The day has come

The Feast of St Mary the Virgin
August 15, 2009

Dear Friends and Fellow Parishioners,

With some regret we write to tell you that we have discerned that it is time for us to leave The Episcopal Church, which means that we must leave the Church of the Holy Family, our church home for the past twenty years.

As most of you will know, this decision is not undertaken lightly. It follows on several years of prayer, thought and discussion, of searching the Scriptures under the guidance of catholic tradition, all as we watched The Episcopal Church as a whole move toward what we and many in The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and the wider Church Catholic believe to be an unfaithful representation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There has been what Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina recently described as “a common pattern in how the core doctrines of our faith are being systematically deconstructed”, those core doctrines concerning the nature of God and the liturgical use of the trinitarian Name, the uniqueness of Christ and of the necessity of salvation through him, the authority of Holy Scripture, the theology of baptism, and the right understanding of the nature of our humanity (of which human sexuality, the presenting issue in the current crisis in the Anglican Communion, is a part). The Episcopal Church has consistently and repeatedly acted in a manner that has defied the wider discernment of both the Churches of the Anglican Communion and of the Church Catholic, and the actions of our General Convention and of our bishops over the past six years have fractured the bonds of affection throughout the Anglican Communion.

While the Diocese of North Carolina and our bishop, +Michael Curry, have concurred in and promoted the theological direction of The Episcopal Church, the Church of the Holy Family, under Father Timothy’s leadership, has remained largely unaffected. We have maintained right liturgical practice. The welcoming, inclusive and transformative gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached. The youth leadership have faithfully worked to present that gospel to our children and to help them work out the implications of the gospel in their lives. Through the years God has graciously given us a haven in Holy Family wherein we could discern what we should do, and where we should go, and for that we are profoundly thankful.

But this has come at a cost. A catholic understanding of the Church, wherein we are linked to other Christians through the ministry of the bishop, has had to be laid aside in favor of a de facto congregationalism. The cognitive dissonance of remaining Episcopalians – heirs of a catholic tradition of episcopacy – by becoming functional congregationalists has grown too great. This took on greater immediacy when our eldest daughter announced two weeks ago, reluctantly and with sadness, that she did not want to be confirmed in The Episcopal Church.

And so our decision. On this feast of St Mary the Virgin, when we commemorate her blessed dormition (falling asleep in death), we do well to remember her words at the wedding feast at Cana when she was asked what to do when the wine ran out. Indicating Jesus, she said, “Do whatever he tells you to do”. Echoing what our daughter told us that hot Texas afternoon, we are reluctant to leave Holy Family, but that is what we, with the prayer and counsel of friends, have discerned that we are being told to do.

We cannot adequately express what a blessing the fellowship of the Church of the Holy Family has been for us for the last twenty years. From the early years of the Fellowship of St Timothy, through the years of the Thursday night Bible study, through years of magnificent liturgy (including the baptisms – by immersion! – of our three daughters) and faithful, challenging and thoughtful preaching, through the prayers and encouragement of many friends, through the utter joy of working with parish musicians in our music teams and of leading the Children’s Choir, the Compline Choir and singing in the Adult Choir years ago: through all of these we have been blessed in ways for which we can never adequately express our thanks to God and to all of you.

We know that some of you support the direction that The Episcopal Church has taken. Our point is not to spark a debate or to judge your faithfulness personally, but to lay out the reasons for a decision that is momentous and life-changing for us.

Our last Sunday at Church of the Holy Family will be August 30th. We will work to keep our friendships with parishioners at Holy Family alive and well, and we hope that you will do the same for us. Keep us in your prayers, particularly as we look for our new church home, that we would rightly discern where the Lord is leading us. You all remain in our prayers.

In Christ’s peace,

The Martin-Grangers

Notre Dame

My wife found a lovely and deeply personal essay (really, more of a letter) on the First Things weblog, written by a young woman who became pregnant during her senior year at Notre Dame, and how – despite the complete lack of compassion on the part of her boyfriend (the father of the child) – she was supported and encouraged by the Blessed Virgin Mary, her parents and a few caring friends.

God bless Lacy Dodd, her child, her parents and her supportive friends. May none of our own prolife talk be mere “dining room talk”.

As I think about the role of Mary in this, I am reminded of of what Dr George Weigel wrote in a biographical sketch for Pope John Paul the Second in the book Great Spirits 1000-2000: The Fifty-Two Christians Who Most Influenced Their Millennium (I don’t endorse the whole book, by the way):

Mary’s last recorded words, at the wedding feast of Cana, were, “Do whatever he tells you.” True devotion to Mary always points beyond Our Lady to her Son, the incarnate Word of God, a Trinity of self-giving love and receptivity. Thus Mary is the paradigm of all discipleship.

