Who Shall We Put on the Kalendar?: The Episcopal Church and Her Saints

Derek has been thinking about saints lately. His research, no doubt, takes him through some bizarre parts of the hagiography, and so he has been wondering why we canonize particular people and what meaning sainthood has in the ascendant theology of the TEC today. Most compellingly, Derek has a good summary of the Scriptural landscape.

The modern Episcopal view is really a form of pristinism, and I say that in the least pejorative sense possible. In most cases when saints or hagioi in Greek, literally "the holy people" are discussed in the New Testament, it is Paul's general use of the term to refer to the Church Militant in good standing in the various communities to which he provided counsel. Paul's letters occasionally contain things like, "Give my best regards to all the saints of the Church of X, you rock, dudes." It is not an idle term. It asserts Paul's belief that the Church is a new Israel, called to be holy as the Lord God is holy just as Israel was in the wilderness. And whereas the first Israelites sinned and died in the wilderness, the relationship of the Church to Jesus gives a holy standing to her members without them being fully righteous, for they are righteous through Him. The Church thus is Holy because Christ is Holy, righteous as both man and God. And thus by imputation (or Paul's presumably consonant soteriological teaching), the Church's members indeed are holy people. Thus, the Church's members indeed are saints in the earliest sense.

Derek, however, directs us to Revelation where we see a group of the saints before the Last Judgment already in the presence of God. This is odd, considering most evidence in Scripture until that time suggests that no one is in God's presence until the Last Judgment except Enoch and Elijah. At most, there are some people like the poor Lazarus in some sort of holding state called "Abraham's bosom." Otherwise, it's "the trumpet shall sound and the dead be raised" and summoned into the Valley of Josaphat or some other proper place for judgment.

Revelation is an odd duck in the Canon, so it took some time for Christianity to process the implications of its view of heaven. In Bede, we hear the story of a monk who gets into a cold spring every morning to recite the psalms. This practice is explained by a vision he had of various things, including a place of happy people in white who frolicked hither and yon and a place where people were cruelly tortured in fire. The man supposed these were heaven and hell but was told that the gates of Heaven were closed to all but the most holy until the Judgment, and he had seen two versions of the holding area: one in which people were purified and another where people rested happily but without the fullness of the Divine Presence. The man asked what Hell was like and was told that he had seen the entrance to Hell, which was some sort of dank, vaguely living hole. In other words, Heaven is too wonderful to see and Hell too horrible. This story is an early account of Purgatory, whose architecture became considerably more complicated and impact on soteriology increasingly problematic as time went on. But the point remains, Purgatory was a modification of Abraham's Bosom, and Dante seems to have made that happy place into the Terrestrial Paradise. But it should be remembered that reception takes time, and so you can read poetry in Middle English from Ireland concerning the Land of Cockyange, which is said to be better than Heaven, because (a) there is only fruit to eat in heaven, whereas Cockyange has both meat and fruit (b) Enoch and Elijah are the only people in Heaven, whereas the people in Cockyange are much more fun.

But whatever the reason, people relatively early in Tradition kept having visions of the holy martyrs crowned with glory as described in Revelation, and thus experience confirmed what the Scripture taught: some of the saints were admitted to the Divine Presence immediately. First, it was just the martyrs, but when the era of persecutions ended, there was a recognition that some people (traditionally called confessors and the Catholic Encyclopedia claims these were often called "bloodless martyrs" or somesuch) had "especial sanctity" even if they just died quietly after vespers without fuss or bother (in fact, this was often proof of sanctity, especially if you predicted it first, e.g. St Columba). [Random Etymological Note: Saints in Irish are called Naomh, and I've always wondered whether there was any etymological link between this and the Greek word for a temple's inner sanctuary, naos , which is still used in Greek to refer to a church.] Derek has a good entry in Open Thou Our Lips about saints being patrones in the Roman sense, which is worth looking up.

But the saint business seems to have become complicated for a variety of reasons. First of all, there are some cases in which saints have been conflated with pagan deities. St. Brigid is one example, but it's likely that the explanation given in the hagiography, that Brigid's father meant her as an oblate to the service of the goddess explains some of the coincidences between her and the Irish goddess. Irish saints also have strong associations with springs, which if you know anything about Celtic religion, connects them with pagan beliefs about places of strong spiritual energy. But after all, the Lord Jesus, too, was very skillful with springs and water generally. Perhaps the best example of a pagan saint are the rituals associated with St. Gennaro, the patron of Naples. Every year, a vial containing his blood is observed to liquefy. But the miracle of San Gennaro takes time, so while the congregants play the waiting game, women sing a variety of indecent and insulting songs to get the blood to liquefy. There is some incentive in this, because if the blood should take a long time to liquefy or fail to liquefy at all, great misfortune is supposed to befall the city in the next year. St. Augustine of Hippo describes similar rites in his works, involving songs being sung to divinities that never would be sung in polite company, but these involve Cybele etc. and not a Christian martyr. I suspect the liquefaction refers to some old ritual of Neapolitan haruspicy, which has been transformed in some odd way as with all Italian religion. After all, if the Romans replaced a festival of human sacrifice with a fishing tournament (as Ovid claims in the Fasti ), anything is possible.

