Okay, so I goofed over the weekend, and forgot to post anything on Saturday's and Sunday's saints. And boy-howdy, they're not ones that should be easy to forget! Nope, this last weekend, if you were paying more attention than I was, you should have been celebrating the saint days of John Chrysostom and Thomas Aquinas.
Chrysostom's most famous sermon is his Easter sermon, but I always think first of this prayer attributed to him in the BCP, at the end of Morning Prayer:
A Prayer of St. Chrysostom
Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one
accord to make our common supplication unto thee; and
hast promised through thy well-beloved Son that when two
or three are gathered together in his Name thou wilt be in the
midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions
of thy servants as may be best for us; granting us in this
world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life
everlasting. Amen.
You can see from these two pieces alone how he got the nickname of "Golden Mouth". When it comes to the subject of homemaking, I think of St. Chrysostom as a reminder to let our words be encouraging to one another, and, also, as beautiful as our skill allows us.
To be honest, when I think of Aquinas, the first thing I think of one of my college professors, who spent an entire summer reading the Summa Theologica. Apparently, if you stack all the volumes of the Summa vertically, unless you're in the NBA, you'll be looking at a stack of books that's taller than you are.
But when I think of St. Thomas' great work, I can't help but swoon at his academic dedication to the glory and wonder of God (even if I don't agree that Aristotle's categories can be applied to theology the way he thinks they can!). The amazing thing about St. Thomas is that he was a brilliant man who dedicated all of his brilliance to understanding God. He gives me encouragement as I face my own task, homemaking, with an academically-inclined mind. My reaction to learning that I was a mother was to read everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy. Pretty soon, I was reading everything I could get my hands on about babies and housekeeping also. And then, eventually, everything I could read that might shed some light on how to be a Christian woman, a Christian wife, a Christian homemaker.
St. Thomas' field was the queen of sciences, theology. Mine's a smaller field, but I'm still encouraged by his example to try to do it with not just all my heart, but all my mind, and to the glory of God.
May you be encouraged too!
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica
p.s. The reason I got so confused over the weekend was due to mixing up the Roman Catholic calendar, and the Anglican one. I finally discovered the saints' days observed by my church at the beginning of the BCP (of course, everything's in the BCP, I should have known!), and my goodness, we don't observe nearly as many as the Catholics!
I hope this blog will be a help to any Catholic or Orthodox readers, but I think I'm going to mostly refer to my own church's calendar, just to avoid (my own) confusion. However, if any Catholic or Orthodox readers want to offer a guest post about some of your own traditions, let me know!
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