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SAINT JOHN'S SUNDAY
We celebrate St. John's Sunday today as we have done since the Reverend Arthur Brown invited St. John's Masonic Lodge to attend services on June 24, 1755. The Masonic order had adopted both St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist as their patron saints as far back as 1599 as recorded in the minutes of St. John's Lodge Edinbourgh Scotland; St John the Baptist Sunday being the closest to June 24, and St. John's the Evangelist being the 24th of December, both the time of the Equinox.
The Reverend Brown became the second Rector of what was then Queens Chapel in 1736. Reverend Brown joined St John's Masonic Lodge and was made a Master Mason in 1774 and become the Lodge's first Chaplin. In June of 1775, he invited the members of the Lodge to attend services in observance of St John the Baptist Sunday, the first such celebration of its kind in New England and has been celebrated, with the invitation of the Rector, ever since.
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