Viewing all items in Resource Category: Holy Days

Anskar (801-865) should be the patron saint of any Christian who loves doing mission… and who discovers that evangelists meet the most amazing people, and that their lives are full of surprises…. It was the 9th century, and Anskar had grown up in a noble family in Amiens.  He decided to forsake it all in...

St Blaise is the saint for you if you have a sore throat, or a pet who is ill.  He was born in Sebastea, ancient Armenia, (now Sivas, in Turkey) sometime during the late 3rd century, and became a physician.  But his compassion did not stop there: he went on to become bishop of Sebastea,...

When did you first encounter Christianity?  If it was an adult, then Phileas is a saint for you.   His life shows that Truth matters, whenever you encounter it, but is also a warning that you need to count the cost of becoming a Christian. Phileas was a rich man living in Egypt at the end...

Persecution of Christians in various countries is making the headlines these days.  Believers facing such opposition might well find inspiration from the courage of the Japanese Christians of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The Jesuit Francis Xavier had first brought Christianity to Japan in 1549, when he persuaded Shimazu Takahisa, the daimyo of...

St Kew has nothing to do with gardens or the ‘Q’ of James Bond fame.  This Kew was a girl who lived in Cornwall in the 5th century, and should be the patron saint of girls with difficult older brothers. Kew’s older brother was a hermit who felt his younger sister was not worthy to...

Scholastica (d.c. 543) should be the patron saint of any woman who can bend her brother to do her will – no matter how ‘powerful’ that brother might seem to other people. For Scholastica’s brother was no less than the great monk Benedict, who founded the famous Benedictine order and lived at Monte Cassino.   In...

Caedmon (d 680) should be the patron saint of all farmers who enjoy humming to themselves as they do the lambing this Spring.  For Caedmon of Whitby was a bit like David in the Bible – he grew up as a simple herdsman out on the hills who enjoyed composing songs and poetry for himself...

There are two confusing things about this day of romance and anonymous love-cards strewn with lace, cupids and ribbon: firstly, there seems to have been two different Valentines in the 4th century – one a priest martyred on the Flaminian Way, under the emperor Claudius, the other a bishop of Terni martyred at Rome.  And...

The Roman Emperor Claudius II needed soldiers.  He suspected that marriage made men want to stay at home with their wives, instead of fighting wars, so he outlawed marriage. A kind-hearted young priest named Valentine felt sorry for all the couples who wanted to marry, but couldn’t.  So secretly he married as many couples as...

Saint Valentine’s Day, many believe, was named after one or more Christian martyrs and was established by Pope Gelasius 1 in 496 AD.  Valentine of Rome was martyred about 269, and this day usually ‘belongs’ to him. The first recorded association of Valentine Day with romantic love (1382) is from Geoffrey Chaucer. He wrote, ‘For...

Thomas Bray was once called a “Great Small Man”, with good reason.  This diminutive 18th century English clergyman (1658 – 1730) not only helped to establish the Church of England in Maryland, but he was also founder of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in 1698 and the Society for the Propagation...

The Most Reverend Janani Luwum (d 1977) was the sitting Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and Boga Zaire when 35 years ago this month he was murdered by the dictator Idi Amin.   At the time the Church in Uganda was on the verge of centennial celebrations of its birth through the seed of the...