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IMPORTANT 25thS
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The 25th of most months is a day of importance to me (and often to many others). Everyone knows the 25th of December, of course. And the 25th of April is my birthday. The 25th of March is the Solemnity of the Annunciation. January 25 is the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul (and the publication date in 1841 of John Henry Newman’s famous “Tract 90,” written while still an Anglican, to show that a catholic-leaning Anglican could still swear allegiance to the “39 Articles” of the Church of England (yes, he got into huge amounts of trouble for this one!).
Other 25th’s are more approximate for me. It’s one day before my Dad’s birthday in October; it’s one day after the June Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist; it’s 3 days after the February Feast of the Chair of St Peter. It’s usually pretty close to Thanksgiving. And it’s one day before the July Memorial of Ss Joachim & Anne. Not only was St Anne a co-patron of my parish in Chicago, but it’s also the date aimed at by Pope Francis for his message for the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly.
That leaves one 25th—that of May. And this is an optional memorial (because 2 other saints are remembered on this day), but for me it’s a quasi-Solemnity: that of St Bede the Venerable.
He was a Benedictine monk, a spiritual writer, and the first truly “modern” historian who actually fact-checked what he wrote in his monumental “History of the English Church and People.” I read it in college and fell in love with him immediately, so it was a real joy to find out that when I came to Alabama to teach, the parish in Montgomery I’d be a member of was St Bede!
Bede was scholarly, though he almost never left his monastery in Jarrow, in the north of England, from the time of his arrival at the age of about 7. He started there in school, fell in love with the religious life, and never looked back. He had books and manuscripts brought to him. He was able to narrate the resolution of a crisis there, between Saxon and Celtic methods of calculating the date of Easter. He summed up his own life in these words: “It has ever been my delight to learn, to teach, or to write.” Yes, scholarship and holiness can co-exist.
May 26th is another special day—the Memorial of St Philip Neri, regarded as the 2nd founder of the Church of Rome. One of the days for my Italy trip we will celebrate the Eucharist in his church, Chiesa Nuova. But that’s a story for another time.