Theologian's Almanac for Week of March 24, 2024

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, March 24:

March 24 is Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus’ jubilant entry into Jerusalem. It’s essentially a piece of street theater dramatizing Zechariah’s ancient prophecy: the long-awaited divine monarch arrives on a humble donkey, announcing “peace to the nations” (Zech 9:9-10). Shout hosanna! The new era, the Great Jubilee, has begun! Check out SALT’s commentary on Palm (and Passion) Sunday here.

March 24 is also the birthday of American hymn-writer Fanny Crosby, born in Southeast, New York, in 1820. She lost her sight as an infant because of a doctor’s malpractice. She loved music throughout her life, penning thousands of hymns under something like 100 different pseudonyms, since hymnal publishers were reluctant to include too many hymns by any single writer. Her most famous is “Blessed Assurance,” which begins: “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!”

March 25 is traditionally the feast day of the Annunciation, commemorating Gabriel’s angelic announcement to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. The day is nine months before Christmas, of course (and indeed, part of why December 25th was settled upon as Jesus’ birthday is that it’s nine months after Annunciation Day!). But the March date was also associated with the ancient Roman festival of Hilaria, honoring the “Great Mother” goddess Cybele; it was the first feast day after the spring equinox, heralding the coming season of new life.

The story of the Annunciation has inspired countless paintings; here’s one of our favorites here at SALT (by Antonello da Messina), not least because it puts the viewer in the position of Gabriel!

March 25 is also the birthday of American writer Flannery O’Connor, born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. Her father died of lupus when she was 15, and she would die of the same disease at 39. But in her short life, she profoundly shaped American literature with dark stories about religion, sin, and redemption in the American South. Her first novel was Wise Blood, the story of a World War II veteran haunted by a crisis of faith. Some critics found her work a bit too gothic and grotesque, with its emphasis on sin and other religious themes — but O’Connor replied, “To the hard of hearing shout, and for the almost blind, draw large and startling figures.”

She said, “I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”

March 25 is also the day in 1911 that New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burned down. One hundred and forty-six workers — the vast majority of them immigrant women and girls — died in the fire and its aftermath. It was the city’s deadliest workplace disaster until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Frances Perkins, who later became Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, witnessed the blaze — and knew immediately that government action was needed to improve workplace conditions. “We’ve got to turn this into some kind of victory,” she said, “some kind of constructive action.” And that’s exactly what she did, in New York City and across the country.

March 26 is the birthday of American poet Robert Frost, born in San Francisco in 1874. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry an astonishing four times. He said, “One thing I care about and wish young people would care about, is taking poetry as the first form of understanding. If poetry isn’t understanding all, the whole world, then it isn’t worth anything.”

In this age of division, Frost’s famous poem, “Mending Wall,” is worth revisiting. It turns out that the poem’s most famous line, “Good fences make good neighbors,” isn’t Frost’s point at all, but rather the opposite…

March 27 is the day in 1912 that First Lady Helen Herron Taft, along with the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the very first of the Yoshino cherry trees that now grace Washington, D.C. Those first cuttings were from the most celebrated trees growing along the banks of Tokyo’s Arakawa River. Eventually thousands of cherry trees were planted around the Potomac River Tidal Basin in Washington, each one a gift from the Japanese people. During World War II, many cherry trees were destroyed in the allied bombing raids of Tokyo, and after the war, American horticulturalists took cuttings from the Washington trees and sent them back across the Pacific to Tokyo. Likewise, when some of the American trees died years later, Tokyo sent cuttings to Washington.

March 27 is also the day in 1915 that “Typhoid Mary” was put into quarantine. Mary Mallon was a vigorous, hard-working Irish-American woman who worked as a cook in many wealthy households — and every one of them suffered an outbreak of typhoid fever. Eventually, health officials noticed the pattern, and doctors discovered that Mallon’s gallbladder was shedding typhoid bacteria in great numbers. She admitted that she never washed her hands, even before cooking — but she saw no point in doing so, she said, since she was perfectly healthy. An asymptomatic typhoid carrier was unheard of at the time, and Mallon refused to believe she was sick. She changed her name and continued working as a cook for years, with disease and death following in her wake, until authorities placed her permanently in quarantine.

March 28 is Maundy Thursday, “maundy” from the Latin mandatum, “command” or “mandate,” a reference to the “new commandment” Jesus gives his disciples on the eve of his death: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34). Not an abstract or generic “love,” then, but a love “just as I have loved you”: compassionate and tangible, as simple and strong as kneeling to wash someone’s feet and then drying them with a towel (John 13:1-15).

March 28 is also the birthday of St. Teresa of Ávila, born in Gotarrendura, Spain, in 1515. After growing up in a privileged household, as a teenager she decided to become a nun. Shortly after her decision, she contracted malaria and nearly died, suffering paralysis of her legs for three years. During this period, she had several mystical visions, including many of intense rapture — and these shaped her theological and spiritual life for the rest of her life. She eventually founded the Discalced Carmelite Order (“discalced” means “shoeless” — think Francis and Clare!), a new reform order in which the sisters lived in poverty, simplicity, and prayer. Teresa crisscrossed Spain on a donkey, establishing 16 new monasteries for women. Her books, including The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle, are now considered masterpieces in the Christian mystical tradition.

March 29 is Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. All four Gospels link the crucifixion to Passover, a clear signal that we should understand his death first and foremost as a sign that God is once again liberating God’s people, inaugurating a New Exodus in the tradition of the exalted exodus from Egypt.

March 29 is also the birthday of comedian, author, and composer Eric Idle, best known for his membership in the surreal comedy group, Monty Python. He co-wrote and performed the classic theological film, “Life of Brian,” a send-up of the life of Jesus of Nazareth; in particular, Idle wrote the film’s most famous song, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” He also wrote a “comic oratorio” called “Not the Messiah,” a parody of Handel’s “Messiah” loosely based on “Life of Brian.” Blessed are the cheesemakers!

March 30 is Holy Saturday, for Christians a day of silence and waiting, and also the day, it is said, when Jesus “descended into Hell” to free those held captive there. It is a day of shadows and ambiguity, a time of mourning and hope-against-hope. Holy Saturday’s silence is broken by the “Alleluia” of the late-night Easter Vigil or the dawn of Easter morning.