Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

Posts Tagged ‘Memphis’

Yesterday evening, my wife and I were doing our evening devotions from the simplified office of our Synod’s provisional Book of Common Prayer. We read ahead to today’s commemoration of the Anglican Sister Constance and her Companions who lived, served, and died in Christ within a few hours of our home. In a world filled with secular heroes, and anti heroes, it is good from time to time to reflect on the lives of the saints to deepen our own understanding of faithfulness to Christ in the midst of a world devoted to “self”. May the Lord bless this commemoration to your spirit.

In Christ,

+Chuck Huckaby
Bishop
Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

In 1878 Memphis, Tennessee was struck by an epidemic of yellow fever, which so depopulated the area that the city lost its charter and was not reorganized for fourteen years. Almost everyone who could afford to do so left the city and fled to higher ground away from the river. There were in the city several communities of nuns, Anglican and Roman Catholic, who had the opportunity of leaving, but chose to stay and nurse the sick. Most of them, thirty-eight in all, were themselves killed by the fever. One of the first to die (on September 9, 1878) was Constance, head of the (Anglican) Community of St. Mary.

COLLECT
God of compassion, we give you thanks and praise for the heroic witness of Constance and her companions, who, in a time of plague and pestilence, were steadfast in their care for the sick and dying, and loved not their own lives, even unto death: Inspire in us a like love and commitment to those in need, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.