High
and Holy Days for August
High
Days and Holy Days in August
Editor:
Kings and mystics, writers and martyrs
– August does well with its feast days that
remember outstanding Christians. *7
Cajetan is
new this year.
1
Ethelwold - Saint of Wessex
5
Oswald – a king with faith, courage and
humility
6
The Transfiguration of our Lord - when
Jesus met Elijah
and Moses
*7
Cajetan
11
Clare
14
Maximilian Kolbe - heroic Christian
amidst 20th century
suffering
16
Laurence Loricatus
23
Rose of Lima - patron saint of South
America
28
Augustine of Hippo
29
Beheading of St John the Baptist
30
John Bunyan
31
Aidan - the great Celtic saint of
Lindisfarne
**
1 Ethelwold - the
Saint of Wessex
St
Ethelwold (c.912 - 84)
did great things for the church at
Winchester, which in those days was the
principle town of Wessex.
St
Ethelwold began as a simple monk eager to
restore the Rule of Benedictine in England, a
major reform for the church of the time.
After serving at the abbey in
Glastonbury, he was sent on to restore the old
abbey at Abingdon.
The king thought highly of him, and used
him to teach his son, the future king, Edgar.
When
in 963 Ethelwold became Bishop of Winchester, he
replaced the cathedral canons with monks, thus
founding the first monastic cathedral in the
land. This
was a uniquely English institution, which
remained until the Reformation.
The
monastic reform quickly gained momentum: with
the King’s support, Ethelwold restored old
monasteries such as Milton (Dorset), New Minster
and Nunnaminster in Winchester, while new
monasteries were founded and richly endowed at
Peterborough (966), Ely (970) and Thorney (972).
Ethelwold
was austere, able and dynamic. Under his
leadership, the monks surpassed themselves in
music, illumination and writing.
When Ethelwold set the monks to work with
the masons in the cathedral at Winchester, he
built the most powerful organ of its time in
England: it was played by two monks, and had 400
pipes and 36 bellows.
In music, Ethelwold’s Winchester had
the distinction of producing the first English
polyphony in the Winchester
Troper.
Ethelwold’s’
monasteries also produced a surpassing new style
of illumination, and his school of vernacular
writing was the most important of its time: with
accurate, linguistically significant
translations.
A major event of his episcopate was the
consecration of Winchester Cathedral in 980.
**
4
Oswald – a king with faith, courage and
humility
Many
Christians have indulged in fantasies from time
to time about doing something spectacular for
God, which would be remembered for centuries
afterwards. Oswald, who lived from 605 to 642AD,
was in a position to do so.
He
was a King, but in those times such a title
exposed him to danger as well as power. His
father Aethelfrith was a great warrior who laid
the foundations of the great kingdom of
Northumbria. But Aethelfrith was killed by a
rival, and Oswald was only twelve years old
when he was driven into exile with his elder
sister and two younger brothers. For their own
safety, all were taken to Irish territory in the
West of Scotland.
The
three brothers were educated by the Christian
monks on Iona. Meanwhile, warfare raged in
Northumbria, and in due course the time came for
Oswald to make a difficult decision. Should he
remain in safety, or return to claim his
kingdom? In 632 his older brother led an
expedition there to sue for peace, but instead
he was put to the sword. It was a time of broken
dreams and bitter grief for the young Oswald,
who must have spent many hours in prayer before
he decided to risk his life by following his
brother south.
In
his famous book, The Ecclesiastical History
of England, Bede tells us that Oswald
prepared to meet his enemies Cadwallon and Penda
in battle on a December night at a place
which is now called Heavenfield. His small
army was likely to be outnumbered and victory
seemed impossible. But that night, Oswald had a
vision of St Columba, the founder of Iona.
Columba prophesied that Oswald would be king,
and reminded him of God's words to Joshua at the
river Jordan, "Be strong, and of good
courage......for you will be the leader of these
people as they occupy this land."
Before
battle commenced, Oswald made a rough cross from
two young trees and held it upright until soldiers
were able to fill in the hole around it.
Then he led his army in a prayer that God would
bring victory and deliverance to his
people. He also promised that if they survived,
he would send for missionaries from Iona to
bring the Christian faith to Northumbria.
