I AM THEIR FLAG...

In 1861, when they perceived their rights to be threatened, when those who would alter the nature of the government of their fathers were placed in charge, when threatened with change they could not accept, the mighty men of valor began to gather. A band of brothers, native to the Southern soil, they pledged themselves to a cause: the cause of defending family, fireside, and faith. Between the desolation of war and their homes they interposed their bodies and they chose me for their symbol.

I Am Their Flag.

Their mothers, wives, and sweethearts took scissors and thimbles, needles and thread, and from silk or cotton or calico - whatever was the best they had - even from the fabric of their wedding dresses, they cut my pieces and stitched my seams.

I Am Their Flag.

On courthouse lawns, in picnic groves, at train stations across the South the men mustered and the women placed me in their hands. "Fight hard, win if possible, come back if you can; but, above all, maintain your honor. Here is your symbol," they said.

I Am Their Flag.

They flocked to the training grounds and the drill fields. They felt the wrenching sadness of leaving home. They endured sickness, loneliness, boredom, bad food, and poor quarters. They looked to me for inspiration.

I Am Their Flag.

I was at Sumter when they began in jubilation. I was at Big Bethel when the infantry fired its first volley. I smelled the gun smoke along Bull Run in Virginia and at Belmont along the Mississippi. I was in the debacle at Fort Donelson; I led Jackson up the Valley. For Seven Days I flapped in the turgid air of the James River bottoms as McClellan ran from before Richmond. Sidney Johnston died for me at Shiloh as would thousands of others whose graves are marked "Sine Nomine," - without a name - unknown.

I Am Their Flag.

With ammunition gone they defended me along the railroad bed at Manassas by throwing rocks. I saw the fields run red with blood at Sharpsburg. Brave men carried me across Doctor's Creek at Perryville. I saw the blue bodies cover Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg and the Gray ones fall like leaves in the Round Forest at Stones River.

I Am Their Flag.

I was a shroud for the body of Stonewall after Chancellorsville. Men ate rats and mule meat to keep me flying over Vicksburg. I tramped across the wheat field with Kemper and Armistead and Garnett at Gettysburg. I know the thrill of victory, the misery of defeat, the bloody cost of both.

I Am Their Flag.

When Longstreet broke the line at Chickamauga, I was in the lead. I was the last off Lookout Mountain. Men died to rescue me at Missionary Ridge. I was singed by the wildfire that burned to death the wounded in the Wilderness. I was shot to tatters in the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania. I was in it all from Dalton to Peachtree Creek, and no worse place did I ever see than Kennesaw and New Hope Church. They planted me over the trenches at Petersburg and there I stayed for many long months.

I Am Their Flag.

I was rolled in blood at Franklin; I was stiff with ice at Nashville. Many good men bade me farewell at Sayler's Creek. When the end came at Appomattox, when the last Johnny Reb left Durham Station, many of them carried fragments of my fabric hidden on their bodies.

I Am Their Flag.

In the hard years of so-called "Reconstruction," in the difficulty and despair of years that slowly passed, the veterans, their wives and sons and daughters, they loved me. They kept alive the tales of valor and the legends of bravery. They passed them on to the grandchildren and they to their children, and so they were passed to you.

I Am Their Flag.

I have shrouded the bodies of heroes, I have been laved with the blood of martyrs, I am enshrined in the hearts of millions, living and dead. Salute me with affection and reverence. Keep undying devotion in your hearts. I am history. I am heritage, not hate. I am the inspiration of valor from the past. I Am Their Flag. By Dr. Micheal Bradley

~Robert~

Reign of Steamboats on Sabine Full of Romance

The Second Battle of Sabine Pass took place on September 8, 1863, and was the result of a Union expedition into Confederate-controlled Texas during the American Civil War. It has often been credited as the most one-sided Confederate victory during the conflict. Here is a story about life along the Sabine River before the railroads.

