Verbum TIP of the day: Saints as role models (includes Methodists, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican,

MJ. Smith

• For All the Saints: A Calendar of Commemorations for United Methodists by Heather Josselyn-Cranson, editor.
• A Calendar of Other Commemorations from the Uniting Church of Australia
• A Calendar of Commemorations by Donald W. Stake (Presbyterian)
• Festivals and Commemorations: Handbook to the Calendar in Lutheran Book of Worship by Philip H. Pfatteicher
• Ecumenical Calendar of Commemorations from ACTS Church Life Network

Okay, admittedly the above resources are not included in Logos. I mention them to make the point of how broadly the study of saints applies. It is not limited to churches that have a mechanism for declaring someone a "saint" not is it limited to churches that use the term "saint" for their recent role models. It is correlated with churches having, in theory if not in practice, some form of daily prayer, usually morning and evening prayer.

The purpose of a sanctoral cycle or "saints of the day" is to provide role models for Christians - an ever changing variety living in different times, sundry places, with individual backgrounds and challenges. By seeing how they live out their faith one may be challenged to live one's own faith more fully or may see new ways to handle obstacles. A school teacher's rubric http://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?code=H86679&sp=yes& provides a basic outline of use.

For Catholics, Verbum provides a Saint section on the Home Page. Many of these saints are recognized across most of the churches having calendars of saints. Some are uniquely Catholic.

This provides the information for the first two elements of the teacher's rubric.

Clicking on the Saint on the home page, opens the Verbum created Saints resource. This provides you with Logos resources providing information on the saint, a link to Wikipedia for the saint and a link to an image of the saint.

This provides the information necessary to complete the first 4 blocks of the teacher's rubric.

Pfatteicher provides a page of additional information that you can sometimes piece together in Verbum if you have the correct resources, but is not easily available. He presents 3 columns - Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal:

• the collect of the saint
• readings for the saint or reference to generic readings for the group in which the saint fits
• hymn of the day (Lutheran & Methodists have this)
• prayers of the faithful topic (Lutheran)
• preface (Lutheran)
• liturgical color (Lutheran)

Note how the information Pfatteicher supplies helps one focus on what the church sees as the aspects of the saint's life which make them worthy of being role models.

The final step is a journal, in Verbum probably simply kept as a note file linked to the saint's person (okay, many only have topic entries not bio entries but that's another problem). that completes the last rubric - what (if anything) about this saint provides a role model you would like to follow? What makes that appealing to you? How can you take steps to achieve this? [And what about the saint would you prefer not to emulate?]

As there are problems with attaching a note to a non-Biblical name, you may leave the note unlinked or link to the Saints resource (or other resource of your choice).