MASS SCHEDULE – WEEK X TRINITY (August 4, 2013)
5, St. Oswald, King & Martyr
6, Transfiguration (Vacation Singing School 9 am – 4:30 pm)
7, Holy Name (Vacation Singing School 9 am – 4:30 pm)
8, Feria
9, Feria
+ Beginning in the year 449, the pagan Germanic peoples known as the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes invaded Britain and drove the native Britons, a Christian Celtic people, north and west into Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Cornwall. They established seven principal kingdoms (the Heptarchy) in England: The Saxon kingdoms of Essex, Wessex and Sussex (East Saxons, West Saxons, and South Saxons), the Angle kingdoms of East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria, and the Jute kingdom of Kent (in southeast England, the London area). To this day, there are seven principal dialects of English spoken in England, and the seven areas in which they are spoken are substantially the same as the areas of the seven ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
In Northumbria (the region north of the Humber River), in the north of England, in 616, Edwin seized the throne (replacing his sister’s husband, Æthelfrith the Ravager), and Oswald, son of Aethelfrith, fled into Scotland, to the monastic settlement on the island of Iona (off the west coast of southern Scotland). Here Oswald encountered the Christian faith and was converted and baptized. Edwin married Ethelburgha, a princess of Kent, who brought with her a missionary who became first Archbishop of York. Edwin and many of his court accepted baptism in 627. In 632, King Cadwallon of Wales and the pagan king Penda of Mercia invaded Northumbria and killed Edwin in battle. The queen and the archbishop fled south, and Christianity was temporarily suppressed in the North.
The following year, Oswald returned from exile to claim the throne. He met Cadwallon (or Cadwalla) in battle near Hexham. The night before the battle, vastly outnumbered, with a small army of whom not more than a dozen were Christians, he set up a wooden cross, and asked his soldiers to join him in prayer. They did so, and promised to be baptized if they won the battle. The battle was accordingly joined, and Oswald won a victory “as complete as it was unlikely,” defeating and slaying Cadwallon (the victor, as the Welsh bards tell us, of forty battles and sixty single combats). The battle site was thereafter known as Heavensfield. Northumbria, now united, became the most powerful of the Seven Kingdoms, and Oswald was recognized as paramount king of the Heptarchy. His concern was for the conversion of his people to Christianity, and he sent messengers to Iona, where he had himself received the Gospel, asking for a Christian preacher. The first man sent was tactless and a failure, but his replacement Aiden was an outstanding success. Since he did not at first speak the Anglo-Saxon language, Oswald, who was fully bilingual, stood beside him as he preached and interpreted the sermon. Other missionaries soon joined Aiden and the Church flourished in Northumbria. Oswald went to Wessex (the second most powerful of the Seven Kingdoms, and later to be the most powerful, and the nucleus of a united England) in order to seek a bride. Wessex was at that time largely pagan, but his bride, Kineburga, agreed to become a Christian, and so did her father, the King of Wessex. Thus a door was opened for the Gospel in southwestern England. However, Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, yet lived, and in 640 war between Mercia and Northumbria was renewed, with the former followers of Cadwallon allied once more with Mercia. In 642 Penda killed Oswald in a great battle near Maserfeld (Salop), on the border between their kingdoms. As he fell dying, Oswald prayed aloud for the souls of his bodyguards, who died with him, and for the salvation of the people of Northumbria, and for his pagan enemies. Penda ordered the corpse of Oswald to be dismembered and its parts set up on stakes as a sacrifice to Odin. The head was reclaimed by Christians and sent to Lindisfarne, and is now thought to rest in a tomb in Durham Cathedral (but it should be noted that because of invasions and tumults it has been moved several times, making its present location uncertain). (From Sketches, Kieffer)
+ The Transfiguration – Today we celebrate the occasion (recorded in Matthew 17:1-8; Luke 9:28-36) on which Christ, as He was beginning to teach His disciples that He must die and rise again, revealed Himself in shining splendor to Peter, James, and John. Moses and Elijah were present, and are taken to signify that the Law and the Prophets testify that Jesus is the promised Messiah. God the Father also proclaimed him as such, saying, “This is my Beloved Son. Listen to him.” For a moment the veil is drawn aside, and men still on earth are permitted a glimpse of the heavenly reality, the glory of the Eternal Triune God. In the East, the Festival of the Transfiguration has been celebrated since the late fourth century, and is one of the twelve great festivals of the East Orthodox calendar. In the West it was observed after the ninth century by some monastic orders, and in 1457 Pope Callistus III ordered its general observance. At the time of the Reformation, it was still felt in some countries to be a “recent innovation,” and so was not immediately taken over into most Reformation calendars, but is now found on most calendars that have been revised in the twentieth century. A recent tendency in the West is to commemorate the Transfiguration on the Sunday just before Lent, in accordance with the pattern found in the Synoptics where Jesus is represented as beginning to speak of his forthcoming death just about the time of the Transfiguration, so that it forms a fitting transition between the Epiphany season, in which Christ makes himself known, and the Lenten season, in which he prepares the disciples for what lies ahead. Whether observing the Transfiguration then will affect the observation of it on 6 August remains to be seen.
+ All Saints’ Men’s Group will meet Tuesday July 30, 7:00 a.m. in the undercroft.
+ Daily Mass is celebrated at 12:15 p.m. You and your family members are all remembered by name at the Altar of God every week. Please take an All Saints parish prayer list home with you & remember your fellow parishioners in your prayers!
+ Monday Morning Bible Study is taking the summer off! The class will start up again in September. For further information please contact Priscilla King, kingplk@gmail.com, 540-456-6458.
+ All Saints parishioner may obtain a Mass card from the Church office. A Mass card is a greeting card given to someone to inform him or her that a deceased loved one or friend was remembered and prayed for at a weekly Mass. It is a specifically Christian way to express one’s love. Call Julie McDermott at the Church office (434-979-2842) and she will help you fill out the form. The celebrant will sign the card and we will mail it from the Church to the family of the loved one.