<html><body><div>Part two of the draft for Sunday.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><font face="Arial" size="2"> What really stood out about Augustine, however, was the way that he practiced what he believed about Jesus, yet at the same time he didn’t condemn others out of hand. “He asserted that because the validity of the sacraments did not depend upon the holiness of the priest who administered them, irregular sacraments could still be valid provided they were administered in the name of Jesus Christ and in the manner prescribed by the church.”</font><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What made and continues to make Augustine so important for the life of the Church is that he never closed any doors. He welcomed everyone into the discussion around the table. He never dismissed anyone because of who that person was or what that person had done. We call him a saint of Jesus because he made it possible for others to find their way back to what was considered the true Church. Yet he rarely pressured them. Of course he argued. And was renowned for that, but, all the time, his hand was outstretched to welcome laity and clergy and to recognize them as his sisters and brothers in Christ.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Did all the followers of Donatus convert? No! In any conflict of opinion, that seldom happens, But Augustine never gave up. He was even brought to understand that he too made mistakes. In actuality, it took him a long time to become a Christian himself. His example to us today, then, on this Holy Feast, is that love always enables people to come together, and to find in Jesus the common ground on which to build. Yet it <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DOES</u></b> depend on the attitude and behavior of each of us. We can reject people. We can cut them off. We can make life difficult, if not insufferable for them. But we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>CAN</u></b> also do all that we can to find what we share in common, and give thanks to God for calling us <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL</u></b> to be Jesus’ saints.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Augustine is a saint in our Kalendar. His feast day is the 28<sup>th</sup> August.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>What does this say about how we think about saints? What does this say about how we look on saints as examples of godly life which impacts us in particular and society in general?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Consider Florence Nightingale. She was a British woman who had a strong faith and desired to be a missionary for the Christian Church in the nineteenth century, but who was stymied time and again, for all sorts of reasons, often based on sexist and other prejudicial behavior on the part of church committees. Eventually, she trained as a nurse and served in the brutal cold, mud, disease, and death in Crimea during the war there. Despite her incredibly strong and forceful nature, she brought a sense of calm and hope – as well as health, through her insistence on clean conditions. She brought a sense of hope and calm to the medical staff as well as military and civilian patients, with just about everyone with whom she came in contact. She walked around the tented wards each night when people’s spirits were at their lowest, bringing reassurance of love. As the light from her hand-held lamp fell on the pillows of the sick and the dying, the men would reach out to touch that reflected light. Even this mirror of what she held and who she was was enough to help the hospitalised relax and rest, if not sleep, though everything was so dark and awful. She became known as “The Lady with the Lamp”, and held in incredible esteem.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Florence Nightingale is a saint in our Kalendar too! We celebrate <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HER</u></b> life and witness, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HER</u></b> compassion and endurance, especially in light of the vicious patriarchalism that surrounded her, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HER</u></b> ability to reach out to others despite the cost to herself; we celebrate her every 12<sup>th</sup> of August. Florence was admitted to our Kalendar relatively recently – patriarchalism is alive and well!</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I remember Bishop Bob Ladehoff telling me a story about this. He served on the General Convention Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music for many years, and was working on that body when Florence was proposed for inclusion on the calendar. The first time, people canvassed against her, and her celebration was turned down. Three years later, her name came up again, and this time the vote to include and celebrate her ministry was favourable. Bishop Ladehoff told me, however, that people came up to him before the votes, and whispered to him in a conspiratorial and demeaning way, “But she was a lesbian” – even although this is, in fact, not known for sure, but is still part of the continuing campaign to smear and denigrate her. As if her sexual orientation has anything to do with the price of tea in China.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Augustine, Florence Nightingale, I’d be willing to bet that absolutely every single person whom we adjudge a saint or a saintly person has at least <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ONE</u></b> thing of which we might wrinkle our noses. But it must be pointed out that, in Florence Nightingale’s case, she is blameless. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>WE</u></b> are the ones who must be adjudged guilty of prejudice, of bigotry – we and any others who make up stories, who spread half or whole lies with our tiny, hardened hearts.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The point is that there has been only <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ONE</u></b> person of whom various New Testament writers and we can say was without sin. And that person, who was fully human, was also fully divine.