A remarkable historical photograph of the Steamboat "Neches Belle." It was taken by noted photographer Velma Nash, who passed away in 2008 at the age of 93. Here is a 1932 article from The (Beaumont, Texas) Enterprise that describes life on board this steamboat. It is fascinating:

Reign of Steamboats on Sabine Full of Romance
Old-time Glory of Cotton Carriers of 40 Years Ago Told by “Cap’n” John White

Advent of Railroad System Causes Passing of Freighters; Sailings of Neches Belle are Recalled

By Dean Tevis

On a day when the wind is in the east Cap’n John can hear her whistle for the landing – though he’s a good 15 miles from the river. Generally four or five long Blasts—if there’s plenty of steam in the old boilers—low, resonant sounds—as though someone in a little patch of woods at some distance drew a well-resined bow slowly across the “G” string of an old violin.

“If yo’d ever got the note in your heart,” he said, “you’d never forget it!”

Captain John G. White, who skippered the Neches Belle on the Sabine, and who tells the story of the closing days of the steamboats on the rivers of southeastern Texas.

But in reality the captain never hears the whistle of the Neches Belle, one of the very last of the Ladies of the River, proud cotton carriers of a day past and gone, for it’s been 35 years since she and her sisters sailed.

Sometime when you’re on your way north and you’re crossing the historical bridge at Logansport, someone will show you the white bones – a little part of the rotting bottom-planking of the Neches Belle—lying in the shallow waters of the Sabine

T’is the story, if you care to listen to a tale of the rivers of east Texas concerning a man who wouldn’t admit that the railroads could beat the river steamboats as carriers of freight, but who found it out when he was one of the last men tossing a lead into some shallows In the Sabine to test the depth.

About the tale is the rhythm of the rivers of the far south, with semi-tropical vegetation along their banks, and great green pines on their often steep banks. There are odors about the tale—the odors of wild flowers and the smell—the rich peaceful smell of the wild woods. There is music in the story, the music of nature and the little removed song of the darkies. Through it runs strains of “Suzanna,” coming from the Louisiana bank of the Sabine, and a Texas melody from the western bank. Where the Neches Belle and other boats of the Cap’n’s ken ran was once the boundary between Mexico, and then Texas, and the United States of America.

Cap’n John G. White has lived at Kountze for a quarter of a century. When you meet him you fix his age at perhaps 55. Some might say 60. But the fact is that come July the Cap’n will be ‘73. He always has been and is now a “husky young fellow.” But ‘one’ day, not so long ago, he tried to crank a little car. He thought he knew the car. Long association does that even with men and machinery. The Cap’n tore a hawser, as he himself would put it. But you wouldn’t notice it, looking at him casual like.

Cap’n John was first mate, and then captain of the Neches Belle, and skipper and mate of other steamers. His river days were spent largely on the Sabine. That’s his river, though he has sailed the Neches.

His introduction to Texas and her rivers was at old Niblett’s Bluff on the Sabine when he was 7. He came west from Lexington, Ky., then. During the years that followed he worked at pushing husky pine and hardwood logs down the bank to send them on their weary way down the river. In those days the forests were virtually untouched. The chief things a log went for were shingles.

And then it was that Cap’n saw some of the earlier sternwheelers, built, for the most part, at some big port on the Mississippi, though later a shipyard on the lower Sabine turned out several.
SOME years passed and the boy went to Orange and sewed sacks and coopered barrels for Alladice and Lyles. He was 16. They owned the Neches Belle and she was under repair when he dropped down the stream to the place they then called Green’s Bluff. She lay at the old Bill Sword’s shipyard. The boy did a little caulking. He was under the tutorship of a man named Livingston, whom he lovingly refers to as Old Man Livingston. Those were the days, incidentally, when J. E. Broussard of Beaumont ran a meat market at Orange.

The Cap’n’s next step up was under General Slaughter. The general, it appears, was a hold-over in the south from the war. He had been a federal and was a war department engineer assigned to “clean out” the Sabine. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of logs, called “sinkers,” had slipped to the bottom of the river. The Sabine then was looked upon as not only highly navigable, but of as much importance as a traffic lane as the main line of a transcontinental railroad is today. When the steamer which the general commanded chugged north on her cleaning up cruise the Cap’n was one of the crew. A month later he was given charge of the men and several years slipped by.

