Wednesday Meditation

Excerpt from A Saint, His Cloak, and Us by Andrew McGowan

The feast day of Martin of Tours falls on Nov. 11, a date many also know as Veterans Day, or Armistice Day.

Martin of Tours was born around 336 in what is now Hungary, and was brought up in Pavia in northern Italy, where he became a catechumen. He joined the army as a teen and served in Gaul (now France). The most famous story about Martin comes from this period of his life: As he was approaching the gates of Amiens, he met a beggar (who was cold) and was moved to cut his cloak in half to share it with the poor man. That night, Martin dreamed of Jesus wearing the portion of the cloak he had given away, and heard him say to the angels: “Martin, who is still only a catechumen, clothed me with this robe.”

Martin was soon baptized, but felt that his Christian calling required leaving the army. “I am a soldier of Christ,” his biographer [Sulpicius Severus] records him saying. “I cannot fight.” Martin pursued the vocation of a hermit for some years until he was called, against his will, to be bishop of Tours in France.

During Martin’s time as bishop, a Christian teacher named Priscillian, bishop of Avila in Spain, was accused of heresy. Some bishops were happy to use imperial power to put Priscillian on trial and execute him. Martin objected vehemently – despite also condemning Priscillian’s teaching.

Martin was a Christian, and a leader of Christians, who was deeply concerned both with justice and with power. He had to negotiate the changing relationship between church and state, and consider what the integrity of Christian faith demanded or allowed.

(1) The famous story of Martin and the beggar places immediate engagement with the marginalized at its heart. We cannot afford to place our hope for justice on policy or voting patterns alone, or on the state, even while we must act as citizens to seek the best policies. Witness to justice must begin with personal practice, with sharing of possessions, wealth, and gifts, and with our own attention to those in greatest need. Politics, and economics, must be personal.

(2) Martin’s refusal to join fellow bishops opposing Priscillian in using brutal justice of the state as a substitute for charity and persuasion is also a potent example. It speaks not just against the institutionalized violence still countenanced by the state (not only in legalized murder but in systematized racialized incarceration) but against compromise in using any tools of repression supposedly in the name of justice.

Last but not least, Martin devoted himself to prayer and fasting. Spiritual discipline is not an alternative to activism, but must lie at its heart.

The Hispanic population in San Antonio include significant devotion to Martin – “San Martin Caballero” – as patron of those in need. 

(The Rev. Andrew McGowan, an Anglican priest, is dean of Berkeley Divinity School and McFaddin Professor of Anglican Studies and Pastoral Theology at YDS - original version is here: https://reflections.yale.edu/article/god-and-money-turning-tables/saint-his-cloak-and-us)