Second, saints, especially in the High Middle Ages, had economic potential. So it was in the best interest of a parish to preserve the remains of any local hermit of any repute and look for evidence of miraculous doings. While it's fairly easy to snipe at such activities, I've read enough descriptions of these episodes in medieval parish records (I used to read a lot of history of the pre-Reformation Church of England) to think these efforts mostly were in good faith. Occasionally, saints were made up. Eventually, some sort of canonical order was established in the West about who could be venerated or not. Initially (and again I'm following the Catholic Encyclopedia and my memory of medieval English practice), it was possible for veneration to be authorized in a diocese by decree. The usual custom then was for the feast of this saint to become universal by Roman reception. The idea of a Roman martyrology dates to the 3rd century, when the deacons were ordered to record the martyrdoms in their district but it became an increasingly "universal" martyrology later. But canonization was centralized at Rome by the late 12th century. The bureaucratic process presently used in the Roman Catholic Church has evolved since then, and the business of cleaning up what happened before then has been left to the bureaucratic organs and the research activities of the most supercool of the Jesuits, the Bollandists.

But what about Anglicans? Do we canonize? How and why? Well, the place to look first is a kalendar for an edition of the 1662 Prayer Book. I found an online version of the 1771 edition that has a most fascinating calendar, in that it maintains the Feasts of the Apostles, notable early martyrs, and various figures connected the Order of Saint Benedict or the evangelization of the British Isles. It even includes the Invention of the Holy Cross and tells you when to start the O Antiphons in Advent. The only post-Reformation observances are the Feast of King Charles Martyr (one of the patronal feasts of the Monastery, not presently on the American kalendar) and "Papist Conspiracy" or Guy Fawkes Day. No Ridley or Latimer or Cranmer. It was a stripped-down pre-Reformation kalendar only modified by politics. The new feasts famously were opportunities for the High Anglican Ascendancy to glory in its victory over the Puritans (now Nonconformists) and the Roman Catholics. Sick, frankly.

The new American church would have none of the politics in the kalendar, so they removed everyone who could not be found in the Holy Scriptures, maintaining only All Saints (this feast is Gallican in origin and was received at Rome in the 9th century). And so it apparently was until 1979, since the 1928 BCP has the same kalendar as 1789. The story of how we suddenly restored most of the saints of the Scottish kalendar (Laud's Book) and added so many new ones should be told someone who remembers, since some are likely still alive.

So does TEC canonize people? Well, I think we do. All the Roman Pontiff does to canonize is to declare someone a Saint, inscribe their name in a catalog, and appoint a feast day. General Convention does little less. But still we are uncomfortable with our form of canonization, and I just realized why: this practice hasn't been around very long. I once suggested that my campus ministry celebrate the feast day of the patron of the house we used as our base of operations. But despite our willingness to celebrate the feasts of other saints, it seemed odd to celebrate the feast of a man of whom we had two photographs in the house: one of him in clericals and one from his student days in which he was dressed as a woman for a dramatic production. No one normally talks about St. William White or St. Phillips Brooks.

But in the last thirty years, we have put an entire slew of new people on the kalendar with little discussion of why. Most recently, this issue arose with the proposal that Thurgood Marshall be included in the kalendar. Frankly, the proposal was worth it just for the distraction of the newspapers from other matters at General Convention, but it brought up an important question: Thurgood Marshall certainly did a lot of important things for American civil liberties but did he have "especial sanctity" or was a sufficient witness to Christ in his actions? Does it really matter? The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music will consider this question during the next three years.

Fortunately, this Triennium they proposed guidelines in their Report about who to include in the kalendar prefaced with this gem from the Passion of Polycarp:

“There the Lord will permit us, so far as possible, to gather together in joy and gladness to celebrate the day of his martyrdom as a birthday, in memory of those athletes who have gone before, and to train and make ready those who are to come hereafter.”

1. Historicity

Christianity is a radically historical religion, so in almost every instance it is not theological realities or spiritual movements but exemplary witness to the Gospel of Christ in lives actually lived that is commemorated in the Calendar.

I really don't understand what this means, unless it's some convoluted explanation of why we generally don't commemorate Corpus Christi. We commemorate people and not doctrines or the Holy Club or something.

