THE FEASTS OF SAINT MARY THE VIRGIN & JONATHAN MYRICK DANIELS
What brought Blessed Jonathan Daniels to that door on that morning?
St. Clement’s, Seattle, 2024
You may find it helpful to read Revelation 12: 1-17
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In August 1965, Jon Daniels was 26 years old. Ruby Sales was 17. They left their jail cell in Hayneville, Alabama. Walked to the door of the Cash Grocery Store to get sodas. Tom Coleman pointed a shotgun at them. Jon moved in front of Ruby. Jon died.
Jon is one of the church’s martyrs and saints. Ruby went on to Jon’s seminary and now is a human rights worker. Tom Coleman was acquitted and lived until he was 86 years old.
What brought Blessed Jonathan Daniels to that door on that morning?
It was the nudging of the Holy Spirit through the instruments of Martin Luther King and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
There are two images of Mary on the insert of your bulletin.
There’s Mary walking across the green at Salisbury Cathedral. Very human, tenacious. To the rather insistent nudging if the Spirit she has said, “let it be.”
It was her “yes” to God’s call even though she didn’t know where it would take her. She walks through the door of her cousin, and Elisabeth cries out “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” And Mary responded,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord, …
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
The child, the fruit of her womb, is God’s mercy, justice and promise to the people of Israel.
The second Mary is a supernatural sign, a threat to the enemy, the beast, the red dragon. That Mary is at once Israel, the Holy Catholic Church, and the resolute woman in the Salisbury green. She “appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” The red dragon sought to devour the child, Israel, the church -- to destroy all that was called to bring light and hope into the world. The dragon’s purpose was to destroy all that was holy, all that was noble. It wasn’t a desire to control and manipulate but to demolish and consume all faith and hope and love.
You may have noticed in the first reading; the flow of John’s revelation suddenly shifts from the woman and moves to a war in heaven –
And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, 8but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
The woman who carries the child of hope and justice who will ..
Bring down the powerful from their thrones,
and lift up the lowly;
fill the hungry with good things,
and send the rich away empty.
That woman must be stopped, and the child destroyed. So there is a war in heaven. Michael wins the war, and the forces of evil are thrown down to earth
17Then the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.
The dragon went off to make war on the rest of the woman’s children.
That brings us back to Jon Daniels.
How it works
I’ll tell you how I think this works. God is as close as our very breath. Every impulse we have toward kindness and gentleness, justice and mercy, freedom and responsibility -- every one of them is a nudge of the Holy Spirit. All our spiritual disciplines – going to Mass, saying the daily office, acts of contemplation and reflection – are a participation in the very life of God and they can attune us to the movement of the Spirit within us. And so it was for Jonathan.
The nudging had been gentle, Jon was pondering as Mary had done before she said “yes.”
Then for Jon there came a moment when it was resolved. Let me describe that moment.
What brought Blessed Jonathan Daniels to that door on that morning?
Jon was a student at the Episcopal seminary in Cambridge. He came to that having graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and spend a few years working before seeking ordination. He had become an Anglo Catholic and worshipped at the Church of the Advent in Boston. He was a bit older than other seminarians and had a more disciplined spiritual life. He had a strong sense of devotion to Blessed Mary.
Martin Luther King had called for people to join him to march from Selma to Montgomery. The first march had been met with police clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. John Lewis suffered a skull fracture. Fifty-eight people were treated for injuries at the local hospital. It came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Jon Daniels was uncertain about how to respond to King’s call. In the end, Jon went to Selma. And he stayed to help register voters. And he died of a shotgun blast at the door of a country store.
In the days when he was trying to decide whether to go South he continued in the normal activities of a seminarian—reading and writing, classes and chapel. The seminary prayed the Daily Office, so there was Evening Prayer every night. The Magnificat, Mary’s song, that we heard in today’s reading from the gospels is routinely said or sung at Evening Prayer. It would have been in the language of the earlier Prayer Book.
My soul doth magnify the Lord, *
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
That night at Evening Prayer, the decision was still working itself within Jon. The Spirit was breathing and nudging. He found himself especially alert as Mary’s canticle was being sung. Later he wrote about that moment.
“I had come to Evening Prayer as usual that evening, and as usual I was singing the Magnificat with the special love and reverence I have always felt for Mary’s glad song. ‘He hath showed strength with his arm….’ As the lovely hymn of the God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled ‘moment’ …. Then it came. ‘He….hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things…’ I knew then that I must go to Selma.
‘He….hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things…’ I knew then that I must go to Selma.
The Mary that strides across the green in Salesbury, the Blessed Woman who fights the dragon’s attempt to destroy all that is good and holy – she brought Jonathan to Selma, to the cause of freedom, and to the door of a country story in Alabama. She was the instrument of the Holy Spirit’s nudging that allowed Jon to lose his life so he might have life.
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
The icon is from The Anglo Catholics