ALONG in the mid-nineties the Cap’n had his mate’s papers, but in 1897 he got his license as master, which presented the information beneath a seal to all and sundry that John G. White, having proved himself capable, etc., was licensed by the government of the United States to navigate the rivers of east Texas. During this chapter of his story he ran some with Capt. Tom Davis on the Minnie and the Dura.

The Cap’n was an all-around steamboater for at times he held the post of engineer, and on other occasions he was a pilot. In other words Cap’n John knew the turns and the bends, the shallows, and the deep pools of the Sabine. And, therefore, there is perhaps not a man left who can better spin the tale of that river, during the years just before the railroads robbed it of Its meat and Its glory. He got in early enough, too, to learn the romance of the stream. He knows the spot where the Lafitte schooner lies and he knows where the Indian villages were along its banks.

The bulk of the Sabine boats, as Cap’n John put it, went out in about 1893, but some of them stayed on. He sailed out of Orange during the latter nineties with the Neches Belle for Logansport to build a new bridge for the H. B. and W. T., the railroad from Shreveport to Houston. “But she never came out,” said the Cap’n. “She was seized by the law for some debt. I can’t recall just now what it was. We tied her up and left her. That was in a time of fairly high water. Soon the stream fell and the Neches Belle turned over. I saw part of her wreck in the river bed four years ago, and I have no doubt she’s there still. I was the first mate of the Belle and Will Loving—you know Captain Loving—-he was the pilot. and a good one.”

That left Cap’n John out of a job. So it was pretty handy, the way things turned out, When Captain George Wolford of Orange brought the little sternwheeler Dura up the twists and bends and tied her to the bank at Logansport. Logansport, while a Louisiana town, really belongs in the east Texas picture, for it has played a continuous part in Texas’ story.

The Dura was a small steamboat. Her dimensions are quoted as 70 by .14. She carried about a hundred bales on her deck. The Dura, like the fated Neches Belle, was also seized for some debt. She owed, as best the Cap’n can remember, some $800. He stepped in with a proposition, and began operating the Dura to “work her out.”

Dura was owned in Sabine county—more an upriver boat than a member of the downstream company. Sabine Town, probably the greatest of all the lost river ports of both the Sabine and the Neches, was still something of a landing then, and the Cap’n loaded “many a bale there.” He’d bring provisions up the stream, and as he’d unload them he’d pick up cotton. On his return trip it would be the same procedure.

Well, as Cap’n John tells it, “I worked her clear out of debt, but the coming of the railroads put a stop to steamboating. It doesn’t take much explanation to see what happened.”

Cap’n John can close his eyes and see the Sabine in all Its old-time glory, when the pines were tan and thick as hair on a dog’s back. He’ll tell you about Youngblood landing, where they unloaded goods for old Burkeville. That was where Captain Sam Allidice lived. Then, winding north, there was Haddon ferry, one of the oldest on the stream and still in operation today; Snell’s landing, Godwin shoals, Sabine Town, most Important of them all; Pendleton, famous old East Hamilton, Snider’s landing, and then Logansport, the end of the voyage.

T'were few if any river tragedies in Cap’n John’s river experience. It is a peaceful tale he tells, o happy days and nights, of singing black darkies. Of course, they went aground sometimes, and there were bits of trouble here and there, but he never lost a steamboat nor was on one which sunk or burned. He tells, however, of the burning of the Bertha at the crossing of the Kansas City Southern north of Orange.

The Cap’n talks of the old Tennesaw, the Lark, and many other of the boats which plied near to the end of the steamboating days. Then, too, he can go back If you like and tell you stories of the older boats.

He’ll tell you how they made the voyages from river mouth to river mouth—from the Sabine around through the gulf to the Neches, and perhaps from the Neches to the Trinity. They nearly always made these voyages at night.

But when you talk river boats, sternwheelers and brooked streams to him he’ll invariably come back to the Neches Belle!. She was undoubtedly his favorite—the lass of the river he loved best. An Interesting fact is that she was built in Beaumont. Her engines and all her machinery came from the old steamer Vicksburg.

