The Hanscom Family Weblog

On this day in 1698, British missionary Thomas Bray and four laymen founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) “to advance the honor of God and the good of mankind by promoting Christian knowledge both at home and in the other parts of the world by the best methods that should offer.”

March 8

Apollonius, Philemon, and companions, martyrs [BLS]
Duthac, bishop, confessor [BLS; GTZ: Scotland]
Felix, bishop (of Dunwich, Suffolk), martyr [BLS; PRI: England]
Gay, martyr [WTS (Bruges)]
Hunfrid, bishop (of Thérouanne) [GTZ: Thérouanne]
John (of Avila) [BLS]
John (of God), confessor [common]
Julian, abbot (of Toledo) [BLS]
Psalmod, anchoret [BLS]
Pudentiana [PCP (Paris)]
Rose (of Viterbo) [BLS]
Senan, abbot, bishop [BLS]

On This Day

John of God,
Philemon the actor

International Women’s Day (United Nations)

In History

1908 - Thousands of workers in NY needle trades (primarily women) demonstrate & begin a strike for higher wages, shorter workday & an end to child labour

1955 - World Peace Council launches drive to ban all nuclear weapons

1965 - Anti Apartheid movement held mass lobby of House of Commons

GEOFFREY ANKETELL STUDDERT KENNEDY
PRIEST, 1929

Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy (June 27, 1883 - March 8, 1929), was an Anglican priest and poet. He was nicknamed ‘Woodbine Willie’ during World War I for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with spiritual aid to injured and dying soldiers.

Born in Leeds in 1883, Kennedy was the seventh of nine children born to Jeanette Anketell and William Studdert Kennedy, a vicar in Leeds. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he gained a degree in classics and divinity in 1904.

After a year’s training, he became a curate in Rugby and then, in 1914, the vicar of St. Pauls, Worcester. On the outbreak of war, Kennedy volunteered as a chaplain to the armed forces on the Western Front, where he gained the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’, for his practice of giving out Woodbine cigarettes to soldiers. In 1917, he won the Military Cross at Messines Ridge after running into no man’s land to help the wounded during an attack on the German frontline. He wrote a number of poems about his experiences, and these appeared in the books Rough Rhymes of a Padre(1918), and More Rough Rhymes (1919).

Readings:

Psalm 69:15-20
2 Samuel 22:1-7 (8-16) 17-19
1 Corinthians 15:50-58
Luke 10:25-37

Preface of a Saint (2)

PRAYER (traditional language)

Glorious God, we give thanks not merely for high and holy things, but for the common things of earth which thou hast created: Wake us to love and work, that Jesus, the Lord of life, may set our hearts ablaze and that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may recognize thee in thy people and in thy creation, serving the holy and undivided Trinity; who livest and reignest throughout all ages of ages. Amen.

PRAYER (contemporary language)

Glorious God, we give thanks not merely for high and holy things, but for the common things of earth which you have created: Wake us to love and work, that Jesus, the Lord of life, may set our hearts ablaze and that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may recognize you in your people and in your creation, serving the holy and undivided Trinity; who lives and reigns throughout all ages of ages. Amen.

After the war, Kennedy was given charge of St. Edmund King and Martyr in Lombard Street, London. Having been converted to Christian socialism and pacifism during the war, he wrote Lies (1919), Democracy and the Dog-Collar (1921) (featuring such chapters as “The Church Is Not a Movement but a Mob,” “Capitalism is Nothing But Greed, Grab, and Profit-Mongering,” and “So-Called Religious Education Worse than Useless”),Food for the Fed Up (1921), The Wicket Gate (1923), and The Word and the Work (1925). He moved to work for the Industrial Christian Fellowship, for whom he went on speaking tours of Britain. It was on one of these tours that he was taken ill, and died in Liverpool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Anketell_Studdert_Kennedy

Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln

The first thing I ever read about King was a remark by a Roman Catholic priest from England, who said: “Of course I do not believe that no Protestant can go to Heaven. I have known many Protestants whom I firmly believe to be in Heaven, and I have known some that I believe went straight to Heaven without passing through Purgatory. Edward King is the one that comes first to mind.”

