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