Saints

Do you ever feel like you’re alone in your struggles to live out the Christian faith? Do you ever read the Bible yet still wonder what it looks like to follow Jesus in the complexity and difficulty of our time? The stories of great men and women throughout the history of the church can help us form a bridge between the teaching of Scripture and our embodied lives. Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints from Every Era and Place is an illustrated devotional that vividly depicts the lives and words of great women and men of faith. Artist and deacon Ben Lansing and priest D J Marotta offer fifty-two profound images and reflections on Christians, from Polycarp in the first century to the martyrs of Sudan in the twenty-first century. These saints, from every continent and century of church history, demonstrate the historic church’s relevance for Christians today and reveal God’s faithfulness in all times and circumstances. The artwork, biographies, devotionals, and prayers in this book are meant to spark our imaginations, helping us to be faithful here and now, in our own age.

The Saints of the Anglican Calendar by Kathleen Jones introduces us to the 232 men and women who are commemorated in the Common Worship Calendar. Nearly five hundred years after the Reformation, the Church of England is coming to a fuller appreciation of the saints, and their contribution to our spiritual heritage. Medieval accounts of saints’ lives were often marred by confusion and contradictory oral traditions, the writers’ desire to tell an edifying story, and the exploitation of the commercial opportunities of pilgrim shrines. Embellished with improbable miracles and unlikely legends, these accounts made the saints seem remote and unbelievable figures, but recent theological scholarship has cleared away the accretions of centuries, enabling us to see the saints as real people who faced up to the challenge of living out the Christian faith, often in conditions of great difficulty or danger - and who made mistakes like everyone else. This lively and informative volume presents the experience of men and women from the days of the early Church to modern times - people from many walks of life, including some from other Christian traditions. They represent the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ who enrich our understanding of the Christian faith, endow us with a legacy of two thousand years of Christian values in action, and inspire us to walk faithfully in the way of Christ.

Many Australian Christians know little of the numerous others in this country who, by God’s grace, were effective witnesses to Christ. In An Australian Prayer Book (1977), a few local festivals were included, but not Australian people. In A Prayer Book for Australia (1995), the Calendar included a dozen or more people in whose lives God’s grace was so evident that they are commemorated in some part of this land. Australian Anglicans Remember by The Revd Dr Charles Sherlock covers all Australian and New Zealand commemorations listed in APBA.

Exciting Holiness by Brother Tristam SSF and Simon Kershaw is a convenient companion to the Calendar for Anglicans throughout Britain and Ireland. A complete resource for Eucharistic worship on all festivals and feast days, it remains the only volume of its kind, providing prayers and Scripture readings for each day of the Calendars of the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, the Episcopal Church of Scotland and the Church in Wales. For each figure commemorated, Exciting Holiness offers a short biography explaining how the individual inspires us to holy living. For those celebrated with a Festival or Lesser Festival, it also offers a Collect, Bible readings written out in full, Responsorial Psalm and a Post Communion prayer.