Do we need to observe those three Saints' Days immediately after Christmas?

For clergymen [clergypersons] and many lay persons the latter part of Advent together with Christmas Eve & Christmas Day are very busy times. Thus they tend to take it easy in terms of attending public services after the last service on Christmas Day. If they are in Great Britain they enjoy the public holiday known as Boxing Day (26th) and keep far away from their parish church.

Yet in the Church Calendar there are three major Saints' Days immediately following the festival of THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD. These are St Stephen's Day, St John the Evangelist's Day, and The Innocents' Day, on the 26, 27, & 28 December.

It has long been held that these three Days illustrate the triple kind of martyrdom endured by God's saints -- St Stephen in will and deed; St John in will; Holy Innocents in deed.

It has also been held that these days are so placed so as to emphasize the honor due to Stephen as the first martyr, to John's special friendship with the Lord Jesus, and to the intimate connection of the death of the Innocents with the birth of the Saviour.

The problem, modern clergy have to face, is that these Days are not moveable and are long established in the Church Year. Clergy must keep them and if they do they will probably be joined at least by some of the faithful laity.

Therefore, in larger parishes there should be on each of the three days a full service of Holy Communion where the appointed Epistle and Gospel for each Day are used. In smaller parishes, what used to be called Ante-Communion [the first half of the Order for Holy Communion from the BCP], can be read by the clergyman in church whether he be alone or another with him.

That is, in one appropriate way or another the Church should remember the first martyr, the beloved disciple, and the holy innocents, and do so in relation to the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus. In each case, it will be found that an aspect of the meaning and purpose of the Incarnation of the only-begotten Son of the Father will become the clearer and union with him by grace will become the more dearer.

Thus not to keep these days will be to fail in one's duty and also to miss out spiritually on what is gained from these means of grace.

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon Peter@toon662.fsnet.co.uk
December 21,2001

www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928

The Revd. Dr. Peter Toon
Christ Church Rectory
Hot Lane, Biddulph Moor
Stoke-on-Trent ST8 7HP
England