Commontide
Liturgical Color: Red
The Last Sunday of Epiphany (Transfiguration)
O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Epiphany
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who took on our mortal flesh to reveal his glory; that he might bring us out of darkness and into his own glorious light.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
The Last of Epiphany (Transfiguration)
Archbishop of Uganda and Martyr
Anglican Commemoration
Janani Luwum was Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire, killed in February 1977 after he and his fellow bishops delivered a written protest to President Idi Amin over killings and disappearances. The government announced that he had died in a car accident; his body, when it was seen, was full of bullet wounds. He is commemorated across the Anglican Communion as a martyr.
Janani Luwum was born in 1922 in Ngora, Uganda. Educated at Makerere University and ordained to the Anglican priesthood, he became Bishop of North Uganda (1969-1974) and subsequently Archbishop of Uganda (1974-1977). During Idi Amin's brutal dictatorship, Luwum became a courageous voice for the persecuted. In 1977, he and other bishops drafted and signed a memorandum addressed to President Amin documenting the widespread murder of innocent civilians and the persecution of Christians. On February 16, 1977, shortly after delivering the memorandum to Amin personally, Luwum disappeared. The government claimed he died in a car accident, but evidence overwhelmingly indicates he was executed. His martyrdom made him an international symbol of Christian resistance to tyranny and became a defining moment in African Anglican history.
African martyr; defender of the persecuted against state tyranny; symbol of prophetic episcopal leadership in the face of systematic violence; witness to the suffering church in modern Africa.