By Derek Olsen
The first half of Ephesians 4 clearly lays out the purpose of the institutional Church: that we may all come “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13). Appropriately, then, we find it in our baptismal liturgy where parents and godparents solemnly promise that they will “help this child to grow into the full stature of Christ” (p. 302).
But what does this mean? What does this look like? If this is a central purpose of the Church, what guidance does the Church give us for what this may be?
In my doctoral dissertation on how early medieval monks read Scripture, I spent a large portion of chapter 2 looking at how the monks talked about saints. The monastic hagiographies—the accounts read in the liturgical Offices—gave communities a picture of sanctity, a glimpse of how the full stature of Christ looked, incarnate in different places and different times. Now, the history that I found in these could sometimes be…a little questionable, and I discovered that (for my purposes, at least) the less the monks knew historically, the better off I was. The least historical accounts were the most ideal: these texts sketched mostly clearly the idealized holy goals of monastic living.
Now—the Episcopal Church doesn’t talk about saints so much. In fact, within our prayer book only the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, Evangelists, Mary Magdalene, and Stephen the Protomartyr are so honored. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have them… Even before the authorization of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the Episcopal Church envisioned a supplementary volume that would include Days of Optional Observance to liturgically commemorate heroes of the faith. With the authorization of the Prayer Book, General Convention also authorized this volume known as Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1979-A056) which commemorates Christians East and West from the earliest times down to the twentieth century.
Striving for clarity, 1994’s General Convention passed a set of criteria for subsequent additions to the book. The 1994 General Convention Resolution (A074a) can be found in full here. The money section is contained in the 8 bullets under Guidelines; the contents of these bullets describe qualities held by suitable candidates for inclusion:
1. Heroic Faith. This means bearing witness to God in Christ “against the odds.” Historically, the greatest exemplars of such faith have been martyrs, who have suffered death for the cause of Christ, and confessors, who have endured imprisonment, torture, or exile for the sake of Christ. Following this precedent, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America has been very specific and has restricted the designation of martyrdom to persons who have chosen to die rather than give up the Christian faith, and has not applied it to persons whose death may have resulted from their heroic faith but who did not consciously choose martyrdom. There are other situations where choosing and persisting in a Christian manner of life involves confessing Christ “against the odds,” even to the point of risking one’s life. For this reason the Anglican Communion traditionally has honored monks and nuns like Antony, Benedict, Hilda, Constance and her companions, missionaries like George Augustus Selwyn, and people as diverse as Monnica, Richard of Chichester, and Nicholas Ferrar. More recently the Church has learned to honor social reformers like William Wilberforce and Jonathan Daniels for the same reason. Heroic faith is, therefore, a quality manifested in many different situations.
2. Love. “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing…So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:2b-3, 13).
3. Goodness of life. People worthy of commemoration will have worked for the good of others. It is important to recognize that the Church looks not only for goodness but also for growth in goodness. A scandalous life prior to conversion does not disqualify one from consideration for the Calendar; rather, the witness of perseverance to the end will confirm holiness of life and the transforming power of Christ.
4. Joyousness. As faith is incomplete without love, so does love involve “rejoicing in the Spirit”–whether in the midst of extraordinary trials, or in the midst of the ordinary rounds of daily life. A Christian may not fail in the works of love, but still lack the joy of it–thereby falling short of true Christian sanctity. Such joy, however, is as much a discipline of life as an emotion. It need not lie on the surface of a person’s life, but may run deeply and be discerned by others only gradually.
5. Service to others for Christ’s sake. “There are varieties of gifts…and there are varieties of service” (1 Cor. 12:4-5). There is no true holiness without service to others in their needfulness. The Church recognizes that just as human needs are diverse, so also are forms of Christian service–both within the Church and in the world.
6. Devotion. People who are worthy of commemoration have shown evidence of seeking God through the means of grace which the Church recognizes, having “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). We look both for regularity and for growth in the discipline of prayer and meditation upon God’s Word; and we look for this devotion to be manifested not only in a person’s private life but also in visible company and communion with his or her fellow Christians.
7. Recognition by the faithful. Initiating the commemoration of particular saints is the privilege of those who knew, loved, and discerned the special grace of Christ in a member of their community, and who desire to continue in the communion of prayer with that member now departed. Such instinctive recognition by the faithful begins naturally at the local and regional levels. Evidence of both (a) such commemoration growing locally and (b) such recognition of sanctity spreading beyond the immediate community is essential before the national Church has an obligation to take heed. It may, in fact, decide that the commemoration in question is best left to local observance.
