July
Saint Thomas the Apostle 3 July Holy Day
Saint Thomas was a disciple who followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. The first three Gospels list his name among the twelve apostles but say nothing more about him. It is in the Fourth Gospel that Thomas gains prominence — and even some notoriety. According to John, when Jesus began his final journey to Jerusalem, Thomas understood what it meant and said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” But after the resurrection, Thomas refused to believe that the other disciples had seen the risen Jesus. His doubt was quashed in the most dramatic way; and in John’s account the risen Lord drove the point home by telling Thomas: “You have believed because you have seen me; blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
In the New Testament the appearances of the risen Lord are proof that God’s saving purpose had entered its final stage. By appearing to his disciples, Jesus anticipated the still greater revelation when all the peoples of the earth will see him in glory and acknowledge him as Lord.
So Thomas was not wrong in his desire to behold and touch the Lord. But he made seeing the precondition of believing rather than its fulfillment. What blessing could he expect if, like the rest of the world, he postponed faith until the second coming, when sight will leave the world no choice but to believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Those who have not seen and yet believe therefore have a unique freedom in this present age; they shall not experience the final revelation as an eternity of compelled obedience but as the everlasting moment of creation’s fulfillment.
Jesus had mercy on Thomas and healed his desire even as he granted it. In the same way we who honour the doubting apos-tle may pray for the healing of our own desires, that they might become a source of freedom and not of constraint when God shall fulfill our faith with the vision of Christ in glory.
Saint Mary Magdalene
22 July Holy Day
Mary was called the Magdalene because she was a woman of Mag’dala, a village in Galilee. In the Gospels it is said that Jesus cast seven demons out of her and that she was one of a group of women who followed him and used their wealth to provide for the rest of his companions.
Mary accompanied Jesus to Jerusalem, and three of the evange-lists — Matthew, Mark, and John — give her first place among the women disciples who stood nearby while their Lord was crucified. All the Gospel accounts agree that, on the morning of the third day, she went to his tomb in order to anoint his corpse — and was astonished to find the tomb empty, except for mys-terious strangers who told her that Christ was risen. According to John, it was just then that Mary became the first to behold and speak with the risen Lord himself; John also reports that Jesus appointed her to proclaim the news of his resurrection to the apostles. For this reason Mary Magdalene is regarded as their equal by the Eastern Church, for she was the apostle to the apostles.
Anne
26 July
Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary — Commemoration
Today we remember a woman of Israel named Anne, the
mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her story first appeared in an apocryphal writing called “The Book of James,” as part of a mythical account of Mary’s childhood.1
According to this legend, Anne was the childless wife of a man named Jo’-a-chim, whose neighbours would not let him join in public worship because he had “begotten no offspring in Israel.” Grieved by the reproach, Jo’-a-chim went into the desert to fast for forty days and forty nights, leaving Anne to deal with her own grief at home. One afternoon, “she put on her bridal garments, and … went into her garden to walk there. And she saw a laurel tree and sat down beneath it and implored the Lord” to grant her a child. God heard her prayer and sent an angel who said: “Anne, Anne, the Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive and bear a child, and your offspring shall be spoken of in all the world.”
And so it came to pass that she conceived a child in her womb; and when the time was fulfilled she gave birth to a daughter and named her Mary. Anne turned her bedchamber into a sanctuary, so that nothing unclean according to the Law of Moses might touch her child; and when Mary was three years old, her parents brought her to the temple at Jerusalem and presented her as a virgin dedicated to God’s service.
Because of this story the figure of Anne came to be venerated throughout the Church, and even today many pilgrims are drawn to her shrine at Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec. By her legend she takes her place as a symbol of all childless but faith-ful women who, after years of prayerful longing, have at last been able to conceive and bear a child — and who have given thanks to God by seeking to protect their child as a truly sacred gift.
August
Aidan 31
August, Bishop of Lindisfarne, D. 651
On June 9th, we remembered Columba, who founded the monastery at Iona, Scotland in 563. On August 3rd, we remember Aidan from the Iona Monastery who was called to help restore Christianity in the Kingdom of Northumbria, which had been ravaged by war. In 631, pagan invaders wrecked all the churches in this kingdom, which covered much of northeastern England. Its king asked the Irish monks at Iona for help in restoring Christianity among his people. First ,they sent a bishop who regarded his Anglo-Saxon flock as obstinate and uncivilized; he soon became disgruntled and returned to Iona. Then the monks chose Aidan, had him consecrated bishop, and sent him to Northumbria.
Aidan established a monastery on an island called Lindisfarne. This allowed him to come and go among the people as he wished. As the Venerable Bede later said of him: “Aidan used to travel everywhere on foot … in order that, as he walked along, whenever he saw people, whether rich or poor, he might at once approach them and, if they were unbelievers, invite them to accept the mystery of the faith. If they were believers, that he might strengthen them in the faith, urging them by word and deed to practise almsgiving and good works.”
As he journeyed, Aidan founded monasteries and saw to the building of churches. He taught the people how to use fasting and meditation on the Scriptures to strengthen their faith; and he obtained freedom for children who were held as slaves. Finally, because of his obvious holiness and care for the poor, he was able to bear effective witness against the rich and powerful when they exploited or oppressed their neighbours.
Aidan spent just over a decade in mission-work, then retired from Lindisfarne to a much smaller island nearby in order to give himself entirely to prayer and contemplation. There he died in the year 651, beloved by God and by the people of Northumbria.
