August Feasts and Saints - Rector's Rambling for August 4, 2024

     

    August brings us warm but shortening days as summer begins to wind down.  Thank you to everyone for tolerating our sometime warm and muggy worship in our wonderful old building.  If it cools down overnight we can open the upper windows and the very large exhaust fan in the bell tower to pull out the warm air and have the cooler air drawn in.  It is old-time cooling for an old time building.  Soon enough we will be poking at the furnace to warm the church up!

August also brings us a bevy wonderful Feast Days and Saints Days!

Today is the Feast of St. Jean Marie Vianney, also known as the Cure d’Ars.  He is considered the patron saint of parish priests and he died in 1859, the year our parish opened.  His feast day will be observed tomorrow at the 12:15 Holy Communion Service.

Tuesday is a Prayer Book Holy Day.  It is the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord.  See the Teaching Notes column on page 4 for more information on this important day.  Holy Communion will be celebrated at 12:15 that day.

Thursday in the Feast of St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers, better known at the Dominicans.  A contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi  (died 1221) who founded a similar religious order to the Franciscans, being ‘mendicants’.  These are religious who are not centralized in a monastery like the Benedictines or Cistercian but working out in education, parish work, or preaching/evangelism missionary work. Although the Franciscans later developed an educational charism,  the Dominicans have had it as a foundational principle from the start.

St. Clare of Assisi’s feast day is August 11th (celebrated this year on August 12 at 12:15 Mass).  She was received into the Franciscan Order by St. Francis and was the foundress of what is called the Second Order of the Franciscans, also known as the Poor Clares.

August 15th is a special feast of St. Mary the Virgin, mother of our Lord.  St. Helena, the mother of Constantine has her feast day on August 18 (founder of the relic of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem), St. Bernard of Clairvaux is August 20.  He decided to become a Benedictine Monk and convinced 30 friends and family members to join him to reform the Order into a stricter observance of the original rule of life, now known as the Cistercians.  St. Bartholomew the Apostle is August 24, King Louis of France on August 25, St. Augustine of Hippo on the 28th and The Beheading of John the Baptist commemorated on August 29th. 

Don’t know much about these saints?  Look them up online, or better yet join us for Mass those days.