While on a 5 miles walk about I took the opportunity to listen to my favorite podcast: Hidden Brain. Hosted by Skankar Vedantam, the show explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world. Today’s episode was “Why We Hold On To Things.” If you would like to listen….
On All Saints Day we celebrate, remember, and honor all the saints, known and unknown. Back in the earliest days of the Church, we did not so much think of “saints” but rather martyrs were especially esteemed. It was very much a local event, as the local church celebrated the anniversary of a martyr’s death on the anniversary date and in the place of martyrdom. By the 4th century the list of martyrs had grown considerably with some martyrs being celebrated more universally. The Church was caught between its desire to remember and celebrate the martyr’s witness and death, an ever expanding geography, and the practical matter of finding days to set aside to celebrate. Very soon there was a movement to find a common day to celebrate martyrs that were important to the Church while leaving the local communities to set aside days for martyrs that loomed larger in local memory. Continue reading
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