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.