James Tissot (1836-1902), The Holy Women (Les femmes saintes), 1886-1896 (Brooklyn Museum)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (15 September 2024). Today, the calendar of the Church of England in
Common Worship remembers John Coleridge Patteson (1871), First Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions, Martyrs.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
The Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first Anglican woman priest, was ordained priest 80 years ago on 25 January 1944
Luke 8: 1-3 (NRSVA)
1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
A notice board in Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, London, remembers the Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was ordained 80 years ago in 1944 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Today’s Reflection:
In the three short verses in today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist, Saint Luke describes the team of men and women who travel with Jesus, accompanying him in his ministry. They are men and women: the Twelve (verse 1), and a group of women, including three named women, and ‘many others, who provided for them out of their resources’ (verses 2-3).
The women and men are referred to in a way that implies that their ministry is equal. The three named women are Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Cuza, and Susanna, but there are ‘many others.’
These women are women of independent means and are supporting Jesus ‘out of their resources’ or ‘out of their own means’ (Luke 8: 3b). The original text in Greek says αἵτινες διηκόνουν αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐταῖς, they served, provided or ministered using their own resources.
The Greek verb here is διακονέω (
diakoneō), which throughout the New Testament means to minister to, to fill the office of διάκονος (
diakonos, deacon), to perform the duties of deacon, to serve. In this verse, it is found in the imperfect tense, meaning continual and habitual activity in the past. They supply Jesus’ financial needs again and again.
These women are his first supporters of Jesus’ mission, and they generously met the needs of Jesus and his band out of their own personal wealth. The Greek word is the substantive of ὑπάρχω (
hyparchō), ‘what belongs to someone, someone’s property, possession, means’.
If being a true disciple means putting everything that one has at the disposal of Jesus and his ministry, then these three women are, indeed, role models for ministry.
Throughout this year (2024), there have been celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the ordination as priest of the Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi (1907-1992) in Hong Kong on 25 January 1944. She was the first woman to be ordained a priest in a church in the Anglican Communion.
Florence Li Tim-Oi was born in a fishing village in Hong Kong on 5 May 1907. Her father, a doctor turned headmaster, called her ‘Much Beloved’ because he valued her as a daughter even if other parents preferred sons. When she was baptised as a student, Tim-Oi chose the name Florence after Florence Nightingale, the 19th century ‘Lady with the Lamp’ who felt she had a vocation that was ignored by the Church.
At the ordination of a deaconess in Hong Kong Cathedral in 1931, Florence heard and responded to the call to ministry. She took a four-year course at the theological college in Guangzhou (Canton), was ordained deacon in 1941, and was given charge of the Anglican congregation in the Portuguese colony of Macao, which was thronged with refugees from war-torn China.
When a priest could no longer travel from Japanese-occupied territory to preside at the Eucharist, for three years Florence Tim-Oi was licensed to preside as a deacon. Bishop Ronald Owen Hall of Hong Kong then asked her to meet him in Free China, where on 25 January 1944 he ordained her ‘a priest in the Church of God.’ He knew that this was as momentous a step as when the Apostle Peter baptised the Gentile Cornelius. As Saint Peter recognised that God had already given Cornelius the baptismal gift of the Spirit, so Bishop Hall thought he was merely confirming that God had already given Florence the gift of priestly ministry – although he resisted the temptation to rename her Cornelia.
Although Bishop Hall’s action was well received in his diocese, it caused a storm of protest throughout the wider Anglican Communion, and pressure was brought on the bishop to have her relinquish the title and role of a priest.
When she became aware of the concern of the wider church and of the pressure on her bishop, Florence did not get angry and leave the Church. Instead, she decided in 1946 to surrender her priest’s licence, but not her Holy Orders. For the next 39 years, she served faithfully under very difficult circumstances, when the knowledge that she had been ordained priest later helped to carry her through the worst excesses of the Maoist era in China.
She moved to the far south of China, near the Vietnamese border, where she ran a maternity home to protect female babies. The Communist Government closed down all churches in China from 1958-74 and Tim-Oi was designated as a counter-revolutionary, persecuted by the Red Guards. Forced to work on a chicken farm, and then in a factory, she was unable to openly practice her Christian faith or meet people she knew were Christians, lest she got them into trouble.
While she was officially recognised as a priest in the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau in 1971, she was not allowed to retire from her factory work until 1974. At the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1979, she resumed her ministry in the Church in China.
Arrangements were made for her to move to Canada in 1983, and she was appointed an honorary assistant at Saint John’s Chinese congregation and Saint Matthew’s parish in Toronto. By then, the Anglican Church in Canada had approved the ordination of women to the priesthood and in 1984, on the 40th anniversary of her ordination, with great joy and thanksgiving, she was reinstated as a priest.
The anniversary was also celebrated at Westminster Abbey and at
Sheffield Cathedral, although the Church of England had not yet approved the ordination of women.
She was invited to Lambeth Palace that year to meet Archbishop Robert Runcie. Until then, he had not been convinced about women’s ordination, but their meeting changed his thinking: ‘Who am I to say whom God can or cannot call?’
She returned briefly to China in 1987, when Bob Brown made a film about her,
Return to Hepu: Li Tim-Oi Goes Home.
Until she died in 1992, she exercised her priesthood with such faithfulness and quiet dignity that won tremendous respect for herself and gathered increasing support for other women seeking ordination. The very quality of her ministry in China and in Canada and the grace with which she exercised her priesthood helped convince many throughout the Anglican Communion and beyond that the Holy Spirit was working in and through women priests. Her contribution to the Church far exceeded the expectations of those involved in her ordination in 1944.
She was awarded Doctorates of Divinity by the General Theological Seminary, New York, and Trinity College, Toronto. She died in her sleep on 26 February 1992, reportedly after phoning several elderly people who were confined to home, praying with them and offering them pastoral counsel. She is buried in Toronto.
The Anglican Church of Canada agreed in 2004 to include Florence Li Tim-Oi in the Calendar of Holy Persons in the
Book of Alternative Services – on the anniversary of her death, 26 February. She was made a permanent part of the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints in 2018.
The Li Tim-Oi Foundation which helps women in the Two-Thirds World train for ministry and vocational work in their communities.
Her story is told by Ted Harrison in
Much Beloved Daughter (1985) and in her own memoir,
Raindrops of My Life (1996).
The Revd Li Tim-Oi, her mother, Bishop Mok, her father, and Archdeacon Lee Kow Yan after her ordination as deacon in Saint John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong, on Ascension Day 22 May 1941
Today’s Prayers (Friday 20 September 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The 5-finger prayer from the Diocese of Kuching, Malaysia.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections as told to Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 20 September 2024) invites us to pray:
Little Finger (yourself): Thank you Father that you know what I need before I ask you. Please help me to grow in mind, body, and spirit.
The Collect:
God of all tribes and peoples and tongues,
who called your servant John Coleridge Patteson
to witness in life and death to the gospel of Christ
amongst the peoples of Melanesia:
grant us to hear your call to service
and to respond trustfully and joyfully
to Jesus Christ our redeemer,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr John Coleridge Patteson:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of Saint Matthew:
O Almighty God,
whose blessed Son called Matthew the tax collector
to be an apostle and evangelist:
give us grace to forsake the selfish pursuit of gain
and the possessive love of riches
that we may follow in the way of your Son Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
The story about Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion, and how she drew her strength from her faith in God
Scripture quotations are from the
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
http://nrsvbibles.org
The Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi with Archbishop Robert Runcie during a visit to Lambeth Palace 40 years ago in 1984