2. Christian Discipleship

The death of the saints, precious in God’s sight, is the ultimate witness to the power of the Resurrection. What is being commemorated, therefore, is the completion in death of a particular Christian’s living out of the promises of baptism. Baptism is, therefore, a necessary prerequisite for inclusion in the Calendar.

Baptism in blood hopefully is legitimate here. If you die for Christ, you die with Christ. This recommendation is good in that it instructs us not to commemorate non-Christians but says in a way that make people feel better about it because it is linked with the popular baptismal theology.

3. Significance

Those commemorated should have been in their lifetime extraordinary, even heroic servants of God and God’s people for the sake, and after the example, of Jesus Christ. In this way they have testified to the Lordship of Christ over all of history, and continue to inspire us as we carry forward God’s mission in the world.

There is attempt here to use the Roman Catholic language of "heroic virtue" without actually using it. But the point is solid. Those commemorated are exemplars and must be exemplary.

4. Memorability

The Calendar should include those who, through their devotion to Christ and their joyful and loving participation in the community of the faithful, deserve to be remembered by The Episcopal Church today. However, in order to celebrate the whole history of salvation, it is important also to include those “whose memory may have faded in the shifting fashions of public concern, but whose witness is deemed important to the life and mission of the Church” (Thomas Talley).

God bless James Kiefer for bringing the kalendar to life. Basically, this recommendation says that those commemorated must be relevant to us even if they are presently obscure. I really fear for the Cappadocian Fathers, since I don't hear too many priests preach the "good doctrine is important" sermon these days.

5. Range of Inclusion

Particular attention should be paid to Episcopalians and other members of the Anglican Communion. Attention should also be paid to gender and race, to the inclusion of laypeople (witnessing in this way to our baptismal understanding of the Church), and to ecumenical representation. In this way the Calendar will reflect the reality of our time: that instant communication and extensive travel are leading to an ever deeper international and ecumenical consciousness among Christian people.

Mission St. Clare puts a lot of fun Lutheran observances on the kalendar. I could go for those. Speaking of ecumenism, how about Brother Roger of Taize? Note that our kalendar is much fuller than the rest of the Communion these days. But again, the chief concern is the saint as exemplar. And I think the idea here is that the best exemplars are those with which we identify or will encourage us to learn about other cultures.

6. Local Observance

Similarly, it should normatively be the case that significant commemoration of a particular person already exists at the local and regional levels before that person is included in the Calendar of the Episcopal Church as a whole.

One question: who authorizes local commemoration?

7. Perspective

It should normatively be the case that a person be included in the Calendar only after two generations or fifty years have elapsed since that person’s death.

Very good. So I guess we'll have to wait on Brother Roger.

Levels of Commemoration

Principal Feasts, Sundays, and Holy Days have primacy of place in the Church’s liturgical observance. It does not seem appropriate to distinguish between the various other commemorations by regarding some as having either a greater or a lesser claim on our observance of them. Each commemoration should be given equal weight as far as the provision of liturgical propers is concerned (including the listing of three lessons).

Makes sense. If I do both Morning and Evening Prayer, I do the regular Lectionary in the morning and the Festal in the evening. But I've noticed that some commemorations have more readings than others.

9. Combined Commemorations

The present edition of Lesser Feasts and Fasts (2003) recognizes that not all those included in the Calendar need to be commemorated “in isolation”. Where there are close and natural links between persons to be remembered, a joint commemoration would make excellent sense (cf. The Cappadocians - Sts. Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and Macrina— and the Reformation martyrs—Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley).

We need some sort of shorthand though. How about the Feast of the Three Anglican Hierarchs (Proto-Martyrs)?

10. Common of Saints

A greater range of “Commons of Saints” should be provided to allow for optional commemorations at the local and regional levels. Presently there are propers provided for martyrs, missionaries, pastors, theologians and teachers, monastics, and “saints.” Possible additional categories could include musicians and other artists, reformers of society, and “stewards of creation,” for example, scientists and environmentalists.

Steward of creation has a nice ring to it actually.

These recommendations have the imprimatur of General Convention as Resolution A057 of this past Convention.

Some Summary Comments

Commemorations really could go either way at this point. Either they could be treated as an opportunity to satisfy interest groups or score political points with the wider culture as in the Church of England in the 17th century or they could be carefully chosen as an encouragement to us, the Church Militant, looking throughout salvation history for lanterns to light the way to Christ's standard. But I think these recommendations are lacking in one thing: although they cite "heroic virtue," they focus on our own opinions of what that is. I am not one to suggest that we require miracles of those we commemorate, but I do think that there are gifts in the church by which especial sanctity can be detected or in which God reveals those he sets apart for his heavenly service. Perhaps, we should consider these as well.

O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys which thou hast prepared for those who unfeignedly love thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, in glory everlasting.