Oswald's
subsequent victory has become part of the
region's folklore, commemorated by the name of
that battlefield and the more permanent cross
which now stands at Heavenfield. Many leaders
would have regarded such a triumph as the high
point of their career, advanced to the royal
palace and quickly forgotten their promise to
God. But Oswald remained faithful, and in due
course St Aidan arrived in the new kingdom and
made Lindisfarne the centre of his ministry.
Now
it was time for Oswald to reveal a quality less
frequently associated with kings, but even more
vital to the spread of God's work. That quality
was humility. As the sponsor and protector of
Aidan, he could easily have imposed his own
agenda on this new mission. Such a test came
early, when Aidan declined Oswald's offer
of resources at court in Bamburgh castle, and
chose the remoter location of Lindisfarne.
Not
only did Oswald accept the monk's decision
gracefully; he continued to spend many
uncomfortable weeks on the road acting as
Aidan's interpreter. His willingness to lay
aside his kingly privileges and play second
fiddle to a spiritual leader ensured that the
Gospel spread quickly through the new
kingdom and transformed many lives.
Within
a few years, dark times returned to Northumbria.
Oswald was slain in battle and his brother Oswin
succeeded to the throne. Penda continued to
wreak havoc with his marauding raids; on one
famous occasion, Aidan watched him attack
the royal fortress as he prayed on the Farne
Islands, and it is written that his
intercessions caused the wind to change
direction and beat back the flames from the
castle gates.
But
through it all, the light of Christianity
continued to flourish and grow. Aidan is rightly
remembered as the missionary who brought the
good news to Northumbria, but he could not have
succeeded without Oswald, the man who was brave
enough to claim an earthly kingdom, yet obedient
enough to play a humbler role in advancing a
heavenly one.
Prayer
from the liturgy for St Oswald's day (August
5th), written by the Northumbria Community:
"I
place into your hands, Lord, the choices that I
face. Guard
me from choosing the way perilous of
which the end is heart-pain and the secret tear.
“May
I feel your presence at the heart of my desire,
and so know it is for Your desire for me. Thus
shall I prosper, thus see that my purpose is
from You, thus have power to do the good which
endures."
(Copyright Northumbria Community
Trust, 1996)
**
6 The Transfiguration
- or the day Jesus met Elijah and
Moses...
The
story is told in Matthew (17:1-9), Mark (9:1-9)
and Luke (9:28-36).
It
was a time when Jesus’ ministry was popular,
when people were seeking him out.
But on this day, He made time to take
Peter, James and John, his closest disciples, up
a high mountain.
In the fourth century, Cyrillic of
Jerusalem identified it as Mount Tabor (and
there is a great church up there today), but
others believe it more likely to have been one
of the three spurs of Mount Hermon, which rises
to about 9,000 feet, and overlooks Caesarea
Philippi.
High
up on the mountain, Jesus was suddenly
transfigured before his friends.
His face began to shine as the sun, his
garments became white and dazzling.
Elijah and Moses, of all people, suddenly
appeared, and talked with him.
A bright cloud overshadowed the
disciples.
Peter
was staggered, but, enthusiast that he was -
immediately suggested building three tabernacles
on that holy place, one for Jesus, one for
Moses, and one for Elijah.
But God’s ‘tabernacling’, God’s
dwelling with mankind, does not any longer
depend upon building a shrine.
It depends on the presence of Jesus,
instead. And
so a cloud covered them, and a voice spoke out
of the cloud, saying that Jesus was his beloved
son, whom the disciple should ‘hear’.
God’s dwelling with mankind depends
upon our listening
to Jesus.
Then,
just as suddenly, it is all over.
What did it mean?
Why Moses and Elijah? Well,
these two men represent the Law and the Prophets
of the Old Covenant, or Old Testament.
But now they are handing on the baton, if
you like: for both the Law and the Prophets
found their true and final fulfilment in Jesus,
the Messiah.
Why
on top of a mountain?
In Exodus we read that Moses went up
Mount Sinai to receive the sacred covenant from
Yahweh in the form of the Ten Commandments.
Now Jesus goes up and is told about the
‘sealing’ of the New Covenant, or New
Testament of God with man, which will be
accomplished by his coming death in Jerusalem.
