took him to the centre of things and perhaps gave him his first taste and enjoyment of power and influence which so shaped his career. He accompanied Alexander to Nicaea in 325 but can hardly have been a major player there as later mythology suggests. When Alexander died in 328 Athanasius, against great opposition from various sources – most particularly the schismatic Melitians – was elected bishop and began to make his own mark on the international stage.

While it is suggested that from the very first as bishop his career was marked most significantly by an assumed leadership of the anti-Arian or pro-homoousian party, this is not, as will be suggested below, perhaps the case. While it is the case that from the start of his episcopate more and more anti-Nicene figures – it is more correct to name them thus than as anti-Arian (for Arius’ role in the post-Nicene period is at best marginal and mainly symbolic) – were being elected or restored to various sees, the clashes between them and the ruthless bishop of Alexandria were as much personal and political as theological. Indeed it could be argued that it was only after the Council of Sirmium in 351, where the Creed of Nicaea from 325 was specifically denounced in the First Sirmian Creed, that Athanasius began vigorously to defend both the homoousian and the authority of Nicaea, in his De Decretis of 352-3. Previously he had said little of real significance on the matter in his published writings.

Athanasius experienced five periods of formal deposition and exile during his episcopal career: from 335-337, to Trier in Gaul, for the alleged maltreatment of his opponents and alleged embezzlement of the corn supplies; from 339-346, spent in Rome; from 356-362 with the desert monks, his indefatigable supporters; from 362-364 again with the monks; and then from 365-6.

His extant writings are many and their consistent theme, in the words of one Athanasian scholar, ‘thoroughly soteriological’: the Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (c.335/6) on the person and work of Christ; his three volume Contra Arianos (339-343? or possibly later); his Festal Letters; the celebrated life of Antony (356); the Apologia ad Constantium (356) in which he lays out clearly his theological confession; and the Letters to [Bp.] Serapion (357-9) where he begins a defence of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit when this was challenged even by vigorous defenders of the homoousian of Nicaea.

His life was one of constant struggle and strife, as much political and personal as theological. Not for nothing has he been called Athanasius contra mundum.

by  Rev Dr David Mackay-Rankin

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.

Kentigern, Christian pioneer

St. Kentigern was born about 518 in Culross, Fife, Scotland, to Thenaw, the daughter of a British prince, Lothus. Kentigern, (the name means “head chief”) was popularly known as St. Mungo, meaning “dear one”. He is believed to have been brought up by St. Servanus at a monastery in Fife. His father’s name is unknown.

At the age of 25, Kentigern began his missionary labours at Cathures, on the Clyde, the site of modern Glasgow. He was welcomed there by Roderick Hael, the Christian King, and laboured in the district for some thirteen years. He lived an austere life in a small cell where the Clyde and Molendinar rivers met. By his teaching and example many people converted to the Christian faith. The large community that grew up around him became known as clasgu, meaning “dear family”. The town and city ultimately grew to be known as modern Glasgow.

About 553 a strong anti-Christian movement in Strathclyde compelled Kentigern to leave the district. He retired to Wales, and stayed with St. David at Menevia, later founding a large monastery in Llanelwy and serving as its first abbot. In 573, accompanied by many of his Welsh disciples, he returned to Scotland at the request of the king, after a battle secured the Christian cause. For eight years he continued his evangelical outreach to the districts of Galloway and Cumberland.

Finally, in 581 Kentigern returned to Glasgow, where he remained until his death in 603, continuing his work amongst the people.

Several miracles were attributed to him including restoring life to a bird that had been inadvertently killed, the discovery inside a fish he caught of the missing ring of the Queen of Cadzow, and the rekindling of a fire that he had been tending, but which had gone out. These events are commemorated in the Coat of Arms of the City of Glasgow. The fourth symbol is a bell, believed to have been given to Kentigern by the Pope, Gregory I.

St. Kentigern is buried in Glasgow on the spot where a beautiful cathedral dedicated to his honour now stands. He is remembered on 13 January each year, the anniversary of his death. His humble life, lived in the service of God, affected the lives of many people, particularly in Wales, Galloway and Cumberland in Scotland, in parts of the northwest of England, and, of course, in Glasgow. St. Kentigern is still remembered as a model of how we can make a difference in the lives of others.

Contributed by Sandra Batey