Today in Lent Madness action, the Round of 32 continues as Sundar Singh takes on Theodore of Tarsus, as we toggle between the early 20th and 7th centuries.

Yesterday, Rose of Lima advanced over Quiteria (hey, there just aren't that many saints that begin with the letter Q!) 58% to 42%.

Also yesterday, the Supreme Executive Committee released the beast of the new on-air Lent Madness talent, as Fr. Christian Anderson of Stuart, FL, and Fr. Michael Sahdev of Beverly Hills, CA, pumped up the penitential hype with their first episode of Monday Madness. If you missed it, be sure to tune in and view Lent Madness history in the making. People in the church love change and innovation!

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Sundar Singh

Born in 1889 to a Sikh family in Punjab in British India, Sundar Singh would seem a most unlikely missionary. Singh’s mother took him to learn from a Hindu sadhu, an ascetic holy man, from a young age, being taught the Bhagavad Gita, while also sending him to a Christian school to learn English. Yet when Singh’s mother died when he was fourteen, he sought to reject religious practice altogether, burning a Bible page by page in anger. In his grief, and finding no answers to his questions, he decided to end his own life, asking the “True God” to appear to stop him. That same night, he had a vision of Jesus Christ.

Convinced, he announced to his father that he would undertake Jesus’s missionary work; his father would reject him, and his own brother attempt to poison him. But by his sixteenth birthday, he was baptized. Wearing the saffron turban and robe of a  sadhu, Singh went out carrying the gospel of Jesus with him, believing that Indians must be converted to Christianity in an Indian way. He became known as “the apostle with the bleeding feet” because of his travels throughout Punjab, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan (partially in modern-day Pakistan).

In 1909 he began training for ministry at an Anglican college in Lahore. His tenure there was brief, as his convictions made him unwilling to conform to Western Anglican notions of ministry. He left after only eight months—knowing that wearing European clerical dress or singing English hymns would not speak to the culture around him. He concluded that Western civilization was running fully in opposition to Christian values, as it was indelibly marked by materialism and colonialism.

Almost certainly because of his earnest desire to proclaim Jesus Christ in the language and texture of India, during Singh’s twenties, his mission spread greatly; by his thirties he was a recognized Christian figure in British India—with one aphorism saying that “he talks like Jesus must have talked.” His work was informed by his habitual practices of morning meditation on the gospels. Perhaps because of his earnest critiques of the sins and faults of Western society—and perhaps because of Western society’s reckoning found among the ashes of World War I—Singh travelled to the West in 1920 and 1922 to acclaim. But the experience only reinforced the emptiness, irreligion, and materialism that had isolated him those years before. Returning to India, he devoted himself to writing.

In 1929, Singh took a final trip to Tibet, during which he disappeared. Yet his legacy of an Indian Church for the Indian people lived on, making him a titanic figure in this history of Christianity in the subcontinent.

Collect for Sundar Singh

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Sundar Singh whom you called to preach the Gospel to the people of India. Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

— David Sibley

Theodore of Tarsus

His name might not be immediately recognized, but there is no denying the impact of Theodore of Tarsus on the church.

Born in 602 in Tarsus in Asia Minor (also the birthplace of St. Paul), Theodore received a well-rounded education, studying in Athens as well as in his hometown. The war with the Persian Empire forced Theodore and his family to flee to Constantinople, where he continued his studies.

He eventually found his way to Rome, where he continued his education by joining a monastery. While in the Roman monastery, he was tapped by Pope Vitalian on March 26, 668, to be the seventh Archbishop of Canterbury. Theodore was sixty-six years old—considered elderly at that time—but his advanced years did not deter his determination and his dedication.

When he arrived in Canterbury, he found a church in disarray, facing countless internal squabbles. Nonetheless, Theodore was able to deal with the many issues he faced because he was intelligent, wise, innovative, and a fair administrator.

Theodore was often called upon to settle disputes among dioceses and kingdoms alike. In his rulings he showed mercy, understanding, and forgiveness. Thanks to Theodore, a resolution was molded between the Celtic and Roman customs, an issue that had been causing great division throughout Britain. He established a school in Canterbury that rapidly grew in reputation and knowledge.

Many consider his greatest—and most enduring—accomplishment to be the establishment of a common feast day for Easter, which was no easy feat in the early church.

Of note, Theodore mentored the great Cuthbert, ordaining him Bishop of Hexham in 684. The Venerable Bede wrote about the influence Theodore had on the lives of other great clerics, guiding them in the way of the faith and the church.

Theodore served as Archbishop of Canterbury for twenty-two years, dying at age eighty-eight on September 19, 690. He is buried, along with Augustine and other early archbishops of Canterbury, in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul at Canterbury, known today as St. Augustine’s Abbey.

September 19 is the feast day of Theodore of Tarsus.

Collect for Theodore of Tarsus

Almighty God, who gave your servant Theodore of Tarsus gifts of grace and wisdom to establish unity where there had been division and order where there had been chaos: Create in your church, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, such godly union and concord that it may proclaim, both by word and example, the Gospel of the Prince of Peace; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

— Neva Rae Fox