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Saints
May 26, 2009 11:26:52 GMT
Post by hibernicus on May 26, 2009 11:26:52 GMT
I suggest we start a thread on saints (usually but not necessarily of the day). This should consist of original material/reflection rather than reproducing pre-existing material (from Wikipedia or elsewhere). The purpose of venerating saints is that they show how to live the life of the Gospel. This does not mean that they were perfect in every way: I can think of many saints who committed serious errors or misdeeds, or whose charism in retrospect has limitations - St. Joseph Calasanctius' mishandling of child abuse cases within his congregation, St. Robert Bellarmine's role in the condemnation of Galileo, St. Francis De Sales' role in the repression of Huguenots come to mind - but they are saints nonetheless. I remember once reading an apoligist for Sufi Islam (a variety which places emphasis on mystical experience and the veneration of saints) quoting what a old Sufi sheik had told him about the Wahhabi condemnation of the cult of saints. (Wahhabism is the puritanical variety of Islam found in Saudi Arabia, which holds that to venerate individuals is to take away from the honour due to God.) The old man said it is the Devil who wishes the saints to be forgotten, because their lives show how he may be vanquished. Whatever we may think of Islam in general, he was right on this. Today is the feast of St. Philip Neri. I will post on him later. If anyone has any thoughts on him, or on another saint, in the meantime, feel free to post here.
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Saints
May 26, 2009 12:30:44 GMT
Post by guillaume on May 26, 2009 12:30:44 GMT
Of course, sir. First of all, we are all called to holiness, depending of our own situations, state of duty, etc... So we are all called to become "saints" at the end. And big sinners can become great saints, because of God's will (saint Augustine, a libertine, saint Paul, persecutor, and many others... [I recommend " Saints for Sinners", by Archbishop Goodier - edition of Sophia Press]. Saint Francis of Assise, himself, was saying that "without the grace of God" he would have committed all the sins... Anyway, while i found your posts interesting, it is for me, a humble and weak soul, difficult to follow 100 % and to answer some of them, because you make usually so many references - revealing your great culture, which, alas, i do not have, references to persons i never heard about.... But being spiritual doesn't mean being intellectual.
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Saints
May 26, 2009 16:42:59 GMT
Post by hibernicus on May 26, 2009 16:42:59 GMT
I am sorry if anyone finds my posts difficult to understand. Ask me for an explanation and I will try to provide it. Don't overestimate my learning. I am a miserable English-speaking Irish monoglot (a shameful contrast to Alisdair, who is a polyglot, and a corresponding handicap in dealing with this sort of material) and a mere dabbler in church history. One purpose of this site is to help us all to learn from each other. Anyone who wants to comment on the life of a saint, or some particular account of a saint, or just say a few lines, should not be afraid to do so. I have done some teaching, and my experience is that if people are really interested in a subject they will know much more about it than they realise - the educator's task is to get them to bring it out.
