1 January - The naming of Jesus
It is Matthew and Luke who tell the story of how the angel instructed that Mary’s baby was to be named Jesus - a common name meaning ‘saviour’. The Church recalls the naming of Jesus on 1 January - eight days after 25 December (by the Jewish way of reckoning days). For in Jewish tradition, the male babies were circumcised and named on their eighth day of life.
For early Christians, the name of Jesus held a special significance. In Jewish tradition, names expressed aspects of personality. Jesus’ name permeated his ministry, and it does so today: we are baptised in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38), we are justified through the name of Jesus (1 Cor 6:11); and God the Father has given Jesus a name above all others (Phil 2:9). All Christian prayer is through ‘Jesus Christ our Lord’, and it is ‘at the name of Jesus’ that one day every knee shall bow.
*1 Have you ever wondered where the name ‘Jesus’ comes from?
The name Jesus is a transliteration of a name that occurs in several languages. It is of Hebrew origin, ‘Yehosua’, or Joshua. Or there is the Hebrew-Aramaic form, ‘Yesua’. In Greek, it became ‘ Ἰησοῦς’ (Iēsoûs), and in Latin it became ‘Iesus’.
The meaning of the name is ‘Yahweh delivers’ or ‘Yahweh rescues’, or ‘Yahweh is salvation’. No wonder the angel Gabriel in Luke 1:26-33 told Mary to name her baby Jesus: “because he will save his people from their sins”.
2 January - Basil the Great
Basil was most people’s idea of the perfect diocesan bishop. He was a theologian of distinction, who as a monk devoted himself to much prayer and teaching. He leapt to the defence of the church from the persecution of the Arian emperor Valens, but also appreciated great secular literature of the time, gave away his inheritance to the poor, knew how to run a soup kitchen, and counted thieves and prostitutes among his converts. Not your everyday bishop!
Basil (c330-79) came from a distinguished and pious family, and he had the best education available at Caesarea, Constantinople and Athens. He decided to become a monk with Gregory of Nazianzus, and settled as a hermit near Neo-Caesarea. He became bishop of Caesarea in 370, with 50 suffragan bishops to look after. It was the time of the great Arian heresy, and Basil would come to be seen as one of the great champions of the Church, defending it from secular encroachments.
Basil loved his people – and was known for his generosity and care for the poor – both through food and medical care. He was a great preacher – preaching both morning and evening to vast congregations, and organising services of psalms before daybreak.
He was interested in monastic legislation, and to this day, nearly all monks and nuns of the Greek Church follow his rule. His emphasis was on community life, liturgical prayer, and manual work, rather than on solitary asceticism. His rule allowed for almsgiving, hospitals and guest-houses. Basil wrote some important works on the Holy Spirit.
He died at 49, worn out by austerities, hard work and disease. He was so loved that even strangers mourned his death, and in the centuries that followed, many artists painted pictures of him. His cult spread rapidly in the West, through Greek monks in Italy and through St Benedict admitting that his rule had been inspired by “our holy father Basil”.
5 Simeon Stylites - one of the weirder saints
Quite frankly, this hermit was about as weird as they come. But he loved God, and God blessed him, strange though he was. So perhaps Simeon Stylites (390 – 459) should be the patron saint of all REALLY eccentric people.
Simeon was the son of a shepherd on the Syrian border of Cilicia, He joined a monastery near Antioch, where he practised mortifications and penances that nearly killed him. When the abbot dismissed him in disgust as crazy, Simeon moved on to Telanissos (nowadays Dair Sem’an) and spent his first Lent there in a total fast. He was found unconscious on Easter Day. After three years in that monastery he felt life was too easy, and moved himself to the top of the nearby mountain, where he chained himself to a rock. He began to be talked about, and more and more people came to see him.
Simeon did not want their company, and so planned his escape: to the top of a pillar. For the next four years he lived on top of a pillar that was nine feet high. More people came by, and so Simeon in desperation added to his pillar, until it grew to be 18 feet high. Still people came to see him, and so three years later, Simeon built himself a real skyscraper – a pillar 33 feet high, from the top of which he enjoyed 10 years of comparative solitude.
Still people came to see him – both Christians and pagans, and so Simeon decided to somehow to build a pillar that was 60 feet high and six feet wide. Here he found peace and quiet, and so here he lived for the last 20 years of his life. People still came to see him, and tried to catch the ‘sacred’ lice that fell off his body. They enjoyed his twice daily exhortations to everyone below. Even the odd emperor came by for a look – Theodosius, Leo and Marcian.
A scholar has written of Simeon: “His preaching was practical, kindly, and free from fanaticism. ... In an age of licentiousness and luxury he gave unique and abiding witness to the need for penance and prayer; his way of life provided a spectacle at once challenging, repulsive and awesome.”
Simeon finally died and was buried at Antioch. Perhaps he would have enjoyed the chance to take the plinth at Trafalgar Square!
