Commontide
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
Easter
Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection, may, by your life-giving Spirit, be delivered from sin and raised from death; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Easter
But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who was offered for us, and has taken away the sin of the world; who by his death has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again has won for us everlasting life.
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.
Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury
Anglican Commemoration
Anselm was born at Aosta about 1033, entered the abbey of Bec in Normandy in 1060, and served as its prior and then abbot before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury on 4 December 1093. He wrote the Monologion, the Proslogion and Cur Deus Homo, and twice went into exile rather than concede the church's liberties to a king. He died at Canterbury on 21 April 1109. Clement XI declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1720.
Anselm was born in Aosta in the foothills of the Alpine region and trained at the monastery of Bec in Normandy under the celebrated Lanfranc. He became prior (1063) and then abbot (1078) of Bec, earning a reputation across Europe for his theological acumen and monastic reformism. In 1093, King William II appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury, though he accepted with reluctance. His tenure was marked by fierce disputes over the investiture controversy and Church-State authority. Anselm insisted that the Church's independence from secular rulers was non-negotiable; he resisted both William Rufus and his successor Henry I, going into voluntary exile (1097–1100 and 1103–1106) rather than compromise ecclesiastical liberty. During his final years at Canterbury, he maintained extraordinary intellectual vigor, debating theology and revising his works until his death. Eadmer, his companion and secretary, records that Anselm continued deep theological discussion on his deathbed. His life embodied the conviction that reason and faith must work together in seeking God's truth.
Anselm's theological legacy rests on two pillars: the ontological argument for God's existence (Proslogion, 1077–78) and the satisfaction theory of the atonement (Cur Deus Homo, 1098). The ontological argument — that God is 'that than which nothing greater can be thought,' and that such a being must exist in reality as well as in the mind — has generated continuous philosophical debate from Gaunilo's contemporary rebuttal through Kant's critique to Plantinga's modal reformulation. Cur Deus Homo reframed atonement theology by arguing that only a God-man could offer the satisfaction owed to divine honor by human sin, displacing the earlier ransom theory that had dominated patristic thought. Both works exemplify Anselm's method of 'faith seeking understanding' (fides quaerens intellectum) — not proving faith by reason alone, but pressing reason into service within the life of faith. His monastic writings, especially the Prayers and Meditations, reveal a devotional warmth that balances his intellectual rigor. The prayers to the Virgin Mary and to St. Paul anticipate later medieval affective piety while remaining grounded in scriptural imagery. Anselm was canonized in 1494 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1720. His influence runs through Aquinas (who adopted and modified the satisfaction theory), Descartes (who revived the ontological argument), Barth (who devoted his first major work to Anselm's theological method), and contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.