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Post by hibernicus on May 26, 2009 17:39:19 GMT
St. Philip Neri, 1515-95, was a Florentine priest who spent his life in pastoral work among the poor of Rome and founded the Congregation of the Oratory. This is a federation of communities of secular priests who live together but are not bound by the solemn vows of a religious order, and who engage in pastoral work in urban centres. John Henry Newman was an Oratorian priest, and his writings on St. Philip are an interesting guide to the spirit of the saint by one who lived it, and is often thought of as the second founder of the Congregation. Nor was it only skilled theologians whose art was enlisted in the service of St. Philip's vision. It is often suggested nowadays that the way in which the painter Caravaggio presents the saints and the Holy Family as resembling the Roman poor of his own day - dirty, wrinkled, ragged, with elements of the grotesque - was intended as secret mockery of Christian belief by an unbelieving artist; but in fact St. Philip encouraged artists to depict the saints and the Gospel in this manner, so that the poor might see their hope in them, and the rich and powerful (who included St. Philip's patrons and members of his Congregation) might be called upon to see Jesus incarnate in the poor and to help them as they would assist Jesus and Our Lady, instead of despising them for their dirt and rags. This is worth bearing in mind as we contemplate today how a mixture of social snobbery and spiritual pride contributed to the torture and rape and exploitation disclosed in the Ryan report; it is also relevant to our discussion elsewhere on this board of the ways in which the literature of horror and the grotesque may be used to tempt us to despair in God and humanity, or to see in the most degraded among us the face of Jesus. How far Caravaggio, whose own life was stormy and full of crime, was touched by the Spirit of Christ through St. Philip, is not known; but all who take pleasure in his works should commend him and themselves to St. Philip's intercession. This morning at Mass the priest told us a story about him that I had not heard but which highlights the absence in him of spiritual pride - that every day when he awoke he would say "This day, O Lord, have mercy on Philip; for this day Philip will betray thee". St. Philip was known for his cheerfulness, and has always been one of the most beloved of saints. (When I visited Armagh Cathedral recently I noticed a window depicting St. Philip, presented by an Irish-American archbishop in honor of his father, also called Philip. I was a little surprised that he had not placed him under the patronage of St. Philip the Apostle; but given that we know so little of the Apostle and so much of his sympathetic Italian namesake, it is understandable.) St. Philip forms a contrast to the view of sanctity as necessarily gloomy and austere. He wrote little himself, but by the force of his love drew to him men of greater talents than himself who recognised that in them which outweighed all their talents; he did not ask them to renounce their talents but to use them in God's service. When Newman chose as his patron the humble and loving teacher of Rome, he followed in the footsteps of such of St. Philip's contemporary disciples as the great Church historian Cesar Baronius; and although Newman's insistence on human friendship as a necessary part of the love of God and of intellectual attainment pre-dates his entry into the Church and attachment ot the Oratorian ethos, it is very much in the spirit of St. Philip, as is the motto which Newman chose as a cardinal COR AD COR LOQUITUR ("Heart speaks to Heart"). St. Philip's contemporaries testify that when his body was opened after his death his heart was shrunken as if consumed by fire, and his ribs cracked as if they had been pressed outward by the swelling of his heart; these were seen as signs of love akin to the stigmata of St. Francis. At the same time he was a man of broad sympathies. He had been taught by the Dominicans of Florence, and he always believed, as many Dominicans have done from that day to this, that the Florentine Dominican Jerome Savonarola, burned at the stake with the approval of Pope Alexander VI whom he had denounced, was in fact a martyr and a saint. This seems a strange affinity, for Savonarola was a puritan rigorist and St. Philip (by the standards of his day) the opposite; but its very strangeness lends it force. I used to be sure that Savonarola was rightly condemned; I have never been sure since I heard of St. Philip's attitude towards him. St. Philip is known as the apostle of Rome; and Newman rightly says that this name is as much to the discredit of the Church of his day as it is to his own honour, because it is a fearful sign of the state into which it had fallen that a new Apostle should be required to evangelise the city of Peter and tend to the needs of its poor. As we look today at the collapse of Catholic observance here in Ireland and the revelations of how as in Renaissance Rome outward shows of piety cloaked the most fearful abuses and corruptions, we can learn from St. Philp that things have been as bad before, that we must not lose hope, and that we must bear witness for Christ in our own cities as he did. St. Philip, who rekindled the light of faith among the people of Rome when corruption had driven out faith, and whose son John Henry Newman came to Ireland to teach us the mutual nourishment of faith and intellect, pray for us. Through your intercession may God raise up new apostles to win back our land to Christ and His Church as He raised up St. Patrick, and as he raised you and others up in what seemed the darkest hour. Fill our hearts with the cheerfulness that comes from God, and in that hope inspire us to labour for Him.
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Saints
May 27, 2009 17:01:19 GMT
Post by hibernicus on May 27, 2009 17:01:19 GMT
I'll do my best to make it more readable.