Edward King was born in 1829, son of a clergyman. He was educated at home by his father and a private tutor, and when he was 19, he went to Oxford and entered Oriel College, the headquarters, as it were, of the Oxford (or Tractarian, or Anglo-Catholic) Movement. Academically, he was at best an average student. In 1854 he was ordained and made curate of Wheatley, a village near Oxford. There he began to be known as a remarkably effective pastor and counsellor. In 1862-3 he was appointed Principal of Cuddesdon, a recently founded (1854) theological college near Oxford. He served there for ten years, and under his pastorship the college became a worshipping community, where individual and communal spiritual life flourished. On the academic side, students at Cuddesdon read about the problems of pastoral work, not in contemporary manuals, but in the writings of Ambrose, Basil, and Gregory the Great. They read the sermons of Chrysostom, Augustine, and Bernard. But King insisted that preaching could never be effective or worthwhile unless it was rooted in a life of prayer and of love for one’s parishioners. A priest must pray regularly for every member of his parish, individually and by name. He must call on every member once every two months, and must get to know them well enough to understand their problems and know where they stood in need of prayer. He said:

Christ lives in his saints. We know his life in them. St
Paul prayed to know the Power of the Resurrection, though he
knew the fact.
If you are to preach, you must make up your minds that you
are sent, and sent by God.
Without the gift of love, you will never be a preacher.
Nothing anonymous will ever persuade—the faith and conduct
of the preacher give life and power to his message. Thus
preaching is different from mere feeling. You may teach
mathematics or geography without being fully convinced. But in
delivering the Gospel message, if it is to be a living
life-giving message, there must be in the preacher a sense of
message and the desire to deliver it.
However, he did not fall, or permit his students to fall, into the trap of supposing that a Christian ought to strive to have no interests other than religious ones. He said:

It is not necessary to be always thinking directly of God. Indeed, it is not possible. Sometimes, of course, we ought to, and can do this, but at other times we must give our minds to what we are doing, even if it is playing and amusement. We may, of course, commit the chief periods of our time and of our occupation to God by a short prayer, as we do before and after meals, and before reading the Bible. So also before any study, and after any study, and such a word of prayer to bless our games that they may be innocent and refreshing to us, and those with whom we play. In this way we can carry out the words “I have set God always before me,” and adopt the motto, “Laborare est orare (to work is to pray)”. A brief prayer is also possible during work and play, but in the main you should be satisfied with commending your work or play to God, and then yourself into it heartily.

King transformed the school, and the lives of those attending it, not so much by the content of his speeches as by his own life and personality. He seemed to make those around him aware of the presence and love of God. One of his students wrote afterwards of King’s influence as follows:

It was light he carried with him—light that shone through
Him—light that flowed from him. The room was lit into which he
entered. It was as if we had fallen under a streak of sunlight,
that flickered, and danced, and laughed, and turned all to
color and gold. …
The whole place was alive with him. His look, his voice, his
gaiety, his beauty, his charm, his holiness, filled it and
possessed it. There was an air about it, a tone in it, a
quality, a delicacy, a depth, which were his creation…. All
was human, natural, and free.

If this were an isolated quotation, we might be inclined to dismiss it as indicating an over-susceptibility on the part of the student. However, it seems to state the impression that King made on many of those he met.

In 1885, he was appointed Bishop of Lincoln, succeeding Christopher Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth, and himself the author of several hymns that are still in general use). He noted with satisfaction that it was the original home of John Wesley, whom he greatly admired. As a bishop-pastor, he was outstandingly effective. One writer of his day called him “the most loved man in Lincolnshire.” The private letters of his contemporaries contain many testimonies to his personal holiness and to his loving concern for others. He sought out those whom the Church had failed to reach, and spoke with them about the Good News of God’s love declared in Jesus Christ. Whenever possible, he did the work of a prison chaplain, speaking with everyone from pickpockets to murderers. In 1887 a young fisherman from Grimsby killed his sweetheart in a jealous quarrel, and was sentenced to hang. The prison chaplain was at a loss what to say to him, and King took over. He spoke to the young man, instructed him in Christian belief, preached to him the Good news of salvation in Christ, and reconciled him with God. (He also waged a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign to have the sentence commuted.)

On one occasion he was caught up in the controversies of his day. Different parties within the Church had come to regard various ceremonial usages as a mark of where the user stood theologically, and in 1887 Bishop King was denounced as celebrating the Liturgy with practices not permitted by the directives in the Book of Common Prayer and elsewhere governing Anglican worship. Specifically, the charges were