The Neches Belle was built to handle 500 bales of cotton. The Cap’n loaded 550 on her decks on one memorable trip. He did this with the help of one Charley—Old Chancy—they called him, who was wise in the way of beats and negroes, who bossed the crew of blacks, and who knew how to get the cotton in. His last name was Pollock. Ah, but those were gracious, happy, friendly days — those river days. “We’d always blow long and loud for the landings,” said the Cap’n. “The old ladies, and sometimes the young ones, would nearly always come down to the bank to greet us. They’d bring greens, butter, milk, eggs, and anything else they had handy. And they were always presents to us. . . - And you can bet your life we never forgot our friends, We always brought them candy or fruit—and anything else we thought they’d like. They enjoyed our coming because there weren’t many visitors along the river In those days. The roads were mud trails and few traveled them. They only saw their own kith and kin.

The officers and crew had to have their fun and they’d play pranks on one another. Cap’n John tells of the night they landed at Possum Bluff, now Deweyville. They ‘stuffed a fox hide with cotton, and then proceeded to take the engineer on a fox hunt. “He was so sick over it he went to bed.” When the steamboat was under way the crew took it pretty easy. Only the pilot and the engineer and the fireman has much to do. Of course the latter were hard at it all the time, and the captan stayed on the job as long as the gangplank was in. The mate had little to do and more often than not he had his feet on the rail and an old black pipe between his teeth. Out on the forward deck the negroes chanted old songs—”I’m Coming to You Darling,” “I’ll See You By and By,” or “The Old Log Cabin.” They are mostly big, black fellows, and the Cap’n will tell you that many of them could carry a 500-pound box of meat on his shoulder.

Once in a while there would be a fight, or some little incident to relieve the monotony, and once in a while the crew would see a deer, and in the older days, a bear, on the bank. As they’d run into the shallows the mate, or perhaps one of the wiser members of the black crew would begin gauging for depth. The Neches Belle needed two and a half feet of water when she was light or six feet loaded. They liked a full seven feet of water for her to run in when she had a full load of cotton or provisions. Moving slowly, cautiously, the man with the lead would cast it. He’d get the depth and call back is a sing-song to the pilot—”mark tow.” A little further, and he’d have three feet. He’d call that back, possibly relaying It to the captain on the deck. When they had a full depth of water the man with the lead’ would call—”mark twain.” That, incidentally, was how Samuel Clemmons got his name. The steamboat boys were popular at the landings and ofter the — folks in the villages held dances for them.

Steamboating on the Sabine and the Neches was pretty much after the fashion of the greater packets on the Mississippi. The country, however, and the streams themselves presented a strange contrast to anyone who had steamboated Old Man River. Here were narrow streams, as against a broad, broad old river. And there weren’t the dangers on the east Texas streams that one encountered on the Mississippi. And then there was a more homely atmosphere at the landings. And the banks themselves; they were tree lined, and often they were steep, and always lonesome.

To know and appreciate the old east Texas setting, through the sixties and the seventies, and on to about the middle of the last decade of the old century, it is necessary to know the old river towns and the ferries. In some few cases they hang on, but for the most part you can’t find where the general store stood, though it often was a brick building. Most of the old men have gone who knew them in their real glory …. You see the roads all led to these landings, these important towns. Forget, for the moment, that there was ever such a thing as a railroad, or even a highway. There wasn’t then, and the rivers were the roads. They grew the cotton in those days just as they do now, and they had to get it out. So by oxen and mule it went down the roads to the steamboat landings, and there it was picked up.

“I tried to beat the railroads,” Cap’n John said, “and I found out quickly that it couldn’t be done. I never dreamed the rails would beat the steamboats, and then for years I never dreamed that any other mode of transportation could beat the railroads—but it appears that’s what’s going on now.”

The Cap’n can enlarge in great degree upon this story, and he’ll do it for you if you like… He’s the most accommodating storyteller, I believe I’ve ever run across. And then he’s accurate. He doesn’t spin bear stories, but he gives you the low-down on the boats and the rivers.

If you care to find him inquire for “Cap’n John” at the first filling station, 10 steps off the new gravel road as you reach the southern limits of Kountze. He’ll be there waiting for you. He’ll have his old steamboat cap on his head, and you’ll find the place just as ship-shape as was the deck of the Neches Belle when he had charge of her.

