Inbetween storms now; the sun radiant up in the pines and bare oaks. Although I got myself turned around this morning and delayed Matins, doing it early this afternoon provided special graces. Soaking up the shine, I sat outside near the bird feeders and a dozen or so of newly-yellowed goldfinches, along with several titmice and black-capped chickadees, flew in, just feet away, to make a winged corsage of the feeder. A red-bellied woodpecker jack-hammered his head nearly off in the tree crowns. I thought about what Our Lord said concerning the falling of these delicate creations. I wondered if Lydia, Doras, and Phoebe listened to birds similarly. Did they know that saying of Jesus? I suppose so. At least I hope so.
My postwoman Shay left Philip H. Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations: A Proposed Common Calendar of Saints at my door stoup this afternoon. You’ll no doubt begin to see a number of references to the book from now on for a while.
As Lutherans we haven’t been remembering these women yearly until recently. On the day following the commemoration of Timoty, Titus, and Silas (yesterday) the Lutheran Book of Worship, as Phatteicher reminds us, introduced our remembering these women in 1978. Lydia, of course, was Paul’s first convert in Europe, as Luke tells us in Acts 16. As a business lady, she apparently did quite well for herself. Paul stayed at her home, and she probably helped finance a good bit of his ministry. Dorcus or Tabitha (the name means “gazelle,” Phatteicher says) came from Joppa; her specialty in ministry was helping God’s beloved poor. According to Luke (Acts 9.36-43) Paul brought her back to life when she died. “Dorcas is called a ‘disciple’ in a feminine form of the word, the only occurrence of that word in the New Testament. (Hurray for early Christian femininism!) Phoebe (meaning “bright” or “radiant”; apparently the name of disciple Phoebe and the woodland bird here aren’t related related; certainly I wouldn’t call the Eastern Phoebe particularly bright, but it does sing a well-enunciated phoe-be, or fi-bree, and that settles the relationship, doesn’t it?). She was a deaconess at the church in Cenchreae, the east seaport of Corinth. She became an inspiration for the orders of deaconesses that emerged in the Church in the third and fourth centuries. Again Phatteicher: “In Romans 16.1-2 Pauls commends her to the Roman Church upon her move there, and this fact that she was free to travel suggests that she was perhaps a widow. Her specific service that earned her the title of ‘helper’ or ‘deaconess’ was perhaps her willingness to stand by foreigners in their uncertainties.”
I’ve copied this prayer to my office book:
Almighty God, you inspired your servants Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe to support and sustain your church by their deeds of generous love: Open our hearts to hear you, conform our will to love you, and strengthen our hands for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, unto the ages of ages.
