Today is the feast of the Holy Cross, a red-letter day newly introduced into the Prayer Book tradition in the 20th century.  Historically, this holiday commemorates the date that Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, found the True Cross in a rubbish heap outside of Jerusalem, thus beginning the veneration (not worship) of the instrument whereby Christ redeemed the world.  In modern Prayer Book context, this holiday focuses on the glory of Christ on the Cross, thus instead of the Gospel lesson being about the crucifixion, it’s from John 12 wherein our Lord declares that when he will be lifted up the whole world will be drawn to him.

Here’s a round-up of different sorts of writings to help explore different facets of the Cross and this holy day.  (In general the first three links are shorter reads and the latter three are longer, in case you need to budget your time.)

• https://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/the-blessed-cross/
  Some Old Testament typology uses Noah’s Ark to foreshadow the Cross!
• https://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2017/10/19/article-31-the-sacrifice-of-christ/
  Why not look at the 39 Articles of Religion while we’re at it?
• https://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/holy-cross-day/
  A survey of the collect and lessons (albeit with the wrong Psalm)
• https://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2019/04/14/who-takes-the-fall/
  A reflection on the crucifixion of Christ through Isaiah’s eyes
• https://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2018/10/23/theology-of-the-cross-versus-glory/
  When I survey the wondrous Cross, this is the doctrine we find
• https://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/we-need-the-cross/
  Confronting evil at the Cross

As a new month is about to begin, let’s take a moment to look ahead at the upcoming noteworthy feast days in the calendar.  September is an exciting month in general, so let’s see what’s coming up.

Foremost is the fact that the feast of Michael the Archangel, and of all angels, is on September 29^th, which is a Sunday this year.  Remember that one of the lovely restorations of tradition in the 2019 Prayer Book that the 1979 nearly squashed is the fact that we can celebrate most major feast days on Sundays again!  The rubrics authorizing this can be found at the top of page 689:

Any of these feasts that fall on a Sunday, other than Advent, Lent, and Easter, may be observed on that Sunday or transferred to the nearest following weekday.

So you have the option of going “1979-style” and transfer the feasts off of Sundays, but if the order-of-options is significant then the primary suggestion is to keep those feasts on the Sundays on which they land.  This is how the old prayer books worked; this is what this Customary encourages.  As a result, this is a big opportunity to pull out those classic angel-themed hymns such as Christ the fair glory of the holy angels (although this is one of the only omissions from the new 2017 hymnal that this writer deeply misses).  This is also a great opportunity to preach about angels, spiritual beings, and all that great biblical stuff that popularly doesn’t get much attention apart from Christmas.

Also coming up this month are the major feasts of Holy Cross Day and St. Matthew’s, on the 14^th and 21^st respectively, both on Saturdays.

Holy Cross Day is (uncoincidentally) forty days after Transfiguration Day, thus bringing an interesting potential “third great fast” of the year to a close.  Historically, Holy Cross Day is tied to the story of the finding of “the true cross” outside Jerusalem by Emperor Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, but liturgically that feast day for us is more about the Cross of Christ at the time of the crucifixion.  It’s not quite a clone of Good Friday, though. Where Good Friday focuses on the “Holy Week” narrative of the death of Christ and our culpability in our sinfulness, Holy Cross Day emphasizes the glory of Christ on the Cross.

St. Matthew, of course, is the first Evangelist (gospel-book-writer).  The historic one-year lectionary seems to draw from his book more than the other three (not that I’ve literally counted the number of appearances of each) and some of the most-beloved gospel texts, like the Sermon on the Mount, are primarily known from Matthew’s book.  St. Matthew is also one of the apostles of whom we know a decent amount, having lived as a tax collector (the equivalent of a traitor to his people in that situation) before getting to follow Jesus.

