Viewing all items in Resource Category: Holy Days

On that long ago first morning of Pentecost, Jerusalem was crowded with thousands of visitors, for it was one of the most popular feast-days in the Jewish calendar – the Feast of Firstfruits, looking forward to the wheat harvest. In one small room of that great city, a small group of people who had followed...

John and Charles Wesley were the founders of Methodism. Two of 19 children born to Samuel and Susannah Wesley of Epworth Rectory in Lincolnshire in 1703 and 1707, their father was the local rector, while their mother was a spiritual inspiration to her many children. Both John and Charles went to Christ Church, Oxford (1720...

The Church calendar celebrates the lives of John and Charles Wesley.  John’s great gift to the Christian cause was the little matter of founding the world-wide movement known as Methodism. His brother Charles had an equally profound impact through his hymns. He wrote over 6,000, most of which aren’t sung nowadays, but among the ones...

The Venerable Bede was an outstanding scholar who accomplished several ‘firsts’. He was the first historian to date events from the birth of Christ. He was the first person to write scholarly works in the English language. And, of course, his world-famous, magisterial Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731, is still in...

Aldhelm is the saint for you if you are intelligent but unconventional. Aldhelm was born in 640, into a family closely related to Ine, the King of Wessex. Educated at the monastic community in Malmesbury in Wiltshire, he went for further study in Canterbury. He proved a brilliant student and was sent back to Malmesbury...

Augustine, a 6th century Italian prior, holds a unique place in British history. He became the ‘apostle to the English,’ although it was with great reluctance. In 596 Augustine was chosen by Pope Gregory to head a mission of monks whom he wanted to send to evangelise the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine was not a bold man,...

John Calvin was a towering figure in the Reformation. His influence on Protestant theology is still felt today. Calvin was born in Picardy, north-east France in 1509, and went on to study law in Orleans, Bourges and Paris, where he absorbed the great humanistic and reforming movements of the time. Then, in his mid-20s, Calvin...

If you have ever cruised to Iceland, you’ll know just how far off the beaten track it is. You may wonder how anybody in ancient times managed to survive all those miles of icy water to even find the place. But it seems that Irish hermits in the early Middle Ages did find it, and...

How far would you go to respond to God’s call on your life? When, as the daughter of a peasant family in Champagne in 1426, 14-year-old Joan heard heavenly voices calling her to ‘save France’ from the English, she decided to obey the call, no matter what the consequences. Teenage girls who want to rescue...

Josephine Butler is the ‘saint’ for anyone who believes in social justice. This remarkable 19th century clergyman’s wife became a renowned campaigner for women’s rights and for putting a halt to human trafficking. Josephine was born in Northumberland in 1828, the daughter of a wealthy family of liberal politics and committed Christian faith. They had...

The Trinity is easier to say than to explain. Christians believe in one God, made up of three equal Persons. It is fundamental to the Nicene Creed, which sets out the definitive doctrine of the Trinity for more than two billion Christians worldwide, including all Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Reformed Christians....

…. celebrating our God who is Three Persons Trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity has kept many a theologian busy down the centuries.  One helpful picture is to imagine the sun shining in the sky. The sun itself – way out there in space, and unapproachable in its fiery majesty – is the...