That
day made a lifelong impact on the disciples.
Peter mentions it in his second letter, 2
Peter 1:16 - 19 - invariably the reading for
this day.
The
Eastern Churches have long held the
Transfiguration as a feast as important as
Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension and Pentecost.
But it took a long time for the West to
observe the Transfiguration.
The feast starts appearing from the 11th
and 12th centuries, and the Prayer Book included
it among the calendar dates, but there was no
liturgical provision for it until the 19th
century.
**
*7 Cajetan
(1480 - 1547)
Bit
short of cash for your holiday this year?
Cajetan should be the patron saint of
anyone who needs some extra money – right now.
For it was he who founded the Monts de
Piete – the pawnshops – in the 16th
century. They
were first designed to help people through a
lean time, not exploit them.
As
a young man, Cajetan gave up a brilliant career
in law to become a priest, and went on to spend
his life fighting corruption within the
priesthood.
He and his friends founded the Theatine
Order, which promoted study of the Bible, sound
Christian doctrine, spirituality of worship,
caring for the sick, and good pastoral care.
They worked in Verona, Venice and Naples
– where the pawn shops first appeared.
Cajetan would undoubtedly have a lot to
say about the amount of interest the credit card
companies charge these days.
**
11
Clare
(1194 – 1253)
Clare
was the famous virgin foundress of the
Minoresses or Poor Clares.
Born at Assisi of the Offreduccio family,
Clare grew up to hear the teaching of St Francis
of Assisi, and at 18 she renounced all her
possessions and joined him at the Portiuncula,
where she became a nun.
Soon Francis found her and her companions
a small house adjacent to the church of San
Damiano, Assisi, which he had so lovingly
restored.
And
so it was that Clare became abbess in 1216 of a
community of women who wished to live according
to the rule and spirit of St Francis.
The way of life was one of extreme
poverty and austerity, but this did not seem to
discourage anyone.
For like the Franciscan friars, Clare’s
nuns soon spread to other parts of Europe,
especially Spain, Bohemia, France and England,
where four convents were founded in the late 13th
and 14th centuries.
Clare
never left her convent at Assisi – she became
distinguished as one of the great medieval
contemplatives, devoted to serving her community
in great joy, and practising Franciscan ideals,
including the love of nature.
Clare
was considered a powerful woman:
when Assisi was in danger of being sacked
by the armies of the Emperor Frederick II,
Claire, although ill, was carried to the wall
with a pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament.
At sight of her and the pyx, her
biographers say, the armies fled.
This is why in art Clare is often
depicted with a pux or monstrance, as on the
D’Estouteville Triptych of English origin c
1360. Clare
was canonised only two years after her death in
1253. The Poor Clare continue today in many
countries as a contemplative order.
All
in all, Clare’s life was one of extreme
self-denial and constant contemplative prayer.
So it is hard to explain easily why
Clare has been named patron saint of
television.
Perhaps there is a TV company somewhere
who wants to launch a series called
‘Help!
I’m a Saint – get me out of here!’
**
14
Maximilian Kolbe
- Christian witness amidst 20th century
suffering
Some
people’s lives seem to epitomise the suffering
of millions, but also to shine with a Christian
response to it.
One such person was Maximilian Kolbe,
1894 - 1941, a Franciscan priest of Poland, and
publisher extraordinary.
Maximilian
was born at Zdunska Wola, near Lodz, where his
parents, devout Christians, worked in a cottage
weaving industry.
Like thousands of others at the time, the
family and their village was ground into poverty
by Russian exploitation.
In 1910 Maximilian entered the Franciscan
Order, and studied at Rome.
After his ordination in 1919, Maximilian
returned to Poland, where he was sent to teach
church history in a seminary.
But a new factor had entered his life: he
diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Living
in post-war Poland was difficult enough, but
with tuberculosis as well - most people would
have quietly withered away.
Not Maximilian Kolbe. Instead, the
tuberculosis gave Maximilian a sense of urgency
- a sense of the brief transitoriness of this
life. He
knew his time was slipping away.
Instead
of teaching
history, he determined to do something to help
the Christians living in Poland now, in the
tatters of Europe after the First World War.
And so he founded a magazine for
Christian readers in Cracow, who badly needed
effective apologetics to help them hold to their
faith in a chaotic world.
