Unseeded. Unstoppable.#Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/sgSwIWirDM

— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 15, 2023

Today is St Swithun’s Day, when the weather-gods obey the saint of Winchester – ‘St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain / For forty days it will remain’, and all that. So let’s look at a few extracts from an Old English homily for St Swithun’s Day, written by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century.

Ælfric had a personal connection to Swithun’s story, and in this homily he adds in one or two comments to remind us of it. Swithun was an obscure ninth-century Bishop of Winchester whose fame is almost entirely the work of Æthelwold, his successor at Winchester more than a century later. Winchester was the royal city of Wessex but it was surprisingly short on saints, so Æthelwold did his best to elevate some of his predecessors to that status, including Swithun and St Birinus (a better-attested saint, though his popularity never caught on as Swithun’s did). On 15 July 971, Æthelwold had Swithun’s remains translated to a new shrine inside the Old Minster, Winchester. Ælfric, who was educated at Winchester under Æthelwold and had a great respect for his bishop, would have witnessed much of this, and by the time he wrote about it, around 25 years later, he had come to see Æthelwold’s time – his own youth – as a kind of golden age for the English church, when the king and holy bishops worked together and religion and peace flourished in the land. By the 990s, with the Vikings suddenly once more a pressing threat, this seemed to him like a bright but vanished world.

Read it all.

Today we commemorate our Father among the saints, the Holy Hierarch Swithun, Bishop of Winchester https://t.co/hz9ltoo2Kp #15July pic.twitter.com/ONexo2Io18

— Twelve Apostles' Church, Eastleigh (@12ApostlesHants) July 15, 2023

Almighty God,
by whose grace we celebrate again
the feast of your servant Swithun:
grant that, as he governed with gentleness
the people committed to his care,
so we, rejoicing in our Christian inheritance,
may always seek to build up your Church in unity and love;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever. Amen.

Today marks #StSwithunsDay
One of St Swithun's most famous miracles tells of a simple act of human kindness to a poor woman. When crossing the bridge, she was jostled and dropped her basket of eggs. The saint took pity on her – and made her broken eggs whole. pic.twitter.com/XcaSqeOnUU

— Winchester Cathedral (@WinCathedral) July 15, 2023

Almighty God, who didst give to thy servant Argula von Grumbach a spirit of wisdom and power to love thy Word and to boldly draw others unto its truth: Pour out that same spirit upon us, so that we, knowing and loving thy Holy Word, may be unashamed of Christ and may not sin against the Holy Spirit that is within us, Amen.

Argula von Grumbach (1490-1564) used her unique position (she answered only to the Emperor, within her noble station) to question the church and advocate for others.

All this with four kids in deepest Catholic Bavaria, and amidst constant death threats. #InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/PAjqraUhie

— Mike Stuchbery 💀🍷 (@MikeStuchbery_) March 8, 2023

Almighty God, give us grace to do the work to which Thou hast called us with reverence and Godly fear, not with eye-service as pleasers of men, but in singleness of heart as in Thy sight. Direct, we beseech Thee, all our thoughts, words, and deeds, with the help of Thy Holy Spirit; that we may set Thy will ever before us, and turn away from vanity and self-seeking, and give ourselves wholly unto Thee to spend and be spent in Thy service; through Jesus Christ, our only Lord and Saviour.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

Bore da i chi…dachre digon dymunol i’r wîcend peth cynta’ bore ‘ma…joiwch eich penwythnos👍🏼😃

Good morning everyone…not a bad start first thing…enjoy your weekend my friends👍🏼😃@StormHour @ThePhotoHour #WestWalesSunrise

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿❤️ pic.twitter.com/3MoIrFH15k

— Aled Hall 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@AledHall) July 15, 2023

And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” When they heard this they were silenced. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life.”

–Acts 11:16-18

Golden rays of Avalon this morning. Taken just after sunrise on Glastonbury Tor this morning. pic.twitter.com/YdmYdOtnXY

— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) July 15, 2023