I'll try to post on one saint a week, depending on times and feasts. For example, today was the feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury, sent by Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo-Saxons - the first Archbishop of Canterbury. I can't offhand think of much to say about him, but i have a certain fascination with St. Bede the Venerable, the greatest name of the Anglo-Saxon Church, so I'll post on him next week if nothing else intervenes.
In the meantime, anyone who wants to comment on St. Philip Neri or post on another saint in whom they take particular interest should go ahead.
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Saints
Jun 29, 2009 14:51:17 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Jun 29, 2009 14:51:17 GMT
Sorry that St. Bede (whose feast, I found out afterwards, is actually on the same day as St. Augustine of Canterbury!) has been so long delayed. In the meantime, here's a thought. I have taken to watching the television series THE WIRE for its portrayal of the post-industrial American city. The second series centred on the fate of the boss of a stevedores' union who tries to have the docks rebuilt (instead of being sold off to be redeveloped for housing) and in order to get the money for lobbyists does a deal with organised crime which eventually destroys him. The character is Polish-American and the series showed the economic and moral decline of a certain type of blue-collar ethnic (and to a considerable extent Catholic) working-class milieu; containerisation and automation have reduced labour requirements, the younger generation (the character's son and nephew) are getting involved in drugs etc. Here's the relevance. The character's downfall begins when he buys a stained-glass window in the name of the union for a Catholic church (trying to ingratiate himself with a US senator who attends it). This infuriates a senior police officer who had intended that window to be filled by one paying tribute to the police union, and he sets the detectives on the stevedores (partly from vengefulness, partly because he realises the union is too weak to be able to afford such an expensive gift from membership dues). The interesting point is that neither design is traditionally devotional - the police window shows a policeman letting his son/grandson wear his cap, the stevedores' window shows dockers unloading cargo. A generation or so back the dockers' window might have been expected to show St. Joseph the Worker or some similar nautical saint, and the policemen's window would have had whoever is the patron saint of policemen. (I did a Google search and it is St. Michael the Archangel, which I suppose makes sense.) The labour might be included, but it would be reflected/amplified by reference to the saint - you might call it "thinking with saints". I think this particular fiction does really represent changing tendencies in official devotional art. Any thoughts on its significance?
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Saints
Jul 22, 2009 12:08:02 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Jul 22, 2009 12:08:02 GMT
Here at last are my thoughts on St. Bede, whom I promised back in May. Since then I have been doing some browsing and I find he is the patron saint of historians and died on the same day, May 26 (not the same year) as St. Augustine of Canterbury; Bede's feast is now on May 25. He was born in 672 or 673 and died 26 May 735. He was an Anglo-Saxon; there are disputes over whether he was of noble or plebeian birth. His name is unusual, and some think it indicates his parents dedicated him to the Church from birth. Certainly he went to the monastery of Wearmouth at what is now Sunderland at the age of 7, and remained a Benedictine monk there and in its twin house at Jarrow a few miles away until his death. Wearmouth monastery was founded by a Northumbrian nobleman called Benedict Biscop who gave up the world for the monastic life and who determined to create a monastery which would be a centre of learning and display the glories of the faith in architecture. Accordingly, he journeyed to Rome and brought back many books; no equivalent collection could be found in Northern Europe at the time. He also brought craftsmen who built a fine stone monastery and decorated it magnificently, to the wonder of the people around; he arranged for a cantor to come from Rome and instruct the monks and novices in Roman chant. The monastery developed a scriptorium, copying texts; the great illuminated LINDISFARNE GOSPEL now in the British museum is its great monument. The St. Peter's Campus of the University of Sunderland now stands on the river bank where the monastery was, and in its memory there is a monument in the shape of a concrete book, open at one of the illuminated pages of that gospel. Benedict Biscop is also a saint in the Roman Calendar. I visit Sunderland every so often, and on Sundays attend St. Benedict's Church, a Victorian Gothic building in an area since redeveloped, leaving it tucked in behind a carpet warehouse. The church is staffed by Redemptorists, some of whom are or were Irish. It took me some time to realise that the St. Benedict to whom it is dedicated and whose statue is over the door is not St. Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Western monasticism, but Benedict Biscop. Clearly those who dedicated the church, wished, amongst other pious intentions, to cock a snook at the Church of England (whose mediaeval parish church nearby is on part of the monastic site and incorporates some remains of the later Norman monastery) and to asssert that not there, nor in the great Anglican Cathedral at Durham in whose Galilee chapel Bede's bones are entombed with those of St. Cuthbert, but among the poor Irish immigrants attending Mass were the heirs of Benedict Biscop and Bede. More tomorrow. I'm out of time.
