Calendar of Saints (Episcopal Church in The United States of America)

Calendar Of Saints (Episcopal Church In The United States Of America)

The veneration of saints in the Episcopal Church is a continuation of an ancient tradition from the early Church which honors important people of the Christian faith. The usage of the term "saint" is similar to Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Those in the Anglo-Catholic tradition may explicitly invoke saints as intercessors in prayer. The saints are also recognized as examples in history of good Christian men and women. The Episcopal Church does not canonize individuals, holding instead that all baptized Christians are saints of God and have the potential to be examples of faith to others. Episcopalians pray for each other and for all Christians as members of the Communion of Saints, including both the living and the dead, since all are considered to be in the hands of God. With this understanding, a wide variety of Christians from various denominations and traditions are thought of as "saints" in the Episcopal Church, such as Martin Luther and Augustine of Canterbury. Others recognized as "saints", while not of major ecclesiastical significance, are rather examples of holding moral positions that may have compromised their acceptance by society at the time they lived. Such "saints" include William Wilberforce and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for example.

The Episcopal Church publishes Lesser Feasts and Fasts, which contains feast days for the various men and women the Church wishes to honor. This book is updated every three years and notable persons are added to the liturgical calendar.

This is the calendar of saints and blessed found in the Book of Common Prayer and Lesser Feasts and Fasts; the relevant official resources of the Episcopal Church. This list reflects changes made at the 2009 General Convention. It lists provisional changes made in the new official list of feasts, Holy Women, Holy Men.

There is no single calendar for the various churches making up the Anglican Communion; each makes its own calendar suitable for its local situation. As a result, the calendar here contains a number of figures important in the history of the American church. Calendars in different provinces of course will focus on figures more important to those different countries. At the same time, different provinces often borrow important figures from each other's calendars as the international importance of different figures becomes clear. In this way the calendar of the Episcopal Church has importance beyond the immediate purpose of supporting the liturgy of the Episcopal Church. It is, for example, one of the key sources of the calendar for the international daily office Oremus.

Because of its relation to the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, the Episcopal Church in the Philippines follows this calendar to a large extent.