It is St Christopher’s Day, the car dashboard accessory who safely carried the infant Christ on his shoulders across a dangerous river. Christopher (above) was very popular in medieval times, but was demoted in the Pope’s reorganisation of the calendar of saints in 1969. However, he kept his job as the patron saint of travellers.
Today in 1938, an Anglican church in Vienna, Christ Church, saw 229 Jewish people baptized even though the building was so small it only had seating for a congregation of 150. It was four months since Nazi Germany had invaded Austria in the Anschluss, and open violence towards the Jewish population of Vienna was sharply increasing. Rev Hugh Grimes, a chaplain at the church, offered Jewish people baptism in the hope that the certificates would help them at the border as they fled to safety. When Grimes returned to England that summer, he was not allowed to go back to Vienna as the Church of England didn’t like what he was doing. But another priest, Rev Fred Collard, continued the baptisms, which eventually provided 1,800 Jewish people with the papers they needed. Of these, it is estimated that 1,700 survived the Second World War.
Thomas à Kempis, the author or editor of The Imitation of Christ – simultaneously one of the most modest and popular Christian books ever – died today in 1471. Thomas, a monk in the Netherlands, was part of a spiritual revival called the Devotio Moderna, which encouraged a personal relationship with Christ, as well as the virtues of humility, patience, compassion and self-knowledge. It is thought that Thomas either wrote or compiled some booklets of instruction for young novices, which were brought together to become the Imitation.
‘Praise adds nothing to your holiness, nor does blame take anything from it. You are what you are, and you cannot be said to be better than you are in God’s sight. If you consider well what you are within, you will not care what men say about you. They look to appearances but God looks to the heart. They consider the deed but God weighs the motive.’ Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Today in 1955 George Hensley, founder of the Snake Handling Pentecostal Church, tragically died of a snakebite, received the previous day. George, terrifyingly, had wrapped a deadly 1.5 metre (5 foot) eastern diamondback rattlesnake around his neck while preaching, and suffered the bite while attempting to put the snake back into a can. The Church, which still exists in the Appalachian region of the USA, is weirdly fixated on a disputed verse in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus says, ‘they will pick up snakes in their hands’ (Mark 16:18). George’s final words were, ‘It is God’s will.’ He refused medical treatment, and his death was ruled to be suicide.
The papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (‘Of human life’) was published today 1968. Pope Paul VI had steered Catholicism through a liberal revolution at the Second Vatican Council, but he disillusioned progressives with this infamous encyclical ruling out contraception. He was shocked by the world-wide uproar that greeted it, but it is still official Roman Catholic policy.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the pioneering Romantic poet and theologian, died today in 1834 in Highgate, London. He had been addicted to opium for years, and for the last 18 years of his life had lived with the physician treating him. His friend Charles Lamb once said of him, ‘His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Archangel a little damaged.’
Image: Ad Meskens