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Saints
Jul 23, 2009 11:43:50 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Jul 23, 2009 11:43:50 GMT
Another thought - because we are so used to the Victorian (mostly) Gothic Catholic churches to be found around Ireland, and because they are so widely despised (and often gutted) on a mixture of aesthetic and liturgical grounds, it is hard to realise how impressive they appeared to their first congregations, and how much pride was taken in them. The elaborate liturgical and public devotional ceremonies of what Emmet Larkin called the devotional revolution were not just a splash of colour and perfume in a society poor, dirty and constricted to an extent we can now hardly imagine (unless we have visited the Third World) they also displayed the grandeur of Catholicism where previously Catholic services had been restricted to small and dingy chapels in back streets or on the outskirts of town. Something of the same effect must have been produced in Northumbria by Benedict Biscop's new stone monastery built and magnificently decorated by Roman craftsmen, and the ethereal sound of Roman chant. Although Bede entered the Wearmouth monastery, it is generally (not universall) believed that he soon transferred to its newly-founded twin house at Jarrow; a life of one of the first Abbots of Jarrow describes how a plague killed all the monks except the abbot and a teenaged novice, and between them they sang the Office and antiphons. It is generally believed that this novice was Bede. One problem of a lot of pious and romantic monastic history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is that it tended to glamourise and sentimentalise mediaeval monasticism, and in reaction against Protestant demonisation of monks it denied or ignored the problems that can beset such institutions or the hard conditions under whcih they laboured. We know, for example, that an Abbot to whom Bede was very close left Wearmouth/Jarrow for Rome because of dissensions created by aristocratic members of the community (it is not clear whether these were pupils not necessarily intended for vows and Orders, or surplus members of aristocratic families who made provision for them by sending them to be monks, and who were perhaps resentful of this and unduly conscious of their worldly rank). One early source claims that when Bede himself was old and blind some members of the community mocked the great scholar and preacher by telling him that the people were assembled in the church to hear the Word of God, and that they led him to the church and were amused by the spectacle of him preaching to empty air, but that when he finished they were confounded to hear the angels answer amen to his prayers. Whether the angels indeed replied (at least audibly) you may believe or not as you choose, but I confess I find the description of the mockers smirking to themselves for making the great man ridiculous horribly plausible. Bede himself does not dwell on the faults of the church in his great history because his central purpose is to display the workings of God in his dealings with Anglo-Saxon England, but one of his last works is a letter to a monastic colleague called Egbert in which he laments such abuses as the creation of pseudo-monasteries set up by powerful families to take advantage of the Church's exemption from taxation, whereas in fact the "monasteries" were run as secular holdings, and the tendency of clerics to cluster in the towns aand courts where the best preferment was to be had, and leaving the poor and wild rural areas ot their own devices. This last has been a recurring problem of the Church (the orders of friars with their vows of poverty were set up to remedy it where the secular clergy could and would not do so; St. Alphonsus Liguori set up the Redemptorists to address the same problem in the eighteenth-century kingdom of Naples; we are rapidly developing our own version of it in which the Irish Church, with its reaction against the over-harsh discipline and asceticism of the recent past - at least in the religious orders, secular clergy were a different matter - seems to be transforming itself into an institution for middle-class navel gazers, with the housing estates left to go to hell in their own way). More soon.
