Brother Alex Swain

As of June 1, Br Alex serves in a dual role as part-time Vicar at St. Andrew’s and part-time CYFM program staff at Saint Philip’s in the Hills. He was ordained a deacon earlier this year, and will be ordained a priest at 11:00am on Saturday, August 23, at Saint Philip’s.

Beloved in Christ,

A Roman public arena in Lyons is filled with people gleefully watching as five Christians stumble into the sand filled pit. The men and women are exhausted from days of torture and imprisonment. Their names are Attalus, Blandina, Maturus, Sanctus, and Bishop Pothinus, the first of Lyons.

According to the Episcopal Dictionary, Blandina was a virgin slave girl, Maturus a recent convert, and Sanctus a Deacon. Bishop Pothinus was a disciple of Polycarp (AD 69- 155), and Polycarp is attested by the Holy Fathers Irenaeus and Tertullian as being a disciple of John the Apostle.

In these early years, the Christians were just two generations removed from the very Apostles who bore witness to our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Today is the Feast of the Martyrs of Lyons (also known as the Feast of Blandina and Her Companions). These are people who took up their cross and followed Christ even unto death.

How are we expected to follow in their footsteps?

I think through mundane, day-to-day care for one another, the task of prayer, the quest for holiness, the carrying of our crosses. It is slow, often even gentle. It is a quiet quest, this life of progressive sanctification where we attempt to shape our lives in a cruciform shape, in the shape of the Cross.

“Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial” says Christ in today’s Gospel.

The simple acts of daily prayer, weekly worship, time spent in community, simple acts of thanksgiving to God, prayer for the world: These are the slow and mighty ways in which our hearts are shaped more and more into the life of Jesus. These are the mundane acts by which we can develop our spiritual muscle for keeping awake.

As Alex (my husband, not me in third person) and I settle into our new way of life here in Tucson, I am reminded not to rush, but to savor. To give thanks to God. To give thanks to the heroes of our faith like Blandina and her companions who gave their lives up for Christ, so that we may celebrate and worship and live the life which God is calling each of us into during these days.

I look forward to seeing many of you, and meeting many of you, soon!

—Br Alex