Soon,
the obsolete printing presses (which were
operated by Maximilian’s fellow priests and
lay brothers) were working overtime - the
magazine’s circulation had leapt to 45,000.
Then the printing presses were moved to a town
near Warsaw, Niepokalanow, where Maximilian now
founded a Franciscan community which combined
prayer with cheerfulness and poverty with modern
technology: daily as well as weekly newspapers
were soon produced.
The community grew and grew, until by the
late 1930s it numbered 762 friars.
Then
in 1939 the Germans invaded Poland.
Maximilian sent most of his friars home,
to protect them from what was to come.
He turned the monastery into a refugee
camp for 3,000 Poles and 1,500 Jews.
And the presses continued: taking a
patriotic, independent line, critical of the
Third Reich.
Kolbe
was arrested by the Gestapo along with four
friars. They
were taken to Auschwitz in May 1941.
Their names were exchanged for tattooed
numbers; and they were sent to brutal forced
labour.
But
Maximilian Kolbe continued his priestly
ministry. He
heard confessions in unlikely places, and
smuggled in bread and wine for the Eucharist.
His sympathy and compassion for those
even more unfortunate than himself was
outstanding.
Then
came the final scene in his hard life.
At the end of July, 1941, several men
escaped from his bunker at the camp.
The Gestapo, in revenge, came to select
several more men from the same bunker who were
to be starved to death.
A man, Francis Gajowniczek, was chosen.
As he cried in despair, Kolbe stepped
forward.
“I
am a Catholic priest.
I wish to die for that man.
I am old; he has a wife and children.”
The
officer in charge shrugged his shoulders - and
obliged.
So
Maximilian went to the death chamber of Cell 18,
and set about preparing the others to die with
dignity by prayers, psalms, and the example of
Christ’s Passion.
Two weeks later only four were left
alive: Maximilian
alone was fully conscious.
He was injected with phenol and died on
14 August, aged 47.
He
was beatified by Paul VI in 1971.
In 1982 he was canonised by Pope John
Paul II, formerly Archbishop of Cracow, the
diocese which contains Auschwitz.
Present at the ceremony that day was
Francis Gajowniczek, the man whose life
Maximilian Kolbe had saved.
**
16
Laurence Loricatus (c. 1190 – 1243)
Have
you done something bad which haunts you?
Does the memory of it still follow you
through each day – and keep you awake at
night?
If so, then Laurence Loricatus is the
saint for you.
He was born at Facciolo (Apulia) and as a
youth he killed a man.
Life
changed forever for Laurence.
His guilt overwhelmed him, and he decided
to expiate for it.
He made the long and difficult pilgrimage
to Compostella, but found no relief.
So he became a hermit at Subiaco –
cutting himself off from all the comforts of
normal life.
But he found no relief.
So then he began to wear not a hairshirt,
but a coat of chainmail next to his skin.
It was a heavy, unyielding weight which
bruised and rubbed his skin raw.
Laurence
hated himself and would not forgive himself,
though God had forgiven him years before.
He is a caution to anyone in the same
situation today.
His continued ‘penance’ did no one
any good. The
suffering absorbed hours of his attention, and
got him nowhere.
When
we do something we regret,
of course God wants us to repent of it.
But then he wants us to put it behind us.
Our bad deed needs to be quarantined and
left behind in our lives.
If we won’t put it down, our life
becomes focussed on our hatred of ourselves,
instead of on God’s love for us.
It took the Pope years to get Laurence to
take off that chain-shirt.
**
23 Rose of Lima
1586 – 1617
How will you become a better person than you are
now? Have
you ever denied yourself in order to try and
please God?
No matter what your dedication, it is unlikely
that your efforts will ever have outshone those
of Rose of Lima, who in 1671 became the first
saint of America, and patron of South America.
Her whole life raises the issue:
how do you draw closer to God?
Rose
was born in Lima, Peru, in 1586, into a Spanish
family that had once been rich. Her beauty
earned her her name,
and her character was just as attractive.
She was eager to please,
produced exquisite lace and embroidery,
and was known for her charity.
Her
parents hoped for a good marriage for her, but
it was not to be:
Rose did not want a husband and a place
in the corrupt and wanton society of Lima at the
time, Rose
was an intensely spiritual person.
