St Cuthbert (1) - Cuthbert the Wonderworker

Today (March 20th) is the Feast of St Cuthbert.

Born in Britain around 635AD, Saint Cuthbert entered the monastery of Melrose by the River Tweed at a youthful age. For many years he devoted himself to preaching the gospel and healing the sick in isolated country villages by day and to long prayer-vigils by night.

In 676 retired to a cave to live the life of a hermit, settling on one of the Farne Islands just south of Lindisfarne and giving himself over to a life of prayer and austerity.

Initially he used to receive visitors and wash their feet, but later kept to his cell and gave blessings through its open window. He introduced special laws to protect the Eider and other seabirds nesting on the Farne Islands – the first bird protection laws anywhere in the world.

After eight years as a solitary he was become Bishop of Lindisfarne, serving for two years before returning to his hermitage two months before his death in 687.

His miracles (both during his life and after his death) earned him the title of “Wonderworker of Britain”. Eleven years after his death, his holy relics were revealed to be incorrupt, as they were when his body was translated from Lindisfarne to Durham Cathedral in August of 1104, and when the impious Henry VIII desecrated his shrine in 1537.

St Bede the Venerable writes of St Cuthbert as follows:

And such was Cuthbert’s skill in speaking, so keen his desire to persuade men of what he taught, such a light shone in his angelic face, that no man present dared to conceal from him the secrets of his heart, but all openly revealed in confession what they had done, thinking doubtless that their guilt could in nowise be hidden from him; and having confessed their sins, they wiped them out by fruits worthy of repentance, as he bade them.

He was wont chiefly to resort to those places and preach in those villages which were situated afar off amid steep and wild mountains, so that others dreaded to go thither, and whereof the poverty and barbarity rendered them inaccessible to other teachers.

But he, devoting himself entirely to that pious labour, so industriously ministered to them with his wise teaching, that when he went forth from the monastery, he would often stay a whole week, sometimes two or three, or even sometimes a full month, before he returned home, continuing among the hill folk to call that simple people by his preaching and good works to the things of Heaven.

From St Bede the Venerable: Ecclesiastical History IV, 17.