Celebrating the Saints: The Feasts, Festivals, and Commemorations of Lutheran Service Book
William Weedon
Concordia Publishing House (2016)
288 pages (including indexes, etc.)
The Church Year is one of the great treasures of the Church. It blesses both believers and non-believers. Feasts like Christmas and Easter are known well beyond the walls of local churches. But the Church Year is far more expansive than Christmas and Easter. For the Christian, there is much more to remember and celebrate.
St. Luke begins Acts with the words, “In the first book (the Gospel of Luke), O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1:1-2). The book of Acts is the continuing story of what Jesus “began to do and teach.” The story didn’t end, though, at the end of Acts. Christ continues to “do and teach” through his body, the Church, to this very day. The Church Year is a primary way that we recall that continuing story of Jesus doing and teaching. That story has continued for almost 2000 years!
The Church helps us remember that continuing story by lifting up various individuals and events for us. Lutheran Service Book (LSB) has a fuller liturgical calendar of those events and individuals than used before in the LC-MS. Some of the people remembered are making their first appearance on a liturgical calendar. Therefore we have a need for a book like Celebrating the Saints. Weedon covers each saint and event on our calendar, along with each season. His presentations are devotional in nature and include a short prayer and a verse (sometimes two) of a hymn out of LSB that relates.
Some may think that remembering the saints is a “Roman Catholic thing.” Why would Protestants celebrate “Saint Days?”
Protestants and Roman Catholics approach the saints in different ways. Weedon writes, “We do not commemorate any of the saints because they were perfect. We commemorate them because they were forgiven and through them God has given us a mirror of His grace” (147). We see this mirror throughout Celebrating the Saints.
If you are looking for a scholarly book, which tells you things like when the date was was first celebrated and where, what other churches recognize this particular individual or event and when they do so, and other such information, this book will disappoint. If you are looking for a devotional treatment of the various days and seasons, a treatment that can encourage you in your walk with Christ and lift up what Christ has done throughout the centuries through his Body (which is really why the Church Year was first developed) then you will find Celebrating the Saints to be an excellent book. It is full of hope, encouragement and, most of all, God’s grace in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Blessings in Christ,
Pastor John Rickert