An abbreviated worship schedule for October is on the right sidebar of the HOME page. An August-September-October worship schedule is available for download from the right sidebar of the RESOURCES page.

Commemorations and feast days are part of the Book of Common Prayer calendar throughout the year. Prior to Harvest Sunday this year, the calendar on Tuesday, October 6th remembers

William Tyndale
Translator of the Scriptures into English, Martyr, 1536

Anonymous 16th-century portrait of William Tyndale, now in Hertford College, Oxford. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

William Tyndale was a priest and scholar with a gift for languages. His great mission in life was to make the Bible available to ordinary English speakers where before only the educated and wealthy were able to read it. This reform and his opposition to the annulment of Henry VIII’s first marriage set him at odds with the king. While in exile in Europe, Tyndale was betrayed by an English spy and eventually sentenced to death for heresy. Yet within a few years of his death, his translation of the Bible became widely available in England. His passion comes across clearly in the opening words of his essay A Pathway Into the Holy Scripture:

“I marvel greatly, dearly beloved in Christ, that any man would ever contend or speak against having the scripture available in every language, for every man. For I would have thought no one so blind as to ask why light [the light of the word of God] should be shown to those who walk in darkness—darkness where they cannot but stumble, and where to stumble is the danger of eternal condemnation…I would think he would assert the very contrary: that light destroys darkness and truth reproves all manner of lying.”

This week on Friday, October 8th, the calendar commemorates St. Denys of France, first bishop of Paris, Martyr 272. His true name was Dionysius, but Denys or Denis were more commonly used. The Roman Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of France. During one of the Roman persecutions, he was beheaded for his faith along with two companions.

Also on this day, we remember Robert Grosseteste, Scholar, bishop of Lincoln, 1253. Robert was learned, talented, an original thinker, and an important leader in the life of the English Church. His knowledge of Greek set him apart among thinkers in the Latin West, and he turned his efforts to translating Greek works into Latin. He also opposed the Church’s failure to live up to its pastoral mission. At the end of his life, he refused papal instructions to “confer a benefice on one of the pope’s nephews, whom he viewed as unfit for the pastoral care.” Though his English contemporaries attempted several times to have him canonized because of his saintly life, all three attempts failed.

On Saturday, October 10, we commemorate Paulinus, Missionary, Archbishop of York, 644. Paulinus was sent from Rome to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria where he ministered to the few Christians at King Edwin’s court in York. Edwin was a pagan, but following deep conversations with Paulinus and a decision by his council of nobles, he decided to become a Christian. The bishop baptized Edwin and many of his nobles, and extended his missionary work beyond the area of York. When Edwin was defeated and killed by pagans who also ravaged the Northumbrian church, Paulinus rescued the king’s widow and children. They settled in Kent in the south of England where he spent his remaining years as the bishop of Rochester.