(1) having lighted candles on the altar;
(2) facing “eastward” (that is, toward the altar and with his
Back to the congregation) during most prayers; (3) mixing a little water with the wine in the chalice (done chiefly because the ancients—Jews, Greeks, and Romans alike—regularly diluted their wine with water just before drinking it, but also understood by many as a symbol of human nature being incorporated into the Divine Nature as we are united with Christ through the Sacrament); (4) using the Agnus Dei (“O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us”) as a hymn just before the receiving of the Holy Communion (this hymn is traditional, but had been omitted from the Book of Common Prayer in 1549 because Cranmer transferred the Gloria to a position at the end of the service, and the words of the Agnus Dei are included in the Gloria, so that it seemed repetitious to have them both within a few minutes of each other); (5) making the sign of the Cross when blessing the congregation; and (6) making a ceremony of cleansing the Communion vessels after the service. None of these practices is particularly controversial today, but they were then thought by some to be signs of inclination to the views—and the company—of the Pope. King was tried by a Church Court presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The decision of the Court forbade some of these practices, but permitted others while specifying that they had no theological significance. Thus, lighted candles were to be permitted on the altar, but only when needed for purposes of illumination. The Times wrote of the judgement:
The Ritualists are to have their way in the chief practices Impugned—the other party are diligently assured that there is no such significance as has hitherto been supposed in such practices. The Ritualists…are given the shells they have been fighting for, and the Evangelicals are consoled with the gravest assurances that there were no kernels inside them.

It is ironic that King appears in reference works chiefly as the defendent in the Lincoln Trial, since most of those who knew him would have regarded this as a brief and peripheral episode in a life devoted chiefly to preaching and exemplifying the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

PRAYER (traditional language):

O God, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful Servant Edward to be a bishop and pastor in thy Church and to feed thy flock: Give abundantly to all pastors the gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may minister in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

PRAYER (contemporary language):

O God, our heavenly Father, who raised up your faithful servant Edward to be a bishop and pastor in your Church and to feed your flock: Give abundantly to all pastors the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that they may minister in your household as true servants of Christ and stewards of your divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

St. John of God
(1495-1550)

Having given up active Christian belief while a soldier, John was 40 before the depth of his sinfulness began to dawn on him. He decided to give the rest of his life to God’s service, and headed at once for Africa, where he hoped to free captive Christians and, possibly, be martyred.

He was soon advised that his desire for martyrdom was not spiritually well based, and returned to Spain and the relatively prosaic activity of a religious goods store. Yet he was still not settled. Moved initially by a sermon of Blessed John of Avila, he one day engaged in a public beating of himself, begging mercy and wildly repenting for his past life.

Committed to a mental hospital for these actions, John was visited by Blessed John, who advised him to be more actively involved in tending to the needs of others rather than in enduring personal hardships. John gained peace of heart, and shortly after left the hospital to begin work among the poor.

He established a house where he wisely tended to the needs of the sick poor, at first doing his own begging. But excited by the saint’s great work and inspired by his devotion, many people began to back him up with money and provisions. Among them were the archbishop and marquis of Tarifa.

Behind John’s outward acts of total concern and love for Christ’s sick poor was a deep interior prayer life which was reflected in his spirit of humility. These qualities attracted helpers who, 20 years after John’s death, formed the Brothers Hospitallers, now a worldwide religious order.

John became ill after 10 years of service but tried to disguise his ill health. He began to put the hospital’s administrative work into order and appointed a leader for his helpers. He died under the care of a spiritual friend and admirer, Lady Anne Ossorio.

ST. JOHN OF GOD, CONFESSOR
MONDAY, MARCH 08, 2010

St. John of God was born in Portugal in 1495 of a devout and charitable Christian family. St. John’s family was poor, so when it was time for John to set out on his own, he decided to leave his parents and join the military. John spent a considerable part of his life in the army, but in the process he fell away from the faith of his birth. Around the age of 40, John’s troop was disbanded and he was forced to seek other employment.

John managed to get a job as a shepherd at a rich woman’s farm. Slowly, as John became accustomed to life outside of the military, he began to realize the depth of his sinfulness and began to repent. After receiving some excellent spiritual direction, John began to direct his energies toward the service of others. John established a house devoted to the service of the sick and began to work one on one with the poor of the area. St. John raised money for his charitable work by door to door begging.

Soon, many people began to realize the goodness of John and the holiness of his work and donated generously to him with both money and provisions. John’s goodness and holiness also attracted followers and the group became the foundation of a religious order. After ten years of intense work, John began to weaken and become ill. After several more years of reduced work, John died in 1550 at the age of 55. He is the patron of hospitals, the sick, nurses and booksellers.

http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/saintoftheday/mar_08_-_st._theophylactus_bishop_of_nicomedia#6942

International (Working) Women’s Day

When : March 8th

International Women’s Day is sponsored worldwide by the United Nations. The roots of this celebration goes back to the late 1800’s to early 1900s. It grew from women’s socialist movements and early women’s trade union groups.

The first International Women’s Day was held March 19, 1911. Women socialists and trade unions held an earlier Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February, 1908. The event grew from there and has been celebrated annually since. The focus is upon women workers, and advancing women’s rights in the workforce, politics and society.

More Information:

UN’s International Women’s Day

The History of IWD

International Women in Australia