Curate’s sermon 6.9.26. Luke 1:46-55: Patronal Festival

In the medieval world, patronage was everything. Whoever had the money called the shots. In many ways, this is still the case today, but today we are seeing patronage on a different scale and in different spheres of life. Relationships between patrons and beneficiaries are different too. But back in the day, wealth and patronage also came with Christian responsibilities. Anyone wealthy enough to be a patron either took a chunk of the money to the Church to offer it to God’s glory or did something with it that ensured their own salvation. One example of this is found in chantry chapels, which proliferated in medieval pre-Reformation England. A wealthy person would leave a sizeable sum of money to be used after their death to pay a priest to offer regular mass for the repose of their soul. The said priest would be chanting the mass in a separate chapel set within a bigger church. Even in this church, you will find evidence of multiple altars where services most likely would have taken place for this purpose. Another example is art. In medieval and early Renaissance painting, you will find patrons painted next to saints as a form of prayer for their salvation. I think every image of the Virgin painted by Jan van Eyck shows the chap who paid for it, humbly kneeling in prayer just to the side.
Patrons wanted the best and the latest for their local churches too. This is why ancient churches were often knocked down for new ones to be built, or the old churches were extended with isles and transepts added on. Again, the same thing happened in this church. If there was not much to build or to re-build, patrons would pay for the best stained glass or the most expensive plate to be used in the church – all to the glory of God, but not only God. Every church was dedicated to a saint, who was believed to intercede for the whole local parish. You want to be on their good side too, so they pray for you in heaven! To ensure the saint’s powerful presence in the local community, churches kept relics of the saints they were dedicated to. Every medieval altar had a cavity inside, where the relics would be placed. Countless fingers of St Thomas, teeth of St Apollonia and fragments of the Cross that, if put together, would be make enough wood to build a house would be kept in churches across Europe. Dedications of churches ranged from local saints to Christ’s apostles, but many churches, including this one, were dedicated to Mary. The trick with Mary is that she was assumed bodily into heaven, which means no bones, teeth or anything else left on earth that could be used as relics. The churches had to get creative and discover fragments of her veil, pieces of her belt that she, according to tradition, left behind, strands of her hair or even drops of her milk. John Calvin apparently said that if the Virgin Mary had been a cow, she still could not have yielded the immense quantity of milk shown in Christendom’s shrines.
There is, however, a reason why medieval Christians were so keen on the saints’ relics, whether they were real or not. Just like the earthly wellbeing of Christians and their churches directly depended on their earthly patrons, so their spiritual wellbeing and, very importantly, their prospects of salvation, depended on their heavenly patrons. Getting on the wrong side of the local landowner meant potentially being left without means for earthly existence, but getting on the wrong side of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in her own church, could result in the prospect of the heavenly gates shutting forever right in front of you.
After the Reformation, veneration of saints was suppressed but the dedications remained. This church which, for centuries, prayed to Mary, could not do so anymore but is still named after her. But what does this dedication mean to us now? And what is the point of our patronal festival, if it isn’t to pray and to put more efforts into remaining on Mary’s good side?
Perhaps the simplest answer is that a patronal festival today is a mere nod to a historic tradition, a memorial, if you like. Then, if, in addition to a morning service, one plans a more community-facing patronal celebration, as an article from Church Times recommends, it creates an opportunity to strengthen ties with the parish, including people who would not normally go to church. However, I feel that these things, wonderful as they are, somewhat reduce the saint to a token and the local church to a community hub with a historic past. Surely there must be some theology in what we are doing this morning!
Throughout the year, we do set aside the time to mark significant saints. Whenever an apostle is commemorated in the church calendar, they would normally be marked on a Sunday or Wednesday. Throughout the warmer months of the year, Whorlton has Evening Prayer to mark some of the saints’ days. Saints, in addition to being patrons and protectors in a more Catholic paradigm, are also examples of holiness – people who, very often, lived a fairly ordinary or sometimes not even very Christian life (just look at Apostle Paul!). As we are called to follow Christ, we are also called to imitate him by the example of the saints. In fact, the same Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, ‘Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ’.
In the case of Mary, the Magnificat alone, which we have just heard, sends a strong message of imitating Mary’s humility and obedience, a desire for God’s mercy and justice, and complete trust in His promises and calls upon our lives. As we celebrate Mary today, we are reminded to be more Christ-like through being more Mary-like.
But I think there is another theological dimension beyond purely instructive in celebrating not just the patronal festival but saints in general. If you forgive me, I am going to go Eastern Orthodox for a moment.
In Russian Orthodox theology in particular, there is a beautiful term ‘соборность’, which means ‘togetherness’, ‘collectiveness’, ‘unity’, but also ‘assembly’, ‘gathering’. ‘Sobornost’ represents an idea of an assembly of all faithful people, living and departed, including the saints. It is about spiritual unity without erasing our own identity, a form of unity in plurality, that is centred on Christ, guided by love and uninterrupted in death. We are part of the Church in exactly the same way that anyone sitting in another pew on the other side of the globe is, but also in the same way as Mary and anyone who has gone before us. The heavenly peace the saints and the departed dwell in is not somewhere out there – it is here, with us. And Mary is not a distant figure we read about in the Bible – she is right here with us too.
When we pause to celebrate specifically a patronal festival, I do not think we should detach ourselves from that sense of communion with Mary and other saints. In a Reformed church, we may not pray to the saints and may not chant the Angelus to praise the Virgin Mary, but it does not render her irrelevant and it does not make her presence, her guidance and her patronage impossible.
The saints live as Christ lives and it is days like this, like a patronal festival, that bring us into contact with them and remind us that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and so as they are united with Him, so we are too. Amen.