And another thing—don’t expect to find an old man with a bye-gone complex or an “I sailed her before you were born” fixation. He hasn’t got it.

Mississippi Becomes Second State to Secede from the Union

When South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union on Dec. 20, 1860, politicians, newspapers, and the general public in both the North and South knew other states would soon follow. The divisions between the two halves of the country over the issue of states’ rights had grown too wide for effective compromise, and secessionist talk was heard throughout the South. It did not take long for other states to follow South Carolina’s example.

On Jan. 9, 1861, Mississippi seceded from the Union, Florida seceded the next day, and Alabama the day after that. Within a month seven seceding states formed the Confederate States of America, to be joined by four additional Southern states after the attack on Fort Sumter began the Civil War.

The following newspaper article is about Mississippi’s secession from the Union. The article, from a Southern newspaper, is a news report of the official act of secession and the wild celebrations in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi.

The Southern Cause's photo.

The picture of VMI after the yankee criminal david hunter burned this proud old school. So as y'all can see the yankees that committed crimes against our people; sherman, sheridan, slocum & hunter saw no reason to fight the war with honor, for this reason I 'hate' the term "Civil War" because the yankees made it anything but 'civil' it was the "War of Northern Aggression" they were the aggressors and the invaders. ~Clay~ For four days in June 1864, yankees under the command of gen. david hunter occupied the small Shenandoah Valley town, burning the home of former Virginia governor John Letcher and destroying most of the buildings at the military school {VMI}. The superintendent of VMI, Francis H. Smith, wrote to Confederate adjutant general William Richardson about the devastation: "On Sunday the 12 June all the public buildings of the Institute were burnt by the order of major general d. hunter, except my quarters and the quarters of the Ordnance Sergeant. The peculiar condition of my daughter, with a child only 48 hours old, induced my wife [Sarah Henderson Smith] to throw herself upon the courtesy of the commanding General. The appeal was not in vain; and I acknowledge with pleasure, this relaxation of the devastation which was unsparingly applied to every species of property owned by the state at the V.Mil. Institute, which we were unable to remove…. [W]hen the clouds of heaven reflected the conflagration lighted by the torch of the invader, every eye was moistened that the home of the V.M.I. cadet was gone!".

The picture of VMI after the yankee criminal david hunter burned this proud old school. So as y'all can see the yankees that committed crimes against our people; sherman, sheridan, slocum & hunter saw no reason to fight the war with honor, for this reason I 'hate' the term "Civil War" because the yankees made it anything but 'civil' it was the "War of Northern Aggression" they were the aggressors and the invaders. ~Clay~

For four days in June 1864, yankees under the command of gen. david hunter occupied the small Shenandoah Valley town, burning the home of former Virginia governor John Letcher and destroying most of the buildings at the military school {VMI}. The superintendent of VMI, Francis H. Smith, wrote to Confederate adjutant general William Richardson about the devastation: "On Sunday the 12 June all the public buildings of the Institute were burnt by the order of major general d. hunter, except my quarters and the quarters of the Ordnance Sergeant. The peculiar condition of my daughter, with a child only 48 hours old, induced my wife [Sarah Henderson Smith] to throw herself upon the courtesy of the commanding General. The appeal was not in vain; and I acknowledge with pleasure, this relaxation of the devastation which was unsparingly applied to every species of property owned by the state at the V.Mil. Institute, which we were unable to remove…. [W]hen the clouds of heaven reflected the conflagration lighted by the torch of the invader, every eye was moistened that the home of the V.M.I. cadet was gone!"

Saint Andrew the first-called Apostle, Patron Saint of Scotland († 62)

 

The Cross of Saint Andrew - the blue and white emblem of Scotland's patron saint - is believed to be the oldest continuously used flag in the world. Simple in its design, it has withstood centuries of political and religious turmoil, and remained the standard for Christian Scots, as well as those who have forgotten the reason their banner bears the Cross. (For the record, Saint Andrew was martyred on an X-shaped cross). Like the people for whom it flies, Saint Andrew's Cross has proven its resilience and strength.