Do whatever Jesus tells you to do. The essence of discipleship and of Marian devotion.

Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 202

Vibia Perpetua was a young widow, mother of an infant and owner of several slaves, including Felicitas and Revocatus. With two other young Carthaginians, Secundulus and Saturninus, they were catechumens preparing for baptism.

Early in the third century, the emperor Septimius Severus decreed that all persons should sacrifice to the divinity of the emperor. There was no way that a Christian, confessing faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ, could do this. Perpetua and her companions were arrested and held in prison under miserable conditions.

In a document attributed to Perpetua, we learn of visions she had in prison. One was of a ladder to heaven, which she climbed to reach a large garden; another was of her brother who had died when young of a dreadful disease, but was now well and drinking the water of life; that last was of herself as a warrior battling the Devil and defeating him to win entrance to the gate of life. “And I awoke, understanding that I should fight, not with beasts, but with the Devil…So much about me up to the day before the games; let him who will write of what happened then.”

At the public hearing before the proconsul, she refused even the entreaties of her aged father, saying, “I am a Christian.”

On March 7, Perpetua and her companions, encouraging one another bravely to bear whatever pain they might suffer, were sent to the arena to be mangled by a leopard, a boar, a bear, and a savage cow. Perpetua and Felicitas, tossed by the cow, were bruised and disheveled, but Perpetua, “lost in spirit and ecstasy,” hardly knew that anything had happened. To her companions she cried, “Stand fast in the faith and love one another. And do not let what we suffer be a stumbling block to you.”

Eventually, all were put to death by the stroke of a sword through the throat. The soldier who struck Perpetua was inept. His first blow merely pierced her throat. She shrieked with pain, then aided the man to guide the sword properly. The report of her death concludes, “Perhaps so great a woman, feared by the unclean spirit, could not have been killed unless she so willed it.”

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

Collect

O God the King of saints, you strengthened your servants Perpetua and Felicitas and their companions to make a good confession, staunchly resisting, for the cause of Christ, the claims of human affection, and encouraging one another in their time of trial: Grant that we who cherish their blessed memory may share their pure and steadfast faith, and win with them the palm of victory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Perpetua and her Companions, the Martyrs of Carthage, are published at the Lectionary Page.

John and Charles Wesley, Presbyters and Renewers of the Church, 1791, 1788

John was the fifteenth, and Charles the eighteenth, child of Samuel Wesley, Rector of Epworth, Lincolnshire, and his wife, Susannah. John was born June 17, 1703, and Charles, December 18, 1707. It has been said that the Methodist revival had its foundations in the rectory at Epworth, where the children were under the tutelage and spiritual direction of Susannah and Samuel.

The lives and fortunes of the brothers were closely intertwined. As founders and leaders of the “Methodist” or evangelical revival in eighteenth-century England, their continuing influence redounds throughout the world and is felt in many Churches.

Although their theological writings and sermons are still widely appreciated, it is through their hymns – especially those of Charles, who wrote over six thousand of them – that their religious experience, and their Christian faith and life, continue to affect the hearts and minds of many. Both brothers were profoundly attached to the doctrine and worship of the Church of England; and no amount of abuse and opposition to their cause and methods ever shook their confidence in, and love of, the English Church.

Both the brothers were educated at Christ Church, Oxford. It was there that they gathered a few friends to join in strict adherence to the worship and discipline of the Prayer Book, and were thus given the name “Methodists.” John was ordained in 1728 and Charles in 1735.

The two brothers went together to Georgia in 1735, John as a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and Charles as secretary to James Oglethorpe, the Governor of the colony.

Shortly after their return to England, they both experienced an inner conversion, Charles on May 21, 1738, and John on May 24, at a meeting in Aldersgate Street with a group of Moravians, during a reading of Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. John recorded,

“I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

And so the Wesleyan revival was born.

The later schism of the Methodists from the Church of England occurred after the death of the two brothers – Charles on March 29, 1788, and John on March 2, 1791 – though John’s uncanonical ordinations of elders for the American Methodist societies (occasioned by the Bishop of London’s refusal to ordain to the presbyterate any Methodist preachers for America, and bitterly opposed by Charles) doubtless set the basis for it.