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Saints
Jul 24, 2009 11:35:08 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Jul 24, 2009 11:35:08 GMT
In response to Ezigbotutu's question [highly abusive and insulting comment by an atheist on the practice of sewlf-scourging; this individual has now been banned for continuous abusive posts, which have all been deleted - HIB], if such it may be called - First, insanity is to some extent a matter of social definition (within limits) relating to inability to function within society. Up until a few decades ago behaving in public as, say the BIG BROTHER contestants routinely do would have been seen as not merely objectionable (which it is) but as clear evidence of insanity (PRIVATE EYE got this quite nicely when it had a parody of an eighteenth-century newspaper advertising the then-fashionable practice of going in to Bedlam Asylum to mock the antics of the lunatics as "The Big Bedlam Show").
Secondly: Behaviour which makes perfect sense to a participant may appear strange to an outsider who has no idea of its purpose. (The participant-observer technique in the social sciences was developed precisely to get away from that sort of condescension.) The amount of time and effort devoted by athletes or ballet dancers, for example, to preparing for a display which only lasts a short time and which often involves severe and permanent physical damage, will appear senseless to anyone who has no 'feel' for these pursuits. The comparison of the saint with the athlete in training is particularly apt because St. Paul uses it; ascesis/asceticism derives from the Greek word for "wrestler". Love, the courtship and pursuit of the Beloved and the enjoyment of His company also appears funny to those who do not experience it (as Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son "the pleasure is momentary, the posture undignified, and the consequences embarrassing").
Third: I would agree that some saints (St. Rose of Lima or St. Benedict Joseph Labre do appear to have been examples) were indeed unbalanced, which does not mean they weren't also saints. Quite a lot of creative people have been eccentric or neurotic - both artists and scientists - because they examine what others take for granted. W.H. Auden used to say that he thought this was positively helpful, and that every poet ought to be as neurotic as he could manage. I wouldn't go that far - it's very dangerous to move from being prepared to behave eccentrically in pursuit of a goal, to pursuing eccentricity as an end in itself - but I can see what he was getting at.
Fourth: Some saints have been unbalanced, others have been just the opposite. The two saints I have posted on so far in this thread, Bede and Philip Neri, appear to have been singularly well-balanced and attractive personalities. (In Bede's case this is the impression his writings have made on many generations of scholars, in Philip Neri we have the testimony of contemporaries who would have admired other and more outlandish - at least to Ezigbotutu's eyes - versions of sanctity had they presented themselves.) I can think of other saints of this sort - St. Francis de Sales, for example. Anyone who has read the INTRODUCTION TO A DEVOUT LIFE will be struck by its calmness and sensitivity. I might add that quite a few saints have had considerable wordly achievements. St. John of the Cross was a great poet; the founders of religious orders generally displayed considerable organising skills, often to the great benefit of others even by purely secular standards (the nursing work of St. Camillus de Lellis, for example, or the poor relief of St. Vincent de Paul; if this IS insanity let us have more of it!) St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, whatever you may think of their views, were subtle thinkers who raised profound questions about what it is to be human. St. Nils Stensen was a profound scientist by the standards of the sixteenth century, the first to realise that the existence of fossil fish on mountains proved these areas had once been under water. Ezigbotutu's comments remind me of a sneering little book called BEYOND BELIEF by a journalist called Fay, who started out on HOT PRESS and now infests the Irish edition of the SUNDAY TIMES, in which he collected all the contemporary religious maniacs hecould find as proof of the folly of religious belief. In one chapter, after describing a wandering schizophrenic to be found on O'Connell Street in the mid-1990s when he was writing, he declared that in a previous era she would have been a Major Religious Superior. Sorry - she might have been venerated by some people as a mystic (see Fr. Herbert Thurston's SURPRISING MYSTICS for examples of dodgy mediaeval mystics) but to be a Major Religious Superior you need certain administrative abilities and capacity to function which this woman clearly did not possess.
