Feast of Saint Anthony

The traditional festival of Saint Anthony is celebrated on this day with baking and feasting throughout the Slavic lands of Central Europe as well as the old Christian communities of the Middle East. It commemorates the life and work of the Egyptian hermit, pioneer missionary, and mentor to Athanasius, who died in 365

The Franklin Dialogue: "The Great Omission"

An Epiphany Hymn

Incarnational hope hastens hence
on bud, breeze, and blossom
grieving rynds banished in lilac scents.

Hark, an Epiphany Hymn rings haste
From its loveliest biding-place.

A lavish breach of winter's curt hard sword
an ardent repudiation of death's dark pall
the out-veining sun of the Christus Lord.

Hark, an Epiphany hymn rings haste
From its loveliest biding-place.

At the refectory of your loving-care
the transfiguration clarion sounds a call
that didactae could ne're convey nor spare.

Hark, an Epiphany hymn rings haste
From its loveliest biding-place.

Thus, Gospel comes ensconced in Word and Deed
and the evidence is your shimmering touch:
Christus Victor, shown in a life's sown seed.

Hark, an Epiphany hymn rings haste
From its loveliest biding-place.

The Father of Modern Spain

Thomas of Villanueva (1488-1535) grew up in the region of Don Quixote's La Mancha in a devout Christian home where virtuous living and gracious charity were constantly modeled for him by his parents. It was no surprise then when he committed himself to a life of Christian service after graduating from the new university at Alcala.

On this day in 1518, at the age of thirty, he was ordained and began a brilliant career as an anointed and effective preacher. His ministry was most distinguished not by his very evident pulpit skills however, but rather by his care and concern for the poor and needy. He was especially involved in providing relief for abused children and orphans--securing new homes for them as well as meeting their immediate material needs.

He was involved in other merciful activities as well--once, when he discovered an abortion cabal operating illicitly in a nearby city, he flew into a frenzy of righteous indignation. He used his influence to provoke a criminal investigation. He lobbied for stronger laws for the protection of children. And he worked with authorities to ensure local enforcement of the new laws.

At the time the Iberian peninsula contained no less than eleven separate kingdoms--besides Portugal--including Aragon, Castile, Leon, Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia, Granada, Galicia, Asturias, Navarre, and Murcia. Relying on neither legalism or lawlessness, recidivism or revolution, he raised the standard of Biblical justice in these diverse lands--ultimately laying the ground work for a unified Spanish legal code once the various kingdoms were united under the Hapsburg descendents of Ferdinand and Isabella. In a very real sense then, he was the "Father of Modern Spain"--and that great nation was birthed out of a concern for the needy and helpless.

Courage

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful until it became risky.” C.S. Lewis

Mary Slessor

On this day in 1915, the government-run Gazette of Nigeria printed a front-page, black-bordered notice:

"It is with the deepest regret that His Excellency the Governor-General has to announce the death at Itu, on this day, of Miss Mary Mitchell Slessor. For thirty-nine years, with brief and infrequent visits to England, Miss Slessor has laboured among the Eastern Provinces in the south of Nigeria. By her enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and greatness of character she has earned the devotion of thousands of the natives among whom she worked, and the love and esteem of all Europeans, irrespective of class or creed, with whom she came in contact. She has died, as she herself wished, on the scene of her labours, but her memory will live long in the hearts of her friends, Native and Europeans, in Nigeria."

Thus passed one of Africa’s greatest missionaries.

Thomas Mifflin

By an ironic sort of providence, Thomas Mifflin (1744-1800) served as George Washington’s first aide-de-camp at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and, when the war was over, he was the man, as President of the United States, who accepted Washington’s resignation of his commission. In the years between, Mifflin greatly served the cause of freedom while serving as the first Quartermaster General of the Continental Army. He obtained desperately needed supplies for the new army. Although experienced in business and successful in obtaining supplies for the war, Mifflin preferred the front lines, and he distinguished himself in military actions on Long Island and near Philadelphia.

Born on this day in 1744, he was reared in a strict Quaker home. As a young man, much to his dismay, he was excluded from Quaker meetings for his military activities. Nevertheless, he maintained throughout his life a pattern of devotion to his family and their traditions. Somehow though, that did not protect him from public controversy. Mifflin lost favor with Washington, for instance, and was part of the Conway Cabal—a rather notorious plan to replace Washington with General Horatio Gates. And Mifflin narrowly missed court-martial action over his handling of funds by resigning his commission in 1778.

In spite of all these problems and of repeated charges that he was a drunkard, Mifflin continued to be elected to positions of responsibility—as President and Governor of Pennsylvania, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, as well as the highest office in the land, where he served from November 3, 1783 to November 29, 1784. In addition, he was heralded by friends and supporters as a pious and gracious man who cared for nothing more than the sacred honor of his God and his nation.

Most of Mifflin’s significant contributions occurred in his earlier years—in the First and Second Continental Congresses he was firm in his stand for independence and for fighting for it, and he helped obtain both men and supplies for Washington’s army in the early critical period. In 1784, as President, he signed the treaty with Great Britain which ended the war. Although a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he did not make a significant contribution—beyond signing the document.

As Governor of Pennsylvania, although he was accused of negligence, he supported improvements of roads, and reformed the State penal and judicial systems. He had gradually become sympathetic to Jefferson’s principles regarding states' rights, even so, he directed the Pennsylvania militia to support the Federal tax collectors in the Whiskey Rebellion. In spite of charges of corruption, the affable Mifflin remained a popular figure. A magnetic personality and an effective speaker, he managed to hold a variety of elective offices for almost thirty years and make an indelible mark on the critical Revolutionary period.

The Canon

On this day in 367, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, published for his congregants the first authoritative list of the canon of the Old and New Testaments. He included the list as a devotional aid in the pastoral letter he sent out every year on the day after Epiphany.

St. Distaff's Day

This was the day in Medieval England that women returned to their spinning after the holiday season of Christmas and Epiphany. The staff was used to wind wool or flax to aid in the spinning process. On this first day of renewed labor, men would playfully set the women's flax or wool on fire, while the spinners retaliated by drenching the men with pails of water. Gee, sounds like loads of fun!

English poet Robert Herrick famously mentions these activities of Distaff Day his best known ditty:

Partly work and partly play; Ye must on St. Distaff's Day.
From the plow soone free the teame; Then come home and fother them.
If the Maides a-spinning goe; Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Bring the pailes of water then; Let the maides bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff all the right; Then bid Christmas sport good night;
And next morrow, every one, to his owne vocation.

Defining "Conservative" and "Conservatory"

Henry Peacham (1576-1643) was an English poet and writer, best known for his guide to Renaissance arts and manners, The Compleat Gentleman (1622). In it he defines the word “conservative” as “that power of promoting care, stewardship, learning, and healthfulness whilst opposing diminution, detriment, ignorance, and injury.”

In one magnificent example of his Elizabethan and Jacobite prose he describes, "That spherical figure, as to all heavenly bodies, so it agreeth to light, as the most perfect and conservative of all others."

According to Samuel Johnson, in his incomparable Dictionary (1755), it is from this term and its incumbent meaning that the word “conservatory” is derived. Thus, he defines it as “A place where anything is kept in a manner proper to its peculiar nature, as fish in a pond, corn in a grainary, or culture in the heart of a student.”