Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

While some of us may find Rite I language a bit stuffy, we can all readily understand it. When we get back to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer some readers may be caught off guard by the spelling but if read aloud it is comprehensible. We often, at this point, make the mistake of thinking that there were not many resources for prayer and worship in English before this point…when the reality is that the modern English we speak began around this point and if we go much further back, we are looking at everything needing some level of translation.

One of the earliest, and most extensive, devotional texts in English is the Old English Martyrology, written in the Mercian dialect of English that was the dominant tongue in the 600s. It is not a daily devotional, as there is not a devotion for every day, but it does mark all the days deemed important for devotion if one is a Christian. This is inclusive of ones we know to be exceptionally important, such as Christmas, as well as a list of saints and martyrs that are less well known. Some of the more particularly English ones are now only kept in the calendars of the Anglican Communion. One that has generally fallen out of our calendars remains, however, in the calendars of churches in Syria and the middle east, Milus of Susa on November 15.

The curiosity here is that Milus of Susa doesn’t appear on any list of commemorations during this period except ones in Old Syriac or Old English. One would have to go from the kingdom of Mercia on the British Isles across all of Europe and into Persia, modern day Iran, to find another group celebrating his feast. The only link between the two churches is Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to his death on September 19, 660.

He had grown up and was fully educated in the Greek speaking Church, fled to Rome, and was then fully educated in the Latin speaking Church, and then came to Canterbury where he founded a school where Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts, potentially more, weere used to create devotional works in Old English.

As we commemorate him on this day let us remember that our church has never been as quite parochial and specifically English as we often like to think, and that the liturgical work we incorporate into our lives of faith has always been rather broad.

Pax,

—Ben