July 22: Mary Magdalene. The risen Lord’s first word to any person on Easter morning is a name. He says ‘Mary.’ She recognizes him by her name in his mouth. The first Easter proclamation follows: I have seen the Lord. Four words spoken first by a woman who had been healed and refused to leave.
June 29: Peter and Paul. One who denied and was restored. One who persecuted and was arrested by grace. They argued in Antioch. They were martyred in Rome. The Church has never thought it necessary to choose between them. That is what the joint feast says.
June 24: the Nativity of John the Baptist. One of only two births celebrated in the Anglican calendar, the other being Christmas. The Church does not observe birthdays generally. That it has kept June 24 since the fourth century says everything about John’s place in salvation history.
Today the Church observes the Feast of Saint Barnabas. He stood before the apostles in Jerusalem and vouched for Saul when no one else would. If he had been wrong, the cost would have been real. He was not wrong. The man he testified for wrote half the New Testament.
The Season after Pentecost is the Church’s longest season — twenty-four to twenty-eight Sundays of green. Not preparation, not celebration, but formation: the slow, sustained work of becoming what the Gospel has declared the Church to be. Trinity Sunday to Christ the King.
Why does the church observe a feast rooted in the Advent story on May 31st — right in the middle of Trinity season? The answer reveals something surprising about how the church orders time, and something beautiful about the scene at the heart of this feast.