Saint Andrei Rublev was born about 1360 and died in 1430. He was a monk throughout his adult life, first at the Holy Trinity Monastery and later at the Andronikov Monastery in Moscow, where he was buried. He is remembered as being shy and calm, devoted to divine services, meditation and icon painting.
Godhead here in hiding Whom I do adore
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God Thou art.
I want to hear the voices of women
Reverberate around the world
Not the cries of the mourner and the victim only
Those too, of course
But also the articulate agendas of women’s passions
For a well, whole and flourishing world.
Three young companions of St. Paul are commemorated together on the day after the festival of Paul’s conversion. Thus the church is reminded that not age but love of Christ and faithful care of the church are the important qualities for Christian witness in the world
How could Paul both deny that he had received the gospel through human mediation and yet also affirm that his gospel was in accord with the tradition he received? Unless we are content to conclude that Paul was wholly unscrupulous in his shifts and manoeuvres (a judgment we should hesitate before passing on anyone), the answer has to be something along the following lines.
No saint claims to be a saint, and neither did you—except in so far as we are all called to be saints. In 1987 when Bob Browne was making the film Return to Hepu, you said to him: “I am just an earthen vessel with God’s treasure inside me.” No saint would claim more than that for herself. Yet here we have an icon of you with a halo.
What, then, is preaching, of which we are to speak? It is not hard to find a definition. Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men. It has in it two essential elements, truth and personality. Neither of those can it spare and still be preaching. The truest truth, the most authoritative statement of God’s will, communicated in any other way than through the personality of brother man to men is not preached truth. Suppose it written on the sky, suppose it embodied in a book which has been so long held in reverence as the direct utterance of God that the vivid personality of the men who wrote its pages has well-nigh faded out of it; in neither of these cases is there any preaching.
S. Vincent, the most illustrious martyr of the Spanish Church, was born at Saragossa, and suffered in the persecution under Diocletian and Maximinian, A.D. 304. The Governor Datian, after trying persuasion in vain, had recourse to the most horrible torments to subdue S. Vincent’s Faith; but all to no purpose:
S. Agnes, when about thirteen years of age, was demanded in marriage by the son of Symphronius, the Prefect of Rome. But she was a Christian and vowed to celibacy, and therefore refused his offers. She was seized and commanded to burn incense to the gods, but resisted with holy firmness.
On the death of Anterus, Bishop of Rome, A.D. 236, the brethren assembled in the church to choose a successor; but while they were debating who was the fittest person to fill the See, a dove suddenly alighted on the head of a stranger there present, and he was unanimously elected Bishop.