She spent hours in contemplation of Jesus
and St Mary, and took the ‘Blessed
Sacrament’ on a daily basis.
She devoted herself to prayer and simple
acts of mortification.
In those days ‘mortification’ of the
flesh was seen as a way of keeping your earthly
appetites under control, and therefore drawing
nearer to God.
At
20, Rose joined the Third order of St Dominic,
taking as her model Catherine of Siena.
Her love of God continued , as did her
charity to others, but now a darker side to her
spirituality began to grow.
Rose lived as a recluse in a hut, and
increased her acts of mortification.
She wanted to suffer,
she thought it would bring her closer to
God.
She
cut off her hair and rubbed pepper and lye into
her face until it was raw and blistered.
She fasted until she could hardly stand.
She drank gall mixed with bitter herbs.
She filled her bed with broken glass,
thorns and sharp things.
She wore a tight iron chain around her
waist.
She
embraced every penace that she could think of,
and yet still she suffered at times a feeling of terrible loneliness and desolation, for God
seemed far away. Then
she would pray:
"Lord, increase my sufferings, and
with them increase your love in my heart."
Sometimes she would indeed feel God near
her, and then she would be
in ecstasy for hours.
It is hard to explain why Rose thought she needed to inflect needless
suffering on herself in order to get closer to
God. One
scholar has suggested that perhaps Rose wanted
to “make
reparation for the widespread sin and
corruption” in her society at the time.
She had said once that she wanted to pay
for the sin of the idolatry of her countrymen.
Again,
this is hard to understand because the Bible
never once says that any human being can ‘make
payment’ to God for the sins of another
person. We
may grieve over the sins of others,
but only Christ can offer them
forgiveness.
Only he has died for them.
In
Uganda a number of years ago a nun asked a
bishop for help.
“I have done penance all my life.
I have tried so hard to please God –
but I still don’t feel any joy.
What am I doing wrong?”
The Bishop said gently:
“Because, dear sister, you are hoping
to find joy in what you have done for God.
I am joyful because I have discovered
what Jesus has done for me.”
Poor
well-meaning but confused Rose: after a long
illness which seems to have had some
psychological as well as physical elements to
it, she finally died, only 31 years old.
**
28
Augustine of Hippo
(354 – 430)
After
St Paul, who was the most influential Christian
writer ever?
St
Augustine of Hippo, whose feast-day in 28
August. He
lived and wrote in a time of social and
spiritual chaos.
The Roman Empire was collapsing, the
world was about to slide into the dark ages and
the Church was under serious threat from both
heresies within and paganism without.
What
St Augustine wrote helped the Church both to
avoid perversions of Christianity, and to stand
strong and unafraid amongst the violent tumult
of the times.
His writings held sway over Christianity
for the next 15 centuries or so, and still
influence us heavily today.
Augustine
was born at Tagaste, in modern Algeria.
His father was a pagan, but his mother,
Monica, was a Christian.
After studying rhetoric at Carthage to
become a lawyer, he instead became a
scholar-philosopher.
He abandoned Christianity for Manichaeism,
and lived with a mistress for 15 years.
He moved to Rome and then Milan to teach
rhetoric, but slowly grew disenchanted with
Manichaeism.
After
a long interior conflict, vividly described in
his ‘Confessions’, Augustine was converted
and baptised a Christian in 386-7.
He returned to Africa in 388, and joined
some friends in establishing a quasi-monastic
life. He
was ordained priest in 391, and four years later
became coadjutor-bishop of Hippo.
From 396 until his death in 430 he ruled
the diocese alone.
Augustine
had a brilliant mind, an ardent temperament and
a gift for mystical insights. Soon his
understanding of the Christian Revelation was
pouring forth in his many voluminous writings.
So
what did he write?
Most famous is ‘The Confessions’, the
sermons on the Gospel and Epistle of John, the
De Trinitate and the De Civitate Dei.
This last,
‘The City of God’, tackles the
opposition between Christianity and the
‘world’ and represents the first Christian
philosophy of history.
Many
other works were undertaken in his efforts to
tackle various heresies:
Manichaeism, Pelagianism, or Donatism,
and led to the development of his thought on
Creation, Grace, the Sacraments and the Church.