6 January - Epiphany
On 6 January we celebrate Epiphany - the visit of the wise men to the baby Jesus. But who were these wise men? No one knows for sure. Matthew calls them ‘Magi’, and that was the name of an ancient caste of a priestly kind from Persia. It wasn’t until the third century that they were they called kings - by a church father, Tertullian. Another church father, Origin, assumed there were three - to correspond with the gifts given. Later Christian interpretation came to understand gold as a symbol of wisdom and wealth, incense as a symbol of worship and sacrifice, and myrrh as a symbol of healing - and even embalming. Certainly Jesus challenged and set aright the way in which the world handled all three of these things. Since the eighth century, the magi have had the names Balthasar, Caspar and Melchior.
8 Nathalan - an early farmer in Scotland
Many saints have fed the poor, but not many were interested in actual food production. Nathalan (died c.678) was, so perhaps he might be the patron saint of anyone who produces food – and gives most of it away to those in need.
Scotland in the 7th century must have been a hungry place, especially as far north as the Aberdeen district. According to his Legend in the Aberdeen breviary, he was a nobleman who decided to cultivate his land as a way of serving God. He wanted to feed the people in times of famine. It is not known what food he managed to grow so far north, but Nathalan was well-loved for providing what he could.
*12 Antony Pucci - poor, plain and tongue-tied
If you have nothing going for you, Antony Pucci (1819-92) should be your patron saint.
He came from nowhere – a peasant family in Tuscany. He went nowhere – he spent his life as a parish priest in the Tuscan city of Viareggio. He was unattractive to look at. He wasn’t good with words – people found him awkward and shy.
So why do people still remember him today? Because Antony Pucci used the one gift he did have in the service of others. He was an excellent organiser, and he served his people brilliantly. His care for the sick in the epidemics of 1854 and 1866 was outstanding. He even set up the first seaside nursing homes for poorly children.
Antony Pucci used to say that organization is the servant of charity, not its substitute. But he used his gift for organisation as a way of showing his charity, and for that he was loved.
So – if your family is nothing to shout about, if you wince when you look in the mirror in the morning, if you stand tongue-tied in most social situations, don’t despair. Ask God to show you what gift he HAS given you, and use it in the service of others. And in giving to them, you will receive! It is when we lose our lives for his sake, in his service, that we truly find them.
17 Anthony of Egypt (251 -356)
If your Christmas and New Year break included just too many people and even a bout of indigestion, then St Antony may be the saint for you. He was a hermit-monk with a reputation for making poorly people feel better.
Antony was born in Coma (Upper Egypt) in 251, and at 20 became an ascetic. He settled down in the complete solitude of a deserted fort in Pispir, where he spent the next 20 years busy fighting the whole range of usual hermit temptations, such as having queenly devils approach you for marriage, and other hazards like that.
In 306 Antony felt able to face the world again, and so he began visiting with some other hermits. One was Paul, and the story goes that the day they met, a raven provided lunch for them by dropping a loaf of bread nearby.
Antony was a godly man, and would pray for people. Stories went round that those he prayed for were healed, and so he became known as a miracle-worker. He was certainly brave: when in 311 the Roman Emperor Maximinus was persecuting the Christians, Antony went to Alexandria to encourage the church there to stand firm. Years later he was stoutly defending the Christian faith in disputes with heretics.
Antony died in 356, but even hundreds of years later he was not forgotten. A medical band of people adopted his name: The Order of Hospitallers of Saint Antony was founded (c.1100, in La Motte). It became a pilgrimage centre for those suffering from ergotism (called St Antony’s Fire - a serious form of fungi poisoning).
Antony was a tremendously popular saint throughout the Middle Ages. By then he was seen as the patriarch of monks, and a healer of both men and animals. Antony even gave us the word ‘tantony’, a diminutive applied to the smallest pig in a litter, and to the smallest bell in a peal of bells.
The early church father, Athanasius, wrote The Life of Antony. This moving biography helped to convert the great Augustine.
21 Meinrad (d 861)
The more things change, the more they remain the same. You could read Meinrad’s story today in the newspapers of any large city. He was born near Wurtemberg of a free peasant family, and became a monk at Reichenau (Switzerland). In 829 he moved to Einsiedeln to be a hermit, where he lived quietly for the next 25 years.
Then one night there was a knock on his door. Meinrad courteously welcomed two strangers who had come to see him. Things took a turn for the bad – they demanded money or treasure. Meinrad explained he had none. They got angry – and savagely beat him to death with their clubs. The life of a gentle, godly man was extinguished. The murderers were caught and executed, and the local people were left to grieve and share their shock and sadness at the pointless death of such a godly man.
25 January - The Conversion of St Paul
January is a month of the beginning of great things! As well as the naming of the Son of God, we celebrate the conversion of the greatest ever apostle of the Christian faith. Many books have been written on Paul, and here is the briefest of introductions.
