St Cuthbert (3) - Cuthbert, the “Haliwerfolc”, and the Scots

During the medieval period, St Cuthbert became politically important in defