Welcome to the opening matchup of Lent Madness XV! If you’re a veteran Lent Madness participant, welcome back! If you're joining us for the first time, we’re delighted you’re along for this wild, saintly ride! And if you're just penitential-curious, check out the About Lent Madness tab on the website to find out what all the fuss is about.

To experience the fullness of Lent Madness, the Supreme Executive Committee (the somewhat benevolent dictatorship that runs this whole enterprise) encourages you
to do a couple things. First, like Lent Madness on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter. Second, subscribe to the Lent Madness e-mails so you never miss a vote — you’ll get each matchup hand-delivered to your inbox on the weekdays of Lent. You can do this by going to the home page of our website and entering your e-mail address. We highly recommend doing this. Finally, you can fill out a bracket online and daily see how you stack up against those who take their Lenten bracketology seriously (keep scrolling and you'll encounter the 2024 Matchup Calendar to determine when your favorite saint will be doing battle). Oh, and if you've ordered a bracket poster, and your handwriting's lousy, you can download these nifty Lent Madness Bracket Stickers and impress your friends with your beautiful penmanship.

But mostly, we encourage you to read about the 32 saints participating in this year’s edition of Lent Madness (download the FREE Digital Saintly Scorecard), faithfully cast your (single!) vote on the weekdays of Lent, and add your comments to the great cloud of participating witnesses that gathers as the online Lent Madness community each year.

To celebrate the 15th year of Lent Madness, all 16 first round matchups are themed battles. Some will be obvious, some less so. For instance, today it's the Thomas Throwdown as Thomas Cranmer faces Thomas the Apostle.

But enough of this idle chatter. It's time to cast your very first vote of Lent Madness 2024! We’re glad you’re all here. Now get to it!

Thomas Cranmer

If you have taken to heart the prayer to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the holy scriptures that are written for our learning, or felt in awe in considering how in Holy Communion “we continually dwell in [Christ] and he in us,” you can thank Thomas Cranmer for these memorable turns of phrase.

Born in 1489, Cranmer undertook studies at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was ordained. There he first came into extended contact with the text of holy scripture and the thought of the Continental Reformation. By 1529, when it was becoming clear that Pope Clement VII would not grant an annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Cranmer, convinced of the superiority of the King over the pope in purely English matters, worked eagerly to sway learned opinion on Henry’s behalf. When Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham died in 1532, Henry swiftly arranged for Cranmer’s elevation to the see of Canterbury.

Upon becoming archbishop, Cranmer became the king’s chief instrument in asserting Royal Supremacy over the church in England. He annulled Henry and Catherine’s marriage in 1533 (later pronouncing similar judgments on marriages to Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves) and he agreed with Parliament’s Act of Supremacy in 1534 which split the Church in England from the Roman Church.

Yet Cranmer was also his own man, devoted to the reformation of the English church. Together with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the first widespread dissemination of the Bible in English. After Henry’s death, during the reign of Edward VI, Cranmer achieved his greatest legacy and highest ambition –-to revise Church services into a “tongue understanded by the people.” He published the Great Litany in English in 1544, and his embrace of the ideas of the Continental Reformation ultimately led to the production of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549 and its subsequent 1552 revision. It was his intense devotion to the English Reformation that would ultimately be his undoing.

Upon the accession of Mary I, a staunch Roman Catholic, to the crown following a nine-day power struggle, Cranmer was accused of treason and heresy, and was arrested and held inhumanely. The stress of his captivity led to deep depression and two recantations of the doctrines he once prized. At his martyrdom, however, he renounced his recantations, and when burned at the stake in Oxford in 1556, he put his hand into fire, proclaiming “this hand hath offended.”

It is to that hand that Anglican churches worldwide owe the masterful prose and poetry and essentially scriptural spirituality that infuse the Book of Common Prayer, guiding us in prayer to this day.

Collect for Thomas Cranmer
Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like your servants Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer we may live in your fear, die in your favor, and rest in your peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ, your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (LFF 2022)

— David Sibley

Thomas the Apostle

Thomas is simply named as a member of the 12 in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Gospel of John, however, takes special interest in Thomas. And the disciple does not always look so great.

In John 11:16, when Jesus wants to return to Judea to mourn his friend Lazarus, Thomas sarcastically remarks, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” In John 14:5, during Jesus’s last meal with his friends, Thomas expresses confusion about Jesus’s plain teaching.

Perhaps most notoriously, Thomas refuses to believe the reports of the disciples when they announce that Jesus was raised from the dead. In John 20:25, Thomas famously says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (Though, to be fair, he only wanted what the other disciples already got to experience.)

Whatever beef the author of the Gospel of John may have had with Thomas, his assaults on Thomas’s character were effective. It probably does not help that Thomas’s name was attached to a collection of Jesus’s sayings that some would deem heretical. The image of “doubting” Thomas, the heretic, persists.

Such a view however, overlooks some of Thomas’s amazing triumphs. Shortly after expressing his desire to see the resurrected Christ for himself, Thomas makes one of the strongest Christological affirmations in the entire New Testament when, upon touching the resurrected Christ’s wounds, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28)

Thomas also became one of early Christianity’s greatest champions. He took the gospel all the way to India. His bold proclamation was accompanied by many miracles. Several early Christian texts bear his name and recount his exploits. The Acts of Thomas tell of his many adventures spreading the gospel (if you vote him into the next round, I promise to share some of the juicier tales). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (which is really mostly about Jesus’ childhood) is essential reading, and really, the Gospel of Thomas is worth careful study too. That his name is attached to so many early Christian texts betrays his importance to the nascent movement.

Thomas was killed in India, either by a spear or at the hands of some angry priests (maybe angry priests with spears!). His feast day is celebrated on December 21 in the Episcopal Church. His story is often told on the second Sunday of Easter.

Collect for Thomas the Apostle
Everliving God, who strengthened your apostle Thomas with firm and certain faith in your Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that our faith may never be found wanting in your sight; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP)

— David Creech