The endurance of Saint Andrew's Cross is seen in the presence it still has in Scotland's largest emigree nation - Canada. In a country whose first Prime Minister was a MacDonald, whose first woman Prime Minister was a Campbell, and which boasted no fewer than nine Prime Ministers of Scottish ancestry (only five Prime Ministers were French), it is not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that Scotland still has at least a pint or two of its own running through the bloodstream of Canadian culture. Official ceremonies, academic awards, university names and traditions, along with the pipers who lead their processions - all these have been inherited from the practices of the Celts of Scotland, through their Canadian children.

The Cross of Saint Andrew can be found on 5 Canadian provincial flags, either within the Union Jack, or in the mirrored image of the flag of Canada's New Scotland, Nova Scotia. Yet those who trace their roots from that chilly isle to this great land do not often read back far enough to discover the essence of Scotland's Celtic roots, roots that reflected the faith of Saint Andrew for nearly one thousand years in a Celtic Church that was vibrant, independent, and fully Orthodox.

For those who entertain new-agey illusions about the Celtic Church, there is bad news: Celtic Christian worship was in most ways very similar to the life of Orthodox parishes today. What is very clear, Celtic Christians had far less in common with the free-wheeling nature worship one might find in certain Protestant or Roman Catholic circles than it did with the spiritual life of Greek monasteries in Byzantium. This shouldn't surprise us: the Greeks and the Celts had the same faith and liturgical life, while the Christian Celts and the modern western confessions, distorted by the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation, do not.

In his classic book, Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, F.E. Warren thoroughly outlines this common spiritual inheritance. Concrete examples are numerous. Celtic Christians fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays, the universal observance of the Church in the first millennium. They rejected the claims to universal authority that Popes of Rome often claimed over Church decisions in custom, belief, and practice, and resisted innovative changes to early Church practices, including the Church calendar. The Celts observed a highly ascetical life, strongly shaped by the widespread presence of monasteries, where monks and non-monastics alike would say the services of the Hours on a daily basis.

The presence of married priests among the Celts did not arise out of a special dispensation from Rome, but rather, from the Celtic Church's independence from Rome. Around 400 A.D., the Celtic Church was large enough to attract the attention of Saint Jerome, who noted that the Celts were in communion with Rome, Gaul, and Africa - part of the universal witness to the One Faith. At the Sixth Ecumenical Council, Saint Wilfred affirmed the Orthodoxy of the Celts, despite the concerns of their critics that some local Celtic customs were at variance with Rome. Saint Columbanus, the great champion of the independence of the Celtic Church, repeatedly upbraids the Roman Church for its claims to universal authority - the timeless Orthodox defense against the extension of papal powers. "Let no bishop leave their diocese," he thunders, "lest he interfere with the affairs of the Church."

Saint Wilfred Saint Columbanus

Synaxis of All Saints who shone forth in Scotland

Saint Donald Saint Columba Saint Cummian Saint Donan

Saint Ninian

The artistic life of the Celtic Church shows a warm interplay between the images of the universal Orthodox witness, and local Celtic traditions. Architectural decoration, ribbons in stone carvings, and giant initial letters in manuscripts reflect a North African influence, a fact not lost on most modern authorities on the Celts. The use of icons, and iconostases, were seen in various Celtic churches, including the burial place of Saint Brigid, the great Celtic saint. Celtic depictions of Christ as a child, wrapped in mummy-like swaddling bands, reflect Egyptian and Byzantine iconography. Like Orthodox bishops today, Celtic bishops used staves bearing the heads of snakes, like Moses in the desert. We can only imagine how much more we would know if the persecutions of Diocletian (305-313AD) had not destroyed many churches in the Celtic diaspora on the European continent (the earliest Celtic Church dated from around 200 A.D).

