St. Monica, St. Augustine, St. John - Rector's Rambling for May 2, 2021

    This week we have some GREAT Feast Days to celebrate.  This week we celebrate St. Athanasius, Ss. Augustine and Monica, and St. John before the Latin Gate.  A wonderful panoply of Holy People!

On Monday, we celebrate today’s Feast, transferred.  St. Athanasius lived in the 4th Century and was one of the great defenders of “Nicene Christology”, taking on those holding heretical views about Jesus’ nature as both God and Man, being of one Substance with the Father, rather than a “like” substance.  The Athanasian Creed, which we recite on Trinity Sunday, is attributed to him and his school.

On Tuesday, we celebrate the Feast of St. Monica of Hippo, also from the 4th Century.  A godly woman, she is credited for one particular gift to the Church – the conversion of her son Augustine to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.  Although it was God the Holy Ghost who ultimately brought him to conversion from the Manichean heresy, he credits her unceasing intercession for him as a major part of his coming to the Faith.  She died shortly after his baptism in 287.

On Wednesday, we celebrate St. Augustine’s Conversion itself.  The wonderful story of that event, as well as what lead up to and followed it, is recorded for us in his autobiography, known as The Confessions of Saint Augustine – a book highly recommended to all the faithful!

Thursday is the Feast of St. John before the Latin Gate.  This secondary feast of St. John (his first primary feast day is December 27) is attributed to a tradition that his detractors tried to kill him by putting him in a pot of boiling oil, but he came through it unscathed.  A Church in Jerusalem, commemorating the place where this was to have happened, exists today, outside the Latin Gate to the city.