Augustine’s
massive influence on Christianity has mainly
been for the good.
Few others have written with such depth
on love, the Holy Trinity and the Psalms.
(The preamble to the marriage service in
the BCP is closely based on Augustine.)
But his views on Predestination and some
of his views on sex (that it is the channel for
the transmission of Original Sin) have since
been mainly ignored by the Church.
As
bishop, Augustine fearlessly upheld order as the
Roman Empire disintegrated around him.
At the time of his death, the Vandals
were at the very gates of Hippo.
**
29 Beheading of St John the
Baptist
When
you go back to work after the August Bank
Holiday this month, spare a thought for John the
Baptist: however rough your local sandwich bar
may be, it probably doesn’t serve you locusts
with a honey dip; you won’t be imprisoned for
saying derogatory things about the local MP’s
wife, and
even the boss from hell is unlikely to have a
daughter who wants to hiphop about with your
head on a platter.
John
the Baptist, by our standards, had a terrible
life. Yet
the Bible tells us that of all the people in
history, no one has even been born who was as
great as him.
Why?
Because of the unique job God gave him to
do, which
has to be the best PR job of all time: act as
God’s press officer.
This
was quite literally the PR job from heaven:
with God as his client, John the
Baptist’s job was to broadcast the news that
the Messiah had come.
Not even Church House Westminster has
ever attempted anything like that.
It
always helps if PR people recognise their own
clients, and the same was true of John:
he was the first person to recognise
Jesus as the Messiah.
PR people also help their clients prepare
for their public role, and John did the same for
Jesus: he baptised him in the Jordan at the
start of his ministry.
PR
people also stand up in public for their
client’s point of view, and in John’s case
it led to his arrest and imprisonment.
His death was finally brought about by
the scheming of Herodias and Salome, and here
the similarity ends:
for not even Max Clifford has ever lost
his head over a client.
**
30 John Bunyan
After
the Bible, John Bunyan’s wonderful Christian
allegory, the Pilgrim’s Progress, is
one of the most celebrated and widely-read books
in the English language.
It has been translated into more than one
hundred languages around the world and keeps its
place as a Christian classic.
Names
of people and places from its pages have been
commonplace wherever English is spoken.
We need only re-call Mr Great-Heart, Mr
Valiant-for-Truth, Giant Despair, Madame Bubble,
the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, the
Delectable Mountains, the Hill Difficulty and
the Celestial City.
Bunyan
was born on 28 November 1628, at Elstow, near
Bedford, England, of a poor family.
He had little formal education and his
father taught him to be a metal worker. His
first wife died young.
His second wife, Elizabeth, helped him
considerably with his blossoming literary
career. His
conversion was the result of reading the Bible,
and the witness of local Christians.
From that time the Bible became the great
inspiration of his life.
He wrote more than fifty books on
Christianity.
A Baptist by conviction, he had little
time for the Established Church.
Bunyan
became a popular preacher, but because of his
opposition to the Established Church and because
he did not have a Church of England preaching
licence, he was imprisoned in 1661.
It was in prison that he wrote Pilgrim’s
Progress.
It was not only Bunyan’s greatest book
but was destined to become one of the most
popular Christian books in the world.
Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory, using the names of people and places from the Bible to
teach spiritual lessons.
The vivid and unforgettable imagery in
the Pilgrim’s Progress covers the whole
Christian gospel from sin and condemnation all
the way through faith, repentance, grace,
justification, sanctification, and perseverance
to heaven itself.
Bunyan
died on 31 August 1688.
His portrayal of the death of Mr Valiant
For Truth is Bunyan at his allegorical best.
This brave old soldier of Jesus Christ
has received his summons to ‘go home.’
Calling his friends together he says,
‘My sword I give to him who shall
succeed me in my pilgrimage …
My marks and scars I carry with me, to be
a witness for me, that I have fought His
battles, Who will now be my rewarder.’ … So
he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for
him on the other side
**
31 Aidan - the man who brought
Christianity to England
August
31st is the feast of St Aidan, who brought
Christianity to northern England.
He is a strong contender for the title of
the first English bishop. Not that honours meant
a great deal to this austere but captivating
character.
