St. Anne

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Personal note, and post-Thanksgiving thinking from The Free Press: 'What We're Grateful For'

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Personal note, and post-Thanksgiving thinking from The Free Press: 'What We're Grateful For'

How was your Thanksgiving? Mine was pretty serious, although it really helped to spend it with a circle of friends from the thriving St. Anne Orthodox Church here in Oak Ridge, Tenn. It was a day to give thanks — including for the life and witness of a dear friend, David Waite, who died recently.

This made me think of the days when David, in the middle of a long fight with cancer, was completely locked down (for obvious reasons) during COVID-tide. We saw him during Zoom classes, but missed him during worship services, even when they were held outdoors (think Holy Week in a revival tent). And David missed a Thanksgiving service that he dearly loved.

This leads me to an “On Religion” column that I wrote during that time about the Orthodox Akathist of Thanksgiving (see the YouTube at the top of this post), a litany of poetic Russian prayers created during hellish persecution by the Bolsheviks (.pdf here). Here is some key material from that column:

An "akathist" is a service honoring a saint, a holy season or the Holy Trinity. Many trace this akathist to the scholarly Metropolitan Tryphon, a well-known spiritual father at the height of the persecution. The version of the service used today was found in the personal effects of Father Gregory Petrov, who died in 1940 in a concentration camp.

It is also important that "Glory to God in all things" were the last words spoken by St. John Chrysostom, the famous preacher and archbishop of Constantinople who died in 407 after being forced into imprisonment and exile by his critics.

Later, there is this:

The service offers thanksgiving for many kinds of gifts and events in life, from the moonlight in which "nightingales sing" to valleys and hills that "lieth like wedding garments, white as snow." Worshippers offer thanksgiving for the "humbleness of the animals which serve me," as well as "artists, poets and scientists," because the "power of Thy supreme knowledge maketh them prophets and interpreters of Thy laws."

But near the end, a priest chants the crucial theme: "How near Thou art in the day of sickness. Thou Thyself visitest the sick; Thou Thyself bendest over the sufferer's bed. His heart speaks to Thee. In the throes of sorrow and suffering Thou bringest peace and unexpected consolation."


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St. Anne plays a major role in papal visit to Canada: Is she important to Catholics, alone?

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St. Anne plays a major role in papal visit to Canada: Is she important to Catholics, alone?

Long ago, I had a strategic and symbolic on-deadline argument with Rocky Mountain News (#RIP) editor.

Holy Week loomed on the horizon, on the Western calendar, and I was asked to fill out a form requesting quick Ash Wednesday feature art. I suggested — thinking beauty and diversity — a visit to an Episcopal parish in the heart of Denver’s most prominent Black neighborhood, a congregation known for the beauty of its high-church, Anglo-Catholic rites.

The editor said the photo needed to be in a Catholic church, since Holy Week is a Catholic story. I said that was a logical way to think about it, since the Catholic church is so prominent. However, I noted that Holy Week is an ancient Christian tradition observed in many Christian churches and denominations. It would be good to remind readers of that fact. I won that debate and the result was a stunning photograph.

I thought of that debate when reading a timely Religion News Service piece that ran with this headline: “Who is St. Anne and why is she so important to Indigenous peoples?” Let me stress that this is a good story and a valid angle during the Pope Francis pilgrimage to Canada. I urge readers to check it out. Here is the top of that report:

When Pope Francis met with a delegation of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people in April at the Vatican, he told them he wanted to visit them in Canada this year. And not just at any time of the year, but during the Feast of St. Anne (July 26).

“I think with joy, for example, of the great veneration that many of you have for Saint Anne, the grandmother of Jesus,” Pope Francis told the Indigenous delegation to the Vatican. “This year I would like to be with you on those days.”

As the pope visits Canada through Friday (July 29), he will indeed celebrate the Feast of St. Anne in the country. He also will visit several sites dedicated to the saint, whom Catholics believe to be the mother of Mary and the grandmother of Jesus.

That last sentence includes a classic example of a statement — “whom Catholics believe to be the mother of Mary and the grandmother of Jesus” — that is certainly accurate, but it would still cause some readers to think, “Wait a minute. Aren’t there millions of other Christians who honor St. Anne for the same reasons?”


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New podcast: 'Screen' culture tied to loneliness; can clergy build bridges with same tech?

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New podcast: 'Screen' culture tied to loneliness; can clergy build bridges with same tech?

The coronavirus pandemic has created a wide variety of religion-beat stories — from empty local pews to the U.S. Supreme Court debating how many people can occupy local pews. And sometimes it feels like all roads during this crisis, for better or worse, lead to the internet.

Yes, we had lots of ground to cover in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

Empty local pews have, in some cases, led to near-empty offering plates. Leaders in religious groups that were struggling before COVID-19 — look for closing congregations, seminaries, colleges and even cathedrals — are now hearing the demographics clock tick, tick, tick even louder.

We’re talking about huge stories, but they are also stories that are hard for journalists to cover, simply because they require information at the local, regional and national levels.

It was easy to cover local clergypersons as they learned to mount smartphones atop camera tripods and stream worship services to their locked-down flocks (as opposed to megachurches that already had cameras and massive websites). It was also easier to cover black-sheep clergy that rebelled against social-distancing guidelines than it was to report on the remarkable efforts of leaders in entire denominations and religious traditions seek ways for their people to worship as best they could within constantly evolving (and often hostile) government guidelines.

Journalists, of course, were also being affected by lockdowns and, in some cases, budget cuts. This was an equal-opportunity crisis.

Let me give you an example of an important story that everyone knows is unfolding right now. Consider this Baptist Press headline: “Pandemic division causing pastors to leave ministry, pastoral mentor says.” Here is the overture:

Brian Croft jokes that masks are the new “color of the carpet argument” in churches, with similarly poor outcomes. Pastors are resigning from the stress “kind of in a way I’ve never really seen.”

The founder of Practical Shepherding transitioned from fulltime pastoring to lead the shepherding outreach fulltime in January, pulled by a need for coaching and counseling that has steadily increased among pastors over the past decade.

Then came COVID-19.


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