My eldest daughter isn’t *quite* old enough for the crown wreath but in a few years…

I would have been even more honest if I had also mentioned that for a Dane/Swede/Norwegian like me, omitting “Santa Lucia” would be unthinkable! All the white robes and crown wreath of candles and star boys…etc.

JJ+

Not an easy question to answer, because a lot originally depended on my personal biases, but here goes:

1. All Prayer Book feasts.
2. All commemorations from Lesser Feasts and Fasts (originally I omitted some of the “low church” folk, but eventually decided to be straight-out Episcopalian - although the Guardian says he is about to cut back a bit)
3. Founders of primary religious orders (Gilbert, Norbert, Scholastica, Cassian)
4. Most familiar mystics (Bonaventure, Birgitta, de Sales, John of Cross, John Vianney, Therese, Eliz of the Trinity
5. “Spiritual leaders” (Grafton, John XXIII, Ramsey)
6. Some British folk (Charles 1, Swithun, More, Wilfred, Walsingham)
7. Venerable traditional Catholic feasts (Conception BVM, O.L. of Sorrows. Corpus Xti, Sacred Heart, Beheading of J Baptist, Lucy - the last because her feast sets the dates for Ember Days)
8. Some contemporaries I respect or knew (Romero, Dorothy Day, Merton, Joe Hunt)
9. Saints named by Dame Julian (John of Beverly, Cecelia, etc.)
10. Martyrs whose relics are in our altar stones.
11. A memorial of our own Order’s founding.

That’s kind of a patchwork, but that’s how it came out….

I didn’t mean necessarily a reformed understanding as practice (no elaborate shrines etc — although the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham has been rebuilt). I wish the clergy would actually teach more about the communion of saints.

Sort of. I don’t think so among English Evangelicals but among the remaining Central Churchmen in America, yes: in my experience, people who don’t practise this because it’s not part of their culture but understand what it really means and wouldn’t tell you not to. ‘All can, some should, none must’, which is fine. Though, as bls recently reminded, there are lots of ordinary Episcopalians who’d resist having things like this. According to one poll most lay Episcopalians think of themselves as Protestants but most clergy don’t. My guess is among at least some of the latter it’s not so much a recovery of Catholic belief or a new ‘reformed’ understanding about the communion of saints but more to do with Broad Church relativism - eventually nothing therefore everything is true so why not have saints in ‘the mix’?

For the medivalists out there, there are some new Anglican and Eastern Orthodox liturgies for the Anglo-Saxon saints. Today is the feast of St. Æthelthryth (Audrey)and I have links to the Cathedral of Ely’s liturgy for Æthelthryth’s feast and translation and links to the Eastern Orthodox liturgy for St. Æthelthryth on my blog Heavenfield. The Eastern Orthodox in Britain have been very busy with the Anglo-Saxon saints!

I do have two questions:

1. Do you think that the Reformation rejection of the saints is wearing off? Saints like Æthelthryth and the Blessed Virgin Mary are coming back in a very visible but reformed way?

2. Has anyone seen the second edition of Exciting Holiness (combined lectionaries for the calendars of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland)? If so, what do you think of it? How complete is it? How does it handle multiple saints on one day?