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Commemorations and feast days are part of the Book of Common Prayer calendar throughout the year. On Monday, August 10th, we remember

Laurence, Archdeacon of Rome, Martyr 258

Among other ministries, Laurence was responsible for church funds used for the poor of Rome. He was ordered to hand the church’s treasure over to the pagan magistrate. Instead he brought a crowd of people who were “beggars, widows, lepers, cripples and the mentally ill.” When he told the magistrate, “This is the church’s wealth,” the angry official ordered his execution. Augustine of Hippo said of Laurence that he “ministered the blood of Christ to the faithful, and for the sake of Christ’s name he poured out his own.”

On Wednesday, August 12th, we commemorate Charles Inglis, first Anglican Bishop in Canada, consecrated 1787. At that time the Diocese of Nova Scotia covered all of the Maritime provinces, Quebec, and what is now Ontario, and his consecration marked “the official beginning of the Anglican Church of Canada.” Bishop Inglis is buried in the crypt of St. Paul’s Church in Halifax. In the words of Anglican author Rev. Dr. Stephen Reynolds, “We honour him for his patience in building our Church and for his pastoral wisdom in sustaining it through its earliest years.”

On Thursday, August 13th, we remember

Hippolytus, Doctor, Bishop in Rome, Martyr 235

Hippolytus was a relatively minor figure in the history of the Christian Church and was the first antipope, because he opposed the legitimately elected bishop of Rome at the time. Hippolytus believed in the doctrine of the Trinity and wrote the treatise Apostolic Tradition, important for its record of “church life and liturgy in the third century.”

On the same day, we also commemorate the life of Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Ireland, 1667. He was the finest Anglican spiritual teacher of his day. During the first English Civil War, he sided with the Royalists. In his The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, Bishop Taylor wrote about the twelve signs of grace shown by those who belong to God, including that person who “in obedience to Christ, worships God diligently, frequently, and constantly with natural religion, that is of prayer, praises, and thanksgiving…”

On Saturday, August 15th, the calendar commemorates

The Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary

This event is also known as the Dormition. The “falling asleep” is when the mother of Jesus died, known to Roman Catholics as  the “Assumption.” According to Anglican writer Rev. Dr. Stephen Reynolds:

“An ancient tradition testifies that Mary was taken up in glory as soon as she died, and Christian devotion has never begrudged her the place of highest honour in the presence of God. It has delighted in the conviction that she who responded to God’s perplexing call with praise must already enjoy the reward of faith—and that she who gave the Son of God his human life has received all the fullness of the eternal life which he was born to give.”

Thus it was that the eighth-century writer St. Andrew of Crete, in his Homily 3 on the Dormition, wrote of Mary’s death:

“Through this woman, the pledge of our salvation has been made and kept, in that this marvellous creature has both reached the limits of our lot and has paid the common debt proper to our nature. And if not all the features of her life were the same as ours, that is due simply to her nearness to God.”