Commemorations of the saints and seasons of the year….
Scholar and political activist W.E.B. Du Bois helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). DuBois attended Harvard University and in 1895 became the first African-American to receive a doctorate from the school. He became a…
Continue ReadingAlthough Samuel David Ferguson was not the first black person to be elected a bishop of the Episcopal Church, he was the first African-American seated in the the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. (Bishop James Theodore Holly was the first…
Continue ReadingSaint Ignatius of Loyola, also known as Íñigo Oñaz López de Loyola, was of noble birth and was reared in the household of a prominent courtier. In 1517 he left his life at court to enter the army. During a…
Continue ReadingWilliam Wilberforce was born in 1759 and served in Parliament from 1780 to 1825. A turning point in his religious life was a tour of Europe. In the luggage of a travelling companion he saw a copy of William Law’s…
Continue ReadingMary and Martha lived with their brother Lazarus at Bethany, a village not far from Jerusalem. They are mentioned in several episodes in the Gospels. On one occasion, when Jesus and His disciples were their guests (Luke 10:38-42), Mary sat…
Continue ReadingToday on the calendar of the Episcopal Church we find commemoration of three influential composers of church music: Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederick Handel, and Henry Purcell. For brevity, we offer only a biography of Purcell here. Henry Purcell (1658…
Continue ReadingWilliam Reed Huntington, although never a bishop, had more influence on the Episcopal Church than most bishops. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1838, the son of a physician, studied at Harvard, and was ordained a priest in 1862.…
Continue ReadingJames and his brother John, the sons of Zebedee, were among the Twelve, the “inner circle” of disciples of our Lord. They, together with Peter, were privileged to behold the Transfiguration, to witness the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the…
Continue ReadingThomas, whose family name was Hammercken, was born in the Rhineland town of Kempen near Düsseldorf in Germany. The school he attended at nearby Deventer in Holland had been started by Gerard Groote, founder of the Brothers of the Common…
Continue ReadingThere is much written of St. Mary Magdalene in the Gospels. To understand something of her significance, consider the following : Mary was from Magdala, a small community on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. Ruins of Magdala still…
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