28 June 2009

Welcome to  St Alban's Anglican Church       

Today's Scripture   :   Lamentations 3: 22-33      2 Corinthians 8: 7–end     S. Mark 5: 21-end

Today: 8.35 a.m. Matins; 9.00 a.m. Ch /Script Study;  9.30 a.m. Holy Eucharist;    6.00 p.m. EP. This Week: Mon (S. Peter, Ap.) 12.30 p.m. HC; Tues-Fri 12.30 p.m. Midday Prayers.

3^rd Sunday after Trinity

O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may by thy mighty aid be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

FAITH IN FOCUS: MARTYRS?

She’s a martyr to her corns, we say. Or perhaps we think that we shouldn’t give publicity to terrorists because they’ll become martyrs.

We use the word martyr in a different way from the way it was thought of in gospel times. For us, martyrdom means suffering, like the woman with her corns. And when we hear of the death of various holy people we call it martyrdom. But in fact the word martyr doesn’t necessarily involve suffering or dying.

The word martyr means a witness. If you are a martyr to the cause, then you are a good advert for the cause, a good example or a witness to what the cause is all about.

In fact, although Sts Peter and Paul were both killed for their faith, they are really martyrs because they both witnessed to it. In an obvious way we can say that dying in order to witness to your faith is the ultimate martyrdom.

Yet what’s important about Peter and Paul isn’t that they died but that they spent their lives passing on the message of Jesus Christ. The ancient Preface prayer for tomorrow’s feast speaks of “Peter, our leader in the faith, and Paul, its fearless preacher.”

If we want to emulate the two saints then we don’t have to seek out death before our time; we have to be martyrs by witnessing and passing on what we have been taught and believe. In fact that’s how Christian faith survives. Faith, they say, is not taught but caught. We catch it at our mother’s knee, at the feet of good teachers, from the lips of holy people we come to meet in life.

It’s easy to bypass our job of transmitting the faith by saying that this is the task of others, of clergy and catechists, of teachers and preachers. But the truth is that the only reason why we can celebrate today’s feast is because of generations of mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles and aunts who accepted the responsibility of handing on their faith to their own families and friends.

Peter and Paul would be happy to accept praise for their martyrdom, for the way they transmitted their faith, but they’d probably be even happier if they thought we were also joining the martyrs’ queue ourselves.