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The point is that we dare not judge a person by a microscopic analysis of every single aspect of a person’s life. We <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>CANNOT</u></b> exclude anyone from our celebration of lives when God doesn’t. I mean, look at Peter, for Pete’s sake! Not his feet only, at times he walked around with clay up to his waist!</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The point of our celebration of<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u> ALL</u></b> the saints who ever lived is that we’re charged to find, at the very least, one, or two, or three or more things in which each of those of whom we’ve read or talked historically has exhibited the image, the compassion, the love of God. We should really celebrate All Saints’ Day every day of our lives, because each day at least one person has left us something through which we can find encouragement, and hope, and peace, as well as a challenge to amend our lives, to set aside all the dirt of prejudice, and bigotry, and injustice which fester within us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Do we celebrate the betrayals in which Peter participated? Of course not! And, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>PLEASE</u></b> note – I’m saying absolutely definitely that whether or not Florence Nightingale was lesbian or strong-willed and, sometimes, not above talking explicitly to men who’d try to dress her down; I’m <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> saying that there was even a whiff of anything wrong in that. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We rejoice that, despite any of people’s shortcomings, they were still able to walk, to talk, to think, to interact to put down whatever was ugly, whatever was brutal, whatever was degrading in everything about them – and to speak to us to live as strong as they did. Celebrating the lives of these people is proof of the incessant love of God in Jesus that takes what we do, and cleanses us, and sets us back on the road, no matter how battered and tattered our lives may seem.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b> is what it means to be a saint – someone sanctified, made holy by God, someone whose memory speaks to us of hope when everything seems dark. So we will name those held in affection by us here. We don’t gloss over their failures, even if our peccadillos make us uncomfortable, just as we shouldn’t ever gloss over our own failures. But we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WILL</u></b> rejoice that they, as a numberless host which <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>WE</u></b> are invited to join; that they are those white-robed people, washed in baptism and anointed by the Holy Spirit, whose life is and always will be in and with God unto the ages of ages.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And for this we say, “Thank God! Amen!”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>NOTES:</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>[1]</span></span></span></span></span><font size="2"><span style='margin: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198264088.001.0001/acprof-9780198264088"><span style="margin: 0px; color: rgb(99, 61, 93); text-decoration: none;">The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa</span></a></i> “ by W. H. C. Frend<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwic7rH1qpTXAhVGz1QKHUTRAZ4QFgg8MAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oxfordscholarship.com%2Fview%2F10.1093%2Facprof%3Aoso%2F9780198264088.001.0001%2Facprof-9780198264088-chapter-16&usg=AOvVaw2u1oPA0KMdiMe9F7iUzHIh"><span style="margin: 0px; color: rgb(102, 0, 153);">St. Augustine and the Donatists - Oxford Scholarship</span></a><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 102, 33);"><a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/.../acprof-9780198264088-chapter-16"><font color="#0563c1">www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/.../acprof-9780198264088-chapter-16</font></a></span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'> </span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'><font size="2"> </font></span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>2</span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“ </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Augustine, the Donatists and the Catholic Church”</span></i><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> b</span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>y <a href="https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/author/Shand-Mark"><span style="margin: 0px; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Shand Mark</span></a>, in <a href="https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/articletype/Article"><span style="margin: 0px; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Article</span></a> Volume <a href="https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/volume/53743/91/2015"><span style="margin: 0px; color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">91/2015</span></a> <a href="issue:%202,%2010/15/2014"><font color="#0563c1">Issue: 2, 10/15/2014</font></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"> </b><a href="https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/54579"><span style="margin: 0px; color: rgb(102, 0, 153);">Augustine, the Donatists and the Catholic Church | Standard Bearer</span></a><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px; color: rgb(0, 102, 33);"><a href="https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/54579"><font color="#0563c1">https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/54579</font></a></span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><font size="2"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'>3</span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Shand Mark, Op. cit.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";'><font size="2"> </font></span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>4</span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Shand Mark, Op. cit.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>5</span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Shand Mark, Op. cit.</span></p></div></body></html>