Templar Edification

For most folks, Easter lasts but a day: a morning of formal worship followed by an afternoon family feast. But in point of fact, Easter is an entire season on the calendar of the Church, one that lasts a full 50 days, beyond the Ascension to Pentecost. I’m not above using this to my clerical advantage, as I may have been known to introduce liturgical modifications with the assurance that it would “only be for Easter.” Muahaha. It is a remarkable claim of the Christian community not simply that Jesus rose from the dead but that He then continued to appear to individuals, groups, and significant crowds for 40 days following His death and Resurrection. As I’ve pointed out before, both at Candlemas and Lent, 40 holds symbolic importance in the Bible, as ancient peoples knew that it takes roughly 40 weeks for a pregnant woman to come to term. It is a number indicating new life, new birth. The nature of these Resurrection appearances proves no less remarkable. Jesus’ conquest of death soars ...

In the early centuries of the Church, Christianity tended to be rather selective regarding whom we would or would not Baptize. It wasn’t a matter of proving one’s worth; the grace of Christ is freely given to sinners, superabundantly, profligately. But people had to know what they were getting into. Jesus promises His followers a cross, after all, and for nearly 300 years Christians had been persecuted by the Roman Empire. The baptismal symbolism of death and resurrection—joined to Christ’s own death, already died for us, that we need never fear death again, and to Christ’s own eternal life already begun—would have been far more than mere sentiment in those days. Christians courted death simply by professing our faith in Christ. Indeed, many were killed while awaiting their Baptism, thus held to have been “baptized in their blood.” In ancient Rome, catechumens could expect a three-year period of preparation, prayer, and formal instruction for at least an hour a week. Jerusalem sped thi...

  Martinmas Most folks with an aptitude for history know that Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day, commemorating the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918, when the armistice ending major hostilities in World War I took effect. Far fewer recall the reason why that specific date, 11 November, had been chosen to close out the most destructive conflict in human history up to that point. For this we must look to an older holiday, and to one soldier in particular. St Martin of Tours, also known as Martin the Merciful, was born in Pannonia, a central European province of the Roman Empire, in the early fourth century. His father was a tribune in the Legions, awarded the status of veteran and the 160 acres of Italian land that came with it. At the age of 10, Martin became a Christian catechumen against his parents’ wishes. Christianity had only recently been legalized, and remained far from accepted amongst the upper echelons of Western Roman soc...