Commontide
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 4th Sunday of Epiphany
O God, you know that we are set in the midst of many grave dangers, and because of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: Grant that your strength and protection may support us in all dangers and carry us through every temptation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Epiphany
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who took on our mortal flesh to reveal his glory; that he might bring us out of darkness and into his own glorious light.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen and Apostle of the North
Ecumenical Commemoration
Anskar (c. 801 to 865), a Frankish monk of Corbie and Corvey, was sent north in 826 with the exiled Danish king Harald Klak and spent the rest of his life on the pagan frontier: two journeys to Birka in Sweden, thirty-four years as bishop of Hamburg and then Bremen, a cathedral burned by a Danish fleet in 845, and a mission repeatedly rebuilt. He is called the Apostle of the North.
Anskar was born around 801 in Picardy and entered the Benedictine monastery of Corbie as a child, later transferring to New Corbie (Corvey) in Saxony. In 826, when the exiled Danish king Harald Klak was baptized at the court of Louis the Pious, Anskar accompanied him back to Denmark as a missionary.
His first Danish mission was short-lived, but in 829 he traveled to the Swedish trading center of Birka, where he established a small Christian community. On his return, Pope Gregory IV appointed him Archbishop of Hamburg with responsibility for the northern mission. When Vikings sacked Hamburg in 845, destroying his cathedral and library, Anskar's see was merged with Bremen.
For the next two decades Anskar worked to rebuild his mission under extraordinarily difficult conditions. He sent missionaries back to both Denmark and Sweden, negotiated with Scandinavian kings for freedom to preach, ransomed Christian captives from the slave trade, and founded schools and hospitals. His progress was modest: the Scandinavian kingdoms would not become securely Christian until the late tenth and eleventh centuries.
Rimbert records that Anskar's dying regret was not that he had accomplished so little, but that God had not granted him the crown of martyrdom. He died on February 3, 865.
Rimbert records that Anskar experienced visions throughout his life. As a young man at Corbie, he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin and the apostles Peter and John commissioning him for missionary work. Throughout his career, further visions sustained him through discouragement.
Rimbert also records that Anskar's prayers were accompanied by healings among both Christians and pagans, and that his personal austerity — hair shirt beneath his vestments, bread-and-water diet when not entertaining guests — impressed the Scandinavians, who respected physical endurance.
His dying wish for martyrdom is one of the most humanly touching moments in medieval hagiography — a man who spent his life facing danger and disappointment, wishing at the end that he had been granted the one thing he wanted most.