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

Collect

Lord God, you inspired your servants John and Charles Wesley with burning zeal for the sanctification of souls, and endowed them with eloquence in speech and song: Kindle in your Church, we entreat you, such fervor, that those whose faith has cooled may be warmed, and those who have not known Christ may turn to him and be saved; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of John and Charles Wesley, Priests, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Chad, Bishop of Lichfield, 672

One of four brothers dedicated to service in the church, two of whom became bishops, Chad (Ceadda) was a disciple of Aidan of Lindisfarne, who sent Chad to Ireland for part of his education. Chad’s elder brother Cedd, a godly and upright man, had founded a monastery at Lastingham, where he governed as abbot. At his death Cedd left the abbacy to Chad. According to the Venerable Bede, Chad was “a holy man, modest in his ways, learned in the Scriptures, and careful to practice all that he found in them.”

Impressed by Chad’s qualities, Oswiu, king of the Northumbrians, appointed Chad to be bishop of York and sent him to Canterbury to be consecrated. On arriving there and finding Archbishop Deusdedit deceased with no successor yet consecrated, and faced with a dearth of bishops in England, Chad was consecrated by the simoniacal Wini of Dorchester, assisted by “two bishops of the British” whose episcopal ordinations, probably at the hands of only one rather than three bishops (as was the custom of the Church in Celtic lands), were not recognized as canonical by the English Church, having been reorganized according to Roman canon after the Synod of Whitby. According to Bed, when he became bishop, Chad “devoted himself to maintaining the truth and purity of the Church, and set himself to practice humility and continence and to study.” Following apostolic example, Chad traveled on foot rather than on horseback when he went to preach the Gospel, “whether in towns or country, in cottages, villages, or strongholds”.

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, arrived in England some four years after Chad’s ordination as bishop. Theodore made it clear that Chad’s ordination had been irregular, that is, not according to Roman canon; and Chad humbly offered to resign his episcopate, remarking that he had never believed himself worthy of the ministry.

Impressed by such humility, Theodore reordained Chad and appointed him bishop of Mercia. Chad continued his practice of making his episcopal visitations and preaching journeys on foot, until Theodore ordered him to ride, at least on longer journeys. When Chad hesitated, “reluctant to forgo this pious exercise which he loved”, the archbishop himself insisted on helping Chad to mount his horse. Chad administered his diocese “in great holiness of life after the example of the early Fathers”. Wulfhere, king of the Mercians, gave Chad land on which he founded a monastery at Barrow (Barwe). Chad established his episcopal seat in the town of Lyccidfelth (Lichfield), where he built himself a house near the church, to which he would retire privately with seven or eight brethren in order to pray and study whenever his work and preaching permitted.

Two and a half years after his reordination and appointment to Mercia, plague broke out, claiming many victims of the diocese including Chad himself. On the seventh day of his illness, he prepared himself for death by receiving Holy Communion. Bede writes that he “regarded death with joy as the Day of the Lord; for he had always been careful to prepare for his coming.” Chad died on the second of March in 672, and was buried first close by Saint Mary’s Church. His body was later translated to the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter in Lichfield.

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts; with quotations from the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, translated by Leo Sherley-Price (Penguin Books, 1990).

The Collect

Almighty God, for the peace of the Church your servant Chad relinquished cheerfully the honors that had been thrust upon him, only to be rewarded with equal responsibility: Keep us, we pray, from thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, and ready at all times to step aside for others, that the cause of Christ may be advanced; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Chad, Bishop of Lichfield, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The icon of Saint Chad is taken from the Orthodox England website.

George Herbert, Presbyter, 1633

George Herbert is famous for his poems and his prose work, A Priest in The Temple: or The Country Parson. He is portrayed by his biographer Izaak Walton as a model of the saintly parish priest. Herbert described his poems as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could submit mine to the will of Jesus my Master; in whose service I have found perfect freedom.”

Herbert was born in 1593, a member of an ancient family, a cousin of the Earl of Pembroke, and acquainted with King James the First and Prince (later King) Charles. Through his official position as Public Orator of Cambridge, he was brought into contact with the Court. Whatever hopes he may have had as a courtier were dimmed, howeer, because of his associations with persons who were out of favor with King Charles the First – principally John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln.

Herbert had begun studying divinity in his early twenties, and in 1626 he took Holy Orders. King Charles provided him with a living as rector of the parishes of Fugglestone and Bemerton in 1630.