Among the optional commemorations, the two most noteworthy entries are St. John Chrysostom on Friday the 13^th (lucky him) and Cyprian of Carthage on Sunday the 15^th.  The former is sometimes referred to as “the Augustine of the East”, being a major preacher and teacher of his day, influential in the East like Augustine of Hippo is in the West.  The latter, of course, will not be celebrated this year because his caliber of feast day cannot be observed on a Sunday in any calendar tradition, but you can still feel free to offer a Collect in his honor at the end of the Prayers of the People at the Sunday Communion liturgy if you wish.  Living in the 200’s, Cyprian represents a fairly early generation of Christian leaders and teachers.  His most famous work was De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate (On the Unity of the Catholic Church), one of the great written products of the Early Church.

One more September commemoration I’d like to note here is one that’s not found in the 2019 calendar: the Nativity of Mary on September 8th.  It’s also on a Sunday, and therefore also a day that we can’t really celebrate either.  I mention it partly because it’s a significant feast day in the Roman calendar, and partly because it’s the ordination anniversary of yours truly.  (I apologize for the self-indulgence.)  Some people say there are already enough feast days in the calendar to commemorate the Blessed Virgin Mary, others say “the more the merrier”, so I leave it to you to decide to what degree it’s worth taking note of our Lady in corporate worship a week and a half from now.

As usual, we’ll note most of these days here when they arrive.  But it’s always important to know these celebrations are coming, before they get here, especially with St. Michael’s on a Sunday about a month from now.

As mentioned a little while ago, we’ve got a major feast day coming up next week: the Transfiguration (August 6th).  Hopefully that will adorn your worship of our Lord on Tuesday!

But let’s take this moment, today, to cast our eyes upon the rest of the month.  There are two more major feast days coming up: St. Mary’s on the 15th and St. Bartholomew’s on the 24th.  On the surface these are pretty straight-forward commemorations, honoring the Virgin Mary, mother of our Lord, and Bartholomew (or Nathaniel), one of the twelve apostles.  If you dig deeper you can make further connections to tradition and history.

St. Mary’s Day (August 15th) was not in the classical prayer books.  This was for two reasons: first it was likely considered sufficient to commemorate Mary in the Purification/Presentation (February 2nd) and the Annunciation (March 25th) and having a third holy day for her would be redundant; and second, August 15th was originally a more specific holy day in Western tradition: the “Assumption” of Mary.  The assumption refers to the post-biblical event of Mary being taken up (or assumed) into heaven.  This is different from Christ’s ascension into heaven in a key way: Christ ascended, which is an active verb; Mary was assumed, which is a passive verb.  Like Elijah and Enoch and presumably post-mortem Moses, the original holiday of August 15th was to commemorate when Mary was taken up into heaven like those Old Testament predecessors.  I call this “extra-biblical” because it takes place after most of the New Testament was written, and thus is not preserved for us as a sure doctrine within the Scriptures themselves.  The Reformers, thus, did not typically teach the Assumption of Mary (nor did they necessarily deny it); it’s purely a diaphora from our perspective.  Thus we are free to read the doctrine of the Assumption into the Collect for this day or not:

O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

For St. Bartholomew’s Day we can also look back at the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a riot of angry Papists who killed thousands of Protestants across France in 1572.  Feel free to Google it if you want to know about the history, just be careful you don’t end up reading about the Doctor Who story about it!  Or do; Doctor Who’s a cool television show. I review stories from that franchise as a for-fun activity.  Anyway, even though there’s no real logical or thematic link between Bartholomew and the massacre of Hugenots, other than the common incident of martyrdom, it’s worthwhile taking note of how major events in history that concur with church holy days can leave deep impressions in popular memory.  Shakespeare helps us do this with St. Crispin’s Day too, for example.

So consider yourself forewarned for a Thursday and Saturday later this month.  We’ll probably take closer looks at the liturgical observances of these days when they arrive, but it’s important for the worshiper to be aware of feast days before they make their appearance.  We’re invited to anticipate them the same way we anticipate Sundays, after all.