Liturgically, the Celtic Liturgy will seem familiar to Orthodox Christians, which is not a surprise in light of the fact that it represents one of the oldest Orthodox liturgies. The celebrant faced the altar, behind an icon screen, offering up the sacrifice of the Holy Mysteries of Communion with both elements together in the chalice. Communion was almost certainly delivered on a spoon; many such spoons have been found. A little water was added to the chalice before Communion, just as it is in the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. There was even use of a small Eucharistic knife or spear, used for dividing Communion before it was placed in the chalice.
The souls of the departed were uniformly commemorated at the Liturgy, with long lists of saints, both local and universal, named at the services (there is some suggestion that the Celts did not ask for specific prayers from the saints; their general intercessions were assumed). The episcopal blessing, at Liturgy and perhaps other times, was bestowed in the manner of the Greek Church, with the fingers of the celebrant in the form of the Christogram (IC XC):

A variety of other liturgical parallels exist. Women were always veiled in the Celtic Church for the reception of Holy Communion. It is known that the Celts served at baptism an unction with blessed oil (as well as chrismation), and performed a ritual washing afterwards, much like the Slavic churches do to this day (the Greek custom of covering a newly baptized child with olive oil is an expansion on this practice, which works very well in Mediterranean climates, but which finds its limits in chilly northern climes). There is some suggestion that the Celts celebrated the Liturgy without wearing shoes, in the manner of the Copts of Egypt (just like the North American saint of our time, Saint John Maximovich). Noting the Celtic monastic connection with the Copts, this would come as no surprise.

It should not surprise us to find these similarities, since in comparing the Celtic Church to the Church in Byzantium, or to Orthodox Christianity today, we are in fact comparing the Church to itself. The Orthodox Christianity of the Apostles, of the Ecumenical Councils, of the Byzantines, the Slavs, the Arabs, and the Celts - it is one faith, not many. The Celtic Church was astonishingly similar to Orthodox life today - because it was Orthodox.

The inheritance of Saint Andrew, whose proud banner waves in front of many a Presbyterian church in Canada, is not to be found inside these churches. Nor is the bold heart of the Celtic Christians of Scotland to be found at Burns dinners or chip shops or the Lodge of the Scottish Rite. The banner of the Celts is an Orthodox Christian one; it always has been. And it is a banner that flies proudly in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Canadians, who still await the rediscovery of their own Orthodox Celtic roots, which cannot be found in the western confessions. These confessions of the last thousand years would have been virtually unrecognizable to the Celts of a millennium ago - the same Celtic Christians who would feel right at home in any Orthodox church in North America today.

Canada's first Scottish leader, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald, lies buried in the cemetery of a parish church in Kingston, Ontario, the same building that is home to the Orthodox Community of Saint Gregory of Nyssa. Perhaps it is in such a representation that we can rediscover the heritage of the founders of our own nation, its own enduring and brave Orthodox roots, put down in Celtic lands by the same Orthodox monastic saints who once made pilgrimage across the ocean to our own land. For it is only these roots that will keep Saint Andrew's banner long and gloriously waving - not just in our hearts, but in our lives.

____________________________________

Background note: The St. Andrew's cross is a distinctive shape because the Apostle Andrew, who would later become the patron saint of Scotland, asked that he not be crucified on a cross of the same shape as that on which Jesus Christ was executed. (See the Great Synaxarion of the Orthodox Church, November 30th)

The legend of the birth of the Scottish flag takes place circa AD 832 near Athelstaneford in East Lothian. Angus mac Fergus, King of the Picts, and Eochaidh of Dalriada faced off against the army of Athelstane, King of Northumbria, comprising Angles and Saxons. On the eve of the battle, it is said that the Scots saw the clouds in the evening sky arranged in a formation exactly like that of St. Andrew's cross. The Scots saw this as a harbinger of their victory. When they were victorious the following day, they adopted a white St. Andrew's cross on a field of azure blue as their national standard.

Father Geoffrey Korz, (Dormition, 2007)

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Troparion (Tone 4)

Andrew, first-called of the Apostles

and brother of the foremost disciple,

entreat the Master of all

to grant peace to the world

and to our souls great mercy.

Kontakion (Tone 2)

Let us praise Andrew, the herald of God,

the namesake of courage,

the first-called of the Savior's disciples

and the brother of Peter.

As he once called to his brother, he now cries out to us:

"Come, for we have found the One whom the world desires!"

Source: © All Saints of North America Orthodox Church
Orthodox Church in America, 2007.
http://www.orthodoxcanada.com/