Together on the Journey:
A Weekly Blog 

This week, on November 12, we marked the commemoration of Charles Simeon, a priest who lived about 200 years ago. Never heard of him? I hadn’t either.

Here is a description of him from the Anglican book For All the Saints:

“Charles Simeon was an Anglican priest who died in 1836 after fifty-four years of ministry at Cambridge University, where he was a spiritual guide for innumerable students and a shining light in the Evangelical Revival of his day. Simeon went to Cambridge as a serious young man who imposed such burdens on his own conscience that he experienced the eucharist as an occasion of guilt, not gladness. Then, as he prepared to make his Easter communion in 1780, he came to know worthiness in Christ alone, and when he received the Sacrament on Easter morning he experienced the sweetness and beauty of the risen Christ in his own life. From that moment he devoted himself to helping others know the same joy. After his graduation Simeon remained at Cambridge, took Holy Orders, and was appointed Vicar of Holy Trinity, the University church. His enthusiasm for Christ was considered vulgar by academics and townspeople alike, and rowdy students often disrupted worship in his church. But his faithfulness as a pastor, especially towards those who suffered during a local famine, finally outmatched the hostility and by 1800 his spiritual authority was unrivalled. Simeon won his greatest fame in the pulpit, where he preached sermons which were passionate in their delivery and powerful in communicating the vibrant joy of salvation in Christ. But he exercised his most enduring influence at “conversation parties,” where he entertained undergraduates and provided them with tea and serious discussion as an alternative to the drunkenness, idleness, and bullying which beset their peers. These parties formed several generations of students and gave them a fervent commitment to Christ, so that Simeon had a truly evangelical impact which reached far beyond Cambridge and was felt in all corners of England long after his death.”

What I find so interesting about Charles Simeon is that he seemed to be extraordinarily good at his job. He was an excellent pastor, priest, teacher, and preacher. He mentored students and obviously had a very big impact on the lives of young people.

For All the Saints is full of descriptions of people who have done extraordinary things, and many of those things appear more extraordinary than what Charles did, but I love that we commemorate him for his ability to mentor and nurture the faith in others.

And it got me thinking about who my mentors were who had a big impact on my life when I was a teen and young adult. Who did I go to to talk about my faith, my questions, and my confusion? And so this week, I invite you to reflect on who that person (or people) may have been for you, and how they are still guiding your faith all these years later. We can’t commemorate all of these mentors in For All the Saints, but commemorating Charles kind of holds the place for all of these mentors. And so let us remember them and thank them, for they are the ones who set us on the path to becoming who we are today. Amen.

-Jess