ST MARTIN'S LENT

With this Sunday, the third before Advent, being two days before the feast of the great St Martin of Tours, we begin St Martin's Lent. Generally the weather is strangely Spring like just before the advent, the coming, of the coldest part of Fall and Winter, and in the medieval period, as St Martin's feast generally came at the beginning of it, it received his name. For American Anglicans it should have another significance. The last revision of the reactionary of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer added propers for the three weeks before Advent Sunday which serve as a restoration of the old extended Advent of the Gallican and Celtic Churches. This allows us to work are way in to the thematic material of Advent before it actually arrives. And they are wonderful lections indeed, a real treat for those who read the daily offices. You will find them on page li and lii of the American Book of Common Prayer.