Theologian's Almanac for Week of October 17, 2021

Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking — specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life.

For the week of Sunday, October 17:

October 18 is the feast day of Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Likely a highly-educated Gentile convert, Luke is considered the best Greek stylist among the four gospel writers, and because his descriptions of Jesus’ healings include correct medical terminology of his day, he is traditionally thought to have been a physician. Later traditions developed that he was also a painter, and several works, in Rome and elsewhere, are attributed to him. In any case, he’s remembered as an artist, both of language and of pigment, and he’s the patron saint of both physicians and painters.

October 21 is the birthday of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in Devonshire, England, in 1772. As a young man, he gave lectures on religion, wrote journalism, and attempted to single-handedly create his own magazine — but eventually settled on poetry as his calling. He met the poet William Wordsworth in 1795, and their brief friendship gave rise to the most productive period in Coleridge’s life. The two poets enjoyed composing their work while walking, and they spent several days hiking the coast, passing the time by creating a gothic ballad about a tragic sea voyage — which Coleridge eventually developed into his most famous poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” It was published with Wordsworth in a collection entitled, Lyrical Ballads, today considered the founding document of the Romantic movement in poetry.

Here’s a taste of Coleridge:

“If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke — Ay! and what then?”

And again, from the "Rime”:

“He prayeth best, who loveth best;
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us;
He made and loveth all.”

October 21 is also the date Martin Luther joined the faculty of the University of Wittenberg in 1512. After a frustrating period in a monastery and a disillusioning visit to a church conference in Rome, he decided to pursue a doctorate at Wittenberg — and did so well that he was asked to join the faculty. Preparing lessons for his students gave him an occasion to work out his thoughts about the monastery and his trip to Rome, and his thinking crystallized when, in 1517, Pope Leo X announced the sale of indulgences — monetary gifts to the church said to lessen the donor’s ultimate punishment for his or her sins — to help finance the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica. Outraged, Luther wrote a treatise called “Disputation on the Power of Indulgences” — commonly known today as “The Ninety-five Theses” — arguing against the sale of indulgences as both corrupt and theologically mistaken. The (probably apocryphal) story goes that he nailed his theses to the door of the university chapel; in any case, his ideas circulated swiftly and widely, stirring controversy and helping to spark what later became known as the Protestant reformations in Western Europe.

October 22 is the feast day of Mary Salome, one of the three Mary’s in the New Testament Gospels, mother of the disciples James and John. According to Matthew, she witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion (Matthew 27:56), and according to Mark, with the other Marys, she found Jesus’ tomb empty on Easter morning (Mark 16:1-8).

October 23 is the birthday of physician and poet Robert Bridges, born in Walmer, England, in 1844. Bridges is likely a name you don’t know — but you may know his close friend, Gerard Manley Hopkins (who wrote, among other masterpieces, “God’s Grandeur”). Hopkins published very little of his poetry during his lifetime, but included many poems in his letters to Bridges — and Bridges, after Hopkins’ death, collected and published those poems in 1918. Without Bridges, Hopkins’ poems might never have been remembered at all; it wasn’t until 1930, when a second edition of Hopkins’ poems was published, that people began to recognize him as one of the most gifted, innovative poets of his generation.