Lastly, I can well understand why Ezigbotutu might not like St. Francis of Assisi (I presume this is the St. Francis he has in mind) but why does he think he should have been confined to a mental asylum? I can think of various Deep Greens and similar people who live lives I regard as misguided and anti-social, but I don't think this makes them insane. Once you start throwing that sort of accusation around it's not too far to the sort of anti-psychiatry practiced in the Soviet Union or Franco's Spain, where opposition to the regime is itself seen as proof of insanity and justification for compulsory "treatment".
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Saints
Jul 24, 2009 11:35:58 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Jul 24, 2009 11:35:58 GMT
In general, I suggest Ezigbotutu should learn a bit more about saints before he pronounces with such confident dogmatism.
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Saints
Jul 27, 2009 12:06:32 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Jul 27, 2009 12:06:32 GMT
I address myself to the moderator in the same way that members of a debating society address themselves to the chair - to show that this is part of a discussion in an open forum rather than a one-on-one conversation. Debating societies also ban unparliamentary language, of which ezigbotutu's most recent post provides an example. Ezigbotutu has not addressed my recent post at all. Why do supermodels starve themselves? to look beautiful (a strange idea of beauty in my opinion - I think the fuller figure is more attractive, but that's by the by). Why do ballet dancers put such stresses on their body that a dancer in her 40s can have the legs of a woman in her 70s or 80s? Why do the cyclists in the Tour de France drive themselves up mountains (and cyclists have died of exhaustion on the tour in the past)? Describing these as "masochistic pastimes" is like saying that there is no point in reading fiction because it's not true - someone who says that has missed the whole point of the exercise, and is moreover question-begging (since calling them "masochistic pastimes" implies masochism is the only possible motive). It's about self-mastery to achieve a goal.
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Saints
Jul 31, 2009 17:22:17 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Jul 31, 2009 17:22:17 GMT
Ezigbotutu has missed the point. Ascetic practices are not supposed to be undertaken as an end in themselves but as a means of obtaining and practising self-command so as to focus more closely on God and on the mission which God has in store for the ascetic. They see themselves as athletes or soldiers undergoing training, to run so that they may receive he prize, as St. Paul puts it. Ezigbotutu may think the prize is illusory but it is not possible to understand what the ascetics are doing unless you realise that they believe in its existence. I would add that the comparison with models is somewhat apt, since (a) some models do indeed develop harmful conditions such as anorexia, just as some ascetics may be led astray into spiritual pride or masochistic perversion (b) Just as ideas of beauty are partly socially determined (anyone acquainted with art history will know that previous ages saw female beauty as somewhat plumper than the boyish androgynous look that is fashionable today) so bearing witness to sanctity takes different forms in different ages.
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Saints
Aug 4, 2009 10:53:24 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Aug 4, 2009 10:53:24 GMT
The moderator is not imaginary; the fact that he rarely bothers to look in on the debates is regrettable. In reply to the Member for Babylon Central: firstly, if he thinks the model industry discourages anorexia he must be very naive; secondly, my point did not relate only to professional models but to every woman who diets or exercises for the purpose of health or beauty, however uncomfortable this may be in the short term. Of course this can be overdone, just as ascetic practices can be overdone; that is why they are not normally supposed to be practised by oneself but under the supervision of a spiritual director, who has the same function as an athlete's trainer. The Member for Babylon Central is evading the issue by the practice known as "begging the question" - that is, he starts by taking for granted the truth of the disputed point which he is supposed to be proving - namely that these practices are purely masochistic and have no other purpose. Let him learn how to make a case - and then let him run and hope to receive the prize.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 4, 2009 12:22:21 GMT
Now back to St. Bede. Because of the work of Benedict Biscop Wearmouth-Jarrow became the greatest centre of learning north of the Alps, and Bede was its greatest scholar. He is primarily remembered today as the author of the HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, the major source for Anglo-Saxon England and the finest history of its era. (Bede is much less credulous about dodgy reports of miracles than, say the Frankish historian Gregory of Tours.) He originated the pattern of seeing the history of England as the working-out of God's plans for its people, in the same way that the Old Testament shows the working out of His plans for Israel. Of course we are not English and may look on this view somewhat differently, but it is nonetheless an example of legitimate Christian patriotism which those of any nation can admire.