He was a Jew, born as ‘Saul’ at Tarsus, and brought up by the rabbi Gamaliel as a Pharisee. A devout, fanatical Jew, Saul persecuted the Christians, and watched with satisfaction the first Christian martyrdom, the stoning of Stephen. Then on his way to Damascus Saul had a vision of Christ that stopped him, literally, in his tracks. He realised that this Jesus whom he was persecuting was in fact the Messiah for whom he had longed.
Saul changed overnight. He took a new name, Paul, and became an evangelist for the cause of Christ. He became a leader in the early Church, and his special calling was as an apostle to the Gentiles. He wrote many epistles to the young churches he founded - and thus, inadvertently, wrote a great part of the New Testament.
Life as the greatest apostle was hardly full of perks: he was stoned, beaten, mobbed, homeless, hated, imprisoned, and finally martyred. Tradition has it that he was beheaded in Rome during the persecution of Nero in AD 64, and buried where the basilica of St Paul ‘outside the walls’ now stands. His mighty faith in Christ has kindled similar belief in many millions of people down the centuries.
26 Timothy and Titus
Timothy and Titus are the saints for you if you’ve been a Christian for some time, and now realise that God wants you to move into some form of leadership. A daunting prospect!
The books of First and Second Timothy and Titus are what is known as the three pastoral letters, where Paul writes to ministers in charge of important churches instead of writing to the churches themselves. Paul gives both Timothy and Titus explicit instructions for how to shepherd the sheep in their care. Timothy had been given the responsibility of the church at Ephesus, and Titus the care of the church at Crete.
Both Timothy and Titus were young men, and both felt quite daunted at the task ahead of them!
Timothy, half Jewish, had met Paul when he was still a child, living with his mother Eunice at Lystra. Paul had come to their city and preached, and they had both become Christians. Timothy had then accompanied Paul on his second missionary journey – a great training experience. But experience is given to us so that we might in turn become productive – and in due course Paul entrusted the vastly important church of Ephesus into Timothy’s care. This church was so vibrant in its faith that within 50 years so many Ephesians became Christians that the city’s pagan temples were almost forsaken. A huge responsibility!
Titus was a gentile, almost certainly another convert of Paul’s. Paul had used Titus as a trouble-shooter with the Corinthians, and when Titus was successful in that, gave him a real bit of trouble: the church at Crete. Again, Titus served his Lord faithfully, even in this most difficult of situations.
So if you are going to attempt any leadership for God, why not make time to read the three pastoral epistles first? They have been an invaluable handbook for Christian leaders for 20 centuries, and are full of spiritual wisdom and good common sense. If they worked for Timothy and Titus, they may work for you as well!
Timothy became the first bishop of Ephesus, and was finally martyred when he opposed pagan festivals (probably in honour of Dionysius). He was killed by stones and clubs, easily to hand during the pagan festival of Katagogia. His supposed relics were translated to Constantinople in 356.
Titus went on to become the first Bishop of Crete, and is believed to have died there, though history does not tell us how. His relics are supposed to be buried in Crete, except for his head, which was allegedly taken to Venice in 823.
Both Timothy and Titus were good and faithful servants, and could look back on lives well spent. Imagine - one day you will stand before the Lord, as well, and say: “This is what I did with the leadership role you entrusted to me. Was I a good and faithful servant, too?”
27 Angela Merici (1474 – 1540)
With international concern about the welfare of children, Angela is a good saint to remember as the year gets underway. Not only did she herself survive a harsh childhood, but she went on to dedicate her own life to helping children in need.
Angela was born near Lake Garda, in Desenzano, where she was orphaned as a young child. The 1480s were hardly an easy time for orphaned girls, but somehow Angela survived to grow into her teens, when she became a Franciscan tertiary. However miserable her own childhood, Angela chose to let it work for good in her life: she decided to devote her own life to the education of poor girls. Girls! This was a time when most of the men were illiterate!
But Angela was an audacious woman, and she had only just begun. She and some close companions set to work in the name of Christ, seeking out the poor families in their community. Angela taught the young girls all that she could, and prayed with them, assuring them that even they were precious in the eyes of their Creator.
All of which left the Roman Catholic Church badly baffled. What should they do with religious sisters who had taken no vows, still wore their lay clothes, and who, instead of walling themselves up in some nunnery to lead an enclosed life, spent their days in a decidedly mobile, highly visible fashion – out and about in community support?
It wasn’t until 1565, some 25 years AFTER Angela’s death, that the Church decided it approved of such work. By then the Ursuline nuns, as they were by then called, were going from strength to strength. They still flourish today, with some 2400 Ursuline Sisters in 27 provinces on six continents, and have been well described as ‘the oldest and most considerable teaching order of women in the RC Church.’
It took nearly 300 years, but in 1807 the Roman Catholic Church decided that Angela, unveiled, unenclosed and unsupervised as she had been, had been a saint after all – and ‘made’ her one.