| High Days and Holy Days 1
January - The naming of Jesus It
is Matthew and Luke who tell the story of how the angel
instructed that Mary's baby was to be named Jesus - a
common name meaning 'saviour'. And it is probably no more
than a delightful coincidence that the Church recalls the
naming of Jesus on 1 January - seven days after 25
December. For in Jewish tradition, the male babies were
circumcised and named on their eighth day of life. For
early Christians, the name of Jesus held a special
significance. In Jewish tradition, names expressed
aspects of personality. Jesus' name permeated his
ministry, and it does so today: we are baptised in the
name of Jesus (Acts 2:38), we are justified through the
name of Jesus (1 Cor 6:11); and God the Father has given
Jesus a name above all others (Phil 2:9). All Christian
prayer is through 'Jesus Christ our Lord', and it is 'at
the name of Jesus' that one day every knee shall bow. 6
January - Epiphany On
6 January we celebrate Epiphany - the visit of the wise
men to the baby Jesus. But who were these wise men? No
one knows for sure. Matthew calls them 'Magi', and that
was the name of an ancient caste of a priestly kind from
Persia. It wasn't until the third century that they were
they called kings - by a church father, Tertullian.
Another church father, Origin, assumed there were three -
to correspond with the gifts given. Later Christian
interpretation came to understand gold as a symbol of
wisdom and wealth, incense as a symbol of worship and
sacrifice, and myrrh as a symbol of healing - and even
embalming. Certainly Jesus challenged and set aright the
way in which the world handled all three of these things.
Since the eighth century, the magi have had the names
Balthasar, Caspar and Melchior. 25
January - The Conversion of St Paul January
is a month of the beginning of great things! As well as
the naming of the Son of God, we celebrate the conversion
of the greatest ever apostle of the Christian faith. Many
books have been written on Paul, and here is the briefest
of introductions. He
was a Jew, born as 'Saul' at Tarsus, and brought up by
the rabbi Gamaliel as a Pharisee. A devout, fanatical
Jew, Saul persecuted the Christians, and watched with
satisfaction the first Christian martyrdom, the stoning
of Stephen. Then on his way to Damascus Saul had a vision
of Christ that stopped him, literally, in his tracks. He
realised that this Jesus whom he was persecuting was in
fact the Messiah he had longed for. Saul
changed overnight. He took a new name, Paul, and became
an evangelist for the cause of Christ. He became a leader
in the early Church, and his special calling was as an
apostle to the Gentiles. He wrote many epistles to the
young churches he founded - and thus, inadvertently,
wrote a great part of the New Testament. Life
as the greatest apostle was hardly full of perks: he was
stoned, beaten, mobbed, homeless, hated, imprisoned, and
finally martyred. Tradition has it that he was beheaded
in Rome during the persecution of Nero in AD 64, and
buried where the basilica of St Paul 'outside the walls'
now stands. His mighty faith in Christ has kindled
similar belief in many millions of people down the
centuries. |