As an Anglo-Saxon he does have certain biases (particularly against the Welsh) but he gives moving testimony to the work of the early Irish missionaries from Iona. such as St. Aidan of Lindisfarne. Through him we know something of the lives and works of such men as St. Aidan of Lindisfarne (as well as English saints such as St. Cuthbert, the founder of Durham). Although Bede held these Irish missionaries mistaken in their way of calculating Easter (which led to their eventual return to Iona when they would not accept the Roman calculation) he emphasises that they served the same Lord and the same Gospel, and holds them up for veneration. To Catholic and Anglican alike this is a precious heritage which has comforted many throughout the ages. Basil Cardinal Hume came from Newcastle, and there is a statue of him in that city near the central railway station; it is set against a backdrop of the Farne Islands near the Scots border, the site of St. Aidan's monastery and St. Cuthbert's hermitage.
Bede is regarded as a scientific pioneer of his day (he made advances in methods of computing time and measuring the tides) but this was part of his wider basic purpose which was liturgical. Similarly, the importance of the dispute about the date of Easter cannot be ralised unless we realise that he saw the liturgy as the place where earth touches heaven, centred on Easter. In recent times I have made attempts to read the Office daily (with only intermittent success because of work pressure) and I try to attend Mass daily if I can; and it is only by doing this that I have got some sense of the liturgical cycle and how it relates and incorporates God's covenants and Jesus' preaching both in the cycle of the year and of the individual life. It reminds me how far the Bible is a liturgical book and is best understood not through isolated critical scholarship but through liturgical use.
This has always been at the heart of the Benedictine vocation, and this is what the attempt to revive and make available the riches of the older form of the Latin Rite is about. This is what Bede tried to achieve in his commentaries when he drew on the Fathers of the Church to bring out the symbolic meanings of the Biblical texts and apply them to our struggles in everyday life. Bede also composed many homilies expounding the Biblical text for his hearers and prepared Anglo-Saxon paraphrases of the gospels. When he died he was working on a translation of the Gospel of St. John.
Bede's disciple Cuthbert has left a contemporary eyewitness acoount of the old man's last days; of how he continued to dictate his translation even as his health failed and his feet swelled (indicating circulatory failure, we would say now); how he distributed what few possession he had among the brethren; how at the last he asked to be placed in that spot in his cell where he had prayed, and died a peaceful and holy death among the assmebled monks.
Because Bede wrote in Latin rather than Anglo-Saxon, his work was widely accessible to scholars, and the scribes of Jarrow were hard-pressed to supply copies to the continent. Every generation since his own has known of Bede (this is not the case of the surviving works of Anglo-Saxon literature, which lay neglected for centuries before being rediscovered). Dante placed him in Paradise; Pope Leo XIII declared him the only English Doctor of the Church.
Jarrow was devastated by the Vikings, though there was a later Norman foundation. His bones were removed by fair means or foul to Durham; his shrine was destroyed at the Reformation and his bones and those of St. Cuthbert reinterred in the Galilee Chapel. They were re-excavated in the nineteenth century and replaced in the chapel. Some decades ago an Anglican dean of Durham placed above the grave a quotation from one of Bede's commentaries, whose imagery may strike a chord with readers of JRR Tolkien's works: CHRIST IS THE MORNING STAR WHO, WHEN THE NIGHT OF THIS WORLD IS PAST, BRINGS TO HIS SAINTS THE PROMISE OF THE LIGHT OF LIFE AND OPENS EVERLASTING DAY.
Some concluding thoughts tomorrow.
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Saints
Aug 5, 2009 12:12:33 GMT
Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 5, 2009 12:12:33 GMT
Why not leave this thread for the topic of calendar saints and move the discussion on a new thread on the 'truth or superstition' forum under the topic 'The Canonisation Process' or something?
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