A week of saints - Rector's Rambling for April 19, 2026

     Although we are primarily focusing on the Resurrection this Eastertide, we also have the opportunity to look at a variety of Saints this month particularly some notable ones this week.

Today, if it weren’t Sunday in Eastertide, we could be commemorating the Feast of St. Alphege.  An Archbishop of Canterbury during the time of the viking invasions in the 10th and 11th centuries, he negotiated a peace treaty between King Aethelred and the Norse King Olaf Tryggavon in 994.  In 1011 he was captured by the invading Danes.  According to the Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts, St. Alphage refuse to allow the people to college money to ransom him.  The Danes beat him to death, eventually dispatching his soul to heaven with a blow to the head with an axe-iron in 1012.

April 21 is the Feast of St. Anselm, another Archbishop of Canterbury about about a century later.  Italian by birth, he became a monk in France (Normandy) and eventually Archbishop of Canterbury.  He is best known for his disagreements with the King over the rights of the Church in England, and for what is known as the Ontological Argument for the existence of God.  In a nutshell, “God is that than which nothing greater can be thought.” and that God can be said to exist in reality as well as in the intellect, but not dependent upon the material world for verification.” (LFF, p. 224).  He is also known for the phrase “faith seeking understanding”  “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand. For this , too, I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand” (LFF . 224). 

On Thursday the 23rd we celebrate the Feast of St. George, the Holy Protector of England (Edward the Confessor being the Patron Saint of England).  Little is known historically about St. George other than his martyrdom in Palesine about the year 303.  to him was deeply held in the East as a patron protector of soldiers, and the knights from the west brought that cultus back to the west as a result of the crusades. 

The Flag of St. George, a white field with a red cross, is the flag of England, and the basis of the heraldry of our denomination. One flies this week on the flagpole behind the ministry center. 

Saturday if the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist.  Author of the Gospel in his name, it is attributed as the teaching of St. Peter.  Mark appears in several places in the New Testament, including Acts of the Apostles and St. Pauls letter to the Colossians and St. Peter’s 1st Epistle.

He is believed to have been the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt and there was martyred for the faith.