In
635 he came to Northumbria at the invitation of
the local ruler, Oswald.
Oswald had spent several years of his
childhood on Iona, and when he succeeded to the
throne of his northern kingdom he was shrewd
enough to realise that the Christian faith would
be an ideal unifying force to pacify rival
tribes of warlords.
Oswald's
invitation was not immediately successful. The
first missionary from Iona returned in despair,
claiming that the barbarity of the Northumbrians
made them unconvertible. But as Aidan listened,
he felt the unmistakable call of God to try
again.
"Perhaps
you were too harsh on them," he found
himself suggesting to the travel-stained
missionary. Shortly afterwards, Aidan found
himself at the head of a party of brothers
heading for Northumbria. He was never to see his
beloved Iona again.
The monks made the long journey to Northumbria
on foot, singing psalms as they went. Their need
to ward off the powers of evil with prayer was
genuine, for these were dangerous times to
travel through remote country unarmed. They
arrived safely at Oswald's castle in Bamburgh,
where he offered them lavish hospitality and
assumed that they would found their community
there.
However,
the brothers realised that to live under the
king' s protection would make it difficult to
avoid the world's temptations and establish a
rapport with the local people. They saw the
tidal island of Lindisfarne on the horizon and
chose it as their base. The rest, as the
saying goes, is history.
Aidan was much loved as a teacher and
evangelist; though stern in his own
self-discipline, he was prepared to travel to
the most inaccessible villages, where he cared
for the local people with compassion and
gentleness. In time his influence grew and noble
people joined the stream of visitors to
Lindisfarne.
After
Oswald's death in 642, his brother Oswin
succeeded him as king. Oswin was concerned about
Aidan's habit of walking everywhere. The saint
was ageing rapidly, his body weakened by years
of harsh fasting and exposure to the elements.
Oswin wondered what would happen to him
one day on the road, and also he felt that such
a lowly means of travel was not appropriate for
a bishop. So he gave Aidan one of his finest
horses, complete with a beautifully worked
saddle and bridle.
Aidan did not feel able to risk offending the
king by spurning his generosity, but he rode out
of the palace with a heavy heart. He knew that
people would relate to him differently now that
he had the trappings of affluence, and that it
would be dangerous to stop and rest with such
valuable belongings beside him.
The
king had intended to give him comfort, but his
gesture had had the opposite effect. Aidan had
learnt that possessions, and the need to protect
them, make it more difficult to follow God with
an undivided heart. The story goes that he gave
the horse, complete with saddle, to the first
beggar he met outside the palace gates.
A more pragmatic Christian might have reasoned
that keeping on the right side of Oswin would
lead to opportunities that were too valuable to
risk. Indeed, the king was angry when he heard
what Aidan had done. "That horse was fit
for a king, not for some vagabond," he
protested. "I could have found you an old
nag if you wanted to give it away." Aidan's
reply was simply, "What do you think, O
King? Is
the son of a mare worth more in your eyes than
that son of God?"
There
was an awkward silence; then the King removed
his sword, knelt at Aidan's feet and asked his
forgiveness. When he returned to the banqueting
table, it was with a beaming smile. Sadly, he
too was to perish in battle shortly afterwards;
these were violent times. Yet Oswin, whose
culture demanded that he should appear
all-powerful in the eyes of his followers, had
been publicly humbled by the integrity of a
simple monk who had challenged his values.
What would it be like if contemporary leaders
were equally open to God's influence, and if
there were more Christian leaders of Aidan's
strength of character? Today, we read that
Governments are eager to work alongside churches
in welfare initiatives, and that the
cash-strapped Church of England is considering
the unthinkable indignity of asking its bishops
to sacrifice their chauffeur-driven cars. Will
such stories stand the test of time? Over a
thousand years after his death, a statue of
Aidan stands in the churchyard of St Mary's on
Lindisfarne, visited by pilgrims the world over.
The rector of that
church was until recently David Adam, who has
brought Aidan to public attention through his
excellent biography, "Flame in my
Heart", and his well-known books of Celtic
prayers. It seems that, for once, obedience to
God has brought a rich and lasting harvest.
Flame in my Heart: St Aidan for Today by
David Adam, Triangle Books, 1997
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