His collection of poems, The Temple, was given to his friend, Nicholas Ferrar, and published posthumously. Three of his poems are well known hymns: “Teach me, my God and King”, “Let all the world in every corner sing”, and “King of glory, King of peace”. Their grace, strength, and metaphysical imagery influenced later poets, including Henry Vaughan and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Lines from his poem on prayer have moved many readers:

Prayer, the Church’s banquet, Angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, the heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth.

Herbert was unselfish in his devotion and service to others. Izaak Walton writes that many of the parishioners “let their plow rest when Mr Herbert’s saints-bell rung to prayers, that they might also offer their devotion to God with him.” His words, “Nothing is little in God’s service,” have reminded Christians again and again that everything in daily life, small or great, may be a means of serving and worshiping God.

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

Collect

Our God and King, you called your servant George Herbert from the pursuit of worldly honors to be a pastor of souls, a poet, and a priest in your temple: Give us grace, we pray, joyfully to perform the tasks you give us to do knowing that nothing is menial or common that is done for your sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of George Herbert, Priest, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

The Samaritan Woman

In the Orthodox Churches of the East, the Samaritan Woman, traditionally known as Saint Photini, is commemorated on February 26.

According to Eastern tradition, after her life-changing encounter with the Lord Jesus at Jacob’s Well, the Samaritan Woman was baptized on the day of Pentecost (see Acts 2) and received the name Photini (Latin, Photina), meaning “the enlightened one”. She thereafter labored in the spread of the Gospel in various places, finally receiving the crown of martrydom with her two sons and five sisters during the Neronian persecutions.

Collect

Almighty God, whose dear Son Jesus Christ conversed with the Samaritan Woman at the well of Jacob and gave her to drink of the living water of everlasting life: Grant us so to drink of this living water, that we may in this life be faithful in proclaiming him who is the Messiah, and in the life to come gain everlasting life and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Gospel
John 4:1-42

Now when Jesus* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)* Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,* the one who is speaking to you.’

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah,* can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving* wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

Saint Matthias the Apostle (February 24th)

In the nine days of waiting between the Lord’s Ascension and the Day of Pentecost, the disciples remained together in prayer. During this time, Peter reminded them that the defection and death of Judas had left the fellowship of the Twelve with a vacancy. The Acts of the Apostles records Peter’s proposal that “one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us – one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection” (Acts 1:21-22). Two men were nominated: Joseph, called Barsabbas who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. After prayer, the disciples cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias, who was then added to the eleven Apostles.

Nothing further is told of Matthias after his selection. According to tradition he was an exemplary Apostle, but we know nothing more. Matthias seems an appropriate example to Christians of one whose faithful companionship with Jesus qualifies him to be a suitable witness to the resurrection, and whose service is unheralded and unsung.

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

Collect

Almighty God, who in the place of Judas chose your faithful servant Matthias to be numbered among the Twelve: Grant that your Church, being delivered from false apostles, may always be guided and governed by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Saint Matthias the Apostle are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Apologies for the tardiness of the posting.

Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna and Martyr, 156

Polycarp was one of the leaders of the Church who carried on the tradition of the apostles through the troubled period of Gnostic heresies in the second century. According to Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, who had known him in his early youth, Polycarp was a disciple of John the Apostle, and had been appointed a bishop by “apostles in Asia”. Polycarp is traditionally believed to be the “angel of the church in Smyrna” addressed in Revelation 2:8-11.

We possess a letter from Polycarp to the Church in Philippi, whose text reveals his firm adherence to the faith and his pastoral concern for fellow Christians in trouble.

The epistle concludes:

“May God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the eternal High Priest himself, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, further your growth in faith and truth and in meekness that is perfect and without a vestige of resentment, as well as in patient endurance and long-suffering and perseverance and purity. May he also grant perfect fellowship with his saints to you, and along with you, to us, and indeed to all who are under heaven and destined to believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and his Father, who has raised him from the dead. Pray for all the saints. Pray also for kings and magistrates and rulers, and for such as persecute and hate you, as well as for the enemies of the Cross. Thus all will come to see how well you are doing, and you will be perfect in him.”

An authentic account of the martyrdom of Polycarp on February 23 is also preserved, written from the account of an eyewitness named Marcion (not to be confused with the second-century heretic of the same name). The martyrdom probably occurred in the year 156. The account tells of Polycarp’s courageous witness in the amphitheater at Smyrna. When the proconsul asked him to curse Christ, Polycarp said, “Eighty-six years I have served him, and he never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” The account reports that the magistrate was reluctant to kill the gentle old man, but his hand was forced by the mob, who clamored that he be thrown to wild beasts, as was the fate of other Christians on that dreadful day.

