Saint Anna - Reflection from Rev. Mees Tielens, Curate

This Sunday we’re celebrating St. Anna’s Day, our patronal feast.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/by any other name would smell just as sweet,” Shakespeare famously wrote in “Romeo and Juliet.” And though I would not lightly contradict Shakespeare, and when it comes to the Capulets and Montagues, his point is well taken, it’s not a quote I would apply to St. Anna’s. Because the act of naming yourself isn’t a trivial one; it is an identity marker. That’s true if you change your name when you get married, or transition, and also for merged congregations. Naming yourself is a way of shaping your future, saying out loud for other people to hear and affirm: this is who I want to be. 

And all of the saints and feasts this congregation could have chosen, it chose Anna Alexander as its patron saint. St. Anna (1865-1947), born to former slaves in Georgia, her own mother the result of rape by a white overseer. It chose to stake its identity on the first African-American deaconess (what we would now call a deacon) in the Episcopal Church, who served the poor people around her faithfully as a teacher and lender of aid (both material and spiritual) to anyone who was in need. You can read more about her here–including how, when the diocese split and the new bishop stopped supporting African-American Episcopal ministries, she and her community didn’t stop their work, but just made do. She took her cues from Jesus, not the diocese, continuing to love even when she was not loved in return:

Still, if Anna Alexander lived in a society that was often hateful, she eschewed hate. Though shrewdly aware of realities, for her the burden of race in a racist society was secondary to the values of work and learning. Anger she rejected as a wasteful emotion. Love energized. Convinced that application would be rewarded by accomplishment, she set an example for her pupils by both demanding and giving respect. Fundamentally a Christian educator, she taught Christian values and hope in a world where faith was all too easily eroded and dreams destroyed.[1]

Thinking of all of the challenges Anna Alexander faced, and the example she set, thinking of the inequality around us, the divisive and dehumanizing political rhetoric we hear around us, thinking of the children learning and playing at Kimball Elementary just down the street, the families who get their food from Hope House, and the joys and hardships of your lives, too, I can’t see choosing St. Anna as your patron saint as anything other than an act of hope and love. For yourselves as parishioners, for Antioch, for Contra Costa County, and for the Diocese of California. And I pray we never lose sight of that love, and that hope, as Anna Alexander embodied it. May we always strive to live up to the name we gave ourselves.

Yours in Christ,

Mees+

[1] http://deaconessalexander.georgiaepiscopal.org/?page_id=42