8. Historical perspective. In a resolution on the Calendar, the 1958 Lambeth Conference of Bishops stated, “The addition of a new name should normally result from a widespread desire expressed in the region concerned over a reasonable period of time.” Generally this has been two generations or fifty years after death.
Clearly items seven and eight are particular to the sanctoral process—otherwise, these criteria are a solid start towards what we’re looking for. This gives us a set of qualities that are specific enough to ground one’s character, yet broad enough to envision myriad ways in which they can be implemented.
This past year, General Convention authorized a new book. This text supersedes Lesser Feasts and Fasts and is entitled Holy Women, Holy Men. While it took some twenty years for guidelines to be placed in LFF, this new book has criteria in it from the start. Even at first glance it’s clear that something has changed, though. Here are the principles of revision from Holy Women, Holy Men which begin on pg 131 of the PDF from the Blue Book:
1. Historicity: Christianity is a radically historical religion, so in almost every instance it is not theological realities or spiritual movements but exemplary witness to the Gospel of Christ in lives actually lived that is commemorated in the Calendar.
2. Christian Discipleship: The death of the saints, precious in God’s sight, is the ultimate witness to the power of the Resurrection. What is being commemorated, therefore, is the completion in death of a particular Christian’s living out of the promises of baptism. Baptism is, therefore, a necessary prerequisite for inclusion in the Calendar.
3. Significance: Those commemorated should have been in their lifetime extraordinary, even heroic servants of God and God’s people for the sake, and after the example, of Jesus Christ. In this way they have testified to the Lordship of Christ over all of history, and continue to inspire us as we carry forward God’s mission in the world.
4. Memorability: The Calendar should include those who, through their devotion to Christ and their joyful and loving participation in the community of the faithful, deserve to be remembered by The Episcopal Church today. However, in order to celebrate the whole history of salvation, it is important also to include those “whose memory may have faded in the shifting fashions of public concern, but whose witness is deemed important to the life and mission of the Church” (Thomas Talley).
5. Range of Inclusion: Particular attention should be paid to Episcopalians and other members of the Anglican Communion. Attention should also be paid to gender and race, to the inclusion of lay people (witnessing in this way to our baptismal understanding of the Church), and to ecumenical representation. In this way the Calendar will reflect the reality of our time: that instant communication and extensive travel are leading to an ever deeper international and ecumenical consciousness among Christian people.
6. Local Observance: Similarly, it should normatively be the case that significant commemoration of a particular person already exists at the local and regional levels before that person is included in the Calendar of the Episcopal Church as a whole.
7. Perspective: It should normatively be the case that a person be included in the Calendar only after two generations or fifty years have elapsed since that person’s death.
8. Levels of Commemoration: Principal Feasts, Sundays and Holy Days have primacy of place in the Church’s liturgical observance. It does not seem appropriate to distinguish between the various other commemorations by regarding some as having either a greater or a lesser claim on our observance of them. Each commemoration should be given equal weight as far as the provision of liturgical propers is concerned (including the listing of three lessons).
9. Combined Commemorations: Not all those included in the Calendar need to be commemorated “in isolation.” Where there are close and natural links between persons to be remembered, a joint commemoration would make excellent sense (e.g., the Reformation martyrs—Latimer and Ridley; bishops of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste and Hugh).
The first thing that jumps to mind is that we have a genre change. This is not, as the list before it was, a list of criteria that gives us that snapshot of Christian maturity; this is very much a process for selecting historical personages for commemoration. Thus, these lists don’t function in the same way, either rhetorically or catechetically. The new principles focus on process rather than qualities of life. As a result, the explicit naming of components of the mature Christian life have been curtailed. In their place we have business notes.
Naming sanctoral qualities is neither an abstract task, nor simply a liturgical one: it is a fundamentally theological and ultimately Christological task. The people the Church identifies as models—whether we call them saints or not—say something important about how we construct our understanding of the Christian life. How we construct the Christian life, in turn, speaks volumes about how we understand Christ. Just as we strive to see Christ in all persons, it is in the composite image of the saints that we find Christ at work in our own time, place, and station.
It’s not that I’m against the new criteria (although I’m not convinced that “memorability” is a theological category…), it’s just that I feel we’ve lost something. The guidelines of 1994 were like a few quick brushstrokes, or like the charcoal wisps on a sketch-pad that suggest a scene, a figure, leaving the rest to the imagination. They weren’t a full picture of Christian maturity—but they gave us at least a few key dots that suggest a shape. Leaning on Ephesians, looking back at the monks, I have to wonder: do we have anything like this now in our church—a clear sense of the goal; a useful, sufficient, and functional picture of Christian maturity? Have the new principles moved us forward or back?
Dr. Derek Olsen recently finished his Ph.D. in New Testament at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.