The magistrate refused to throw Polycarp to the wild beasts, claiming he had no authority to do so, but he had Polycarp burned at the stake. Before his ordeal, the saintly bishop looked up to heaven, and prayed:

“Lord God Almighty, Father of your beloved and blessed child Jesus Christ, through whom we have received knowledge of you, God of angels and hosts and all creation, and of the whole race of the upright who live in your presence, I bless you that you have thought me worthy of this day and hour, to be numbered among the martyrs and share in the cup of Christ, for resurrection to eternal life, for soul and body in the incorruptibility of the Holy Spirit. Among them may I be accepted before you today, as a rich and acceptable sacrifice, just as you, the faithful and true God, have prepared and foreshown and brought about. For this reason and for all things I praise you, I bless you, I glorify you, through the eternal heavenly high priest Jesus Christ, your beloved child, through whom be glory to you, with him and the Holy Spirit, now and for the ages to come. Amen.”

Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts with texts from Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation, no. 6.

Collect

O God, the maker of heaven and earth, you gave your venerable servant, the holy and gentle Polycarp, boldness to confess Jesus Christ as King and Savior, and steadfastness to die for his faith: Give us grace, following his example, to share the cup of Christ and rise to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr, are published on the Lectionary Page website.

Martin Luther, Priest and Reformer, 1546

Born in 1483 at Eisleben, Martin Luther entered the University of Erfurt in 1501 and completed his Master of Arts in 1505. His father wished him to become a lawyer, but Martin was drawn to the study of the Scriptures and joined the Augustinian canons, spending three years at their monastery in Erfurt. In 1507 he was ordained a priest and went to the University of Wittenberg, where he lectured on philosophy and the Scriptures, becoming a powerful and influential preacher.

Luther had entered on the search for evangelical perfection with serious zeal and sought exactly to fulfill the rule of the Augustinian order, but he soon found himself struggling against uncertainties and doubts. His inward, spiritual difficulties were enhanced by theological problems, particularly the ambiguities in the nature and scope of the sale of indulgences and his discovery of the message of grace.

As professor of biblical exegesis at Wittenberg, his courses of lectures on the Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews during the years 1513 to 1518 show the growing richness and maturity of his thought. In 1514 he became preacher in the parish church, whose pulpit became the center of a long and fruitful preaching ministry in which Luther expounded profoundly and beautifully the Scriptures for the common people and related them to the practical context of their lives.

Having observed much that he found wrong with his Church and the world Luther “for the purpose of eliciting truth” drew up the Ninety-Five Theses and fastened them on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, the eve of All Saints’ Day. The theses did not deny papal prerogative, though by implication they criticized papal policy; still less did they attack such established teaching as the doctrine of purgatory. But they did stress the spiritual, inward character of Christian faith. Luther sent copies of the Theses to the Archbishop of Mainz (primate of Germany) and to his own bishop, but the printing press intervened. Copies of the theses circulated far and wide, so that what might have been a mere local issue became a public controversy discussed in ever widening circles.

The Reformation that was triggered soon spread over northern Europe and later over much of the world through Protestant missionaries. Luther’s recovery of the doctrine of “justification by faith” alone (sola gratia) led to a reformation of medieval doctrine and , along with other factors, to the rise of the protestant churches. [It should be noted that several unreservedly Roman Catholic clerics of the time, including Cardinal Contarini and Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury, recognized that justification was by God’s grace alone, and that the teaching of sola gratia was agreed upon by a number of Lutheran Churches and the Church of Rome in a statement formulated in recent years.] Luther was a prolific writer, and his commentaries, polemics, and practical devotional works became the hallmark of Reformation writings. His translation of the Bible into the vernacular High German made the Scriptures more widely available in his own homeland, influenced German literature, and influenced the translation of the Scriptures into many other vernacular European languages.

Luther remained professor of biblical exegesis at Wittenberg until late illness prevented his teaching, and he directed much of the reformation of the churches of Germany by personal contact and by his writing. He died February 18, 1546, in Eisleben, the town of his birth, and was buried in Wittenberg.

Adapted from various sources.

Collect

O God, our refuge and our strength: you raised up your servant Martin Luther to reform and renew your Church in the light of your Word. Defend and purify the Church in our own day and grant that, through faith, we may boldly proclaim the riches of your grace which you have made known in Jesus Christ our Savior, who with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The propers for the commemoration of Martin Luther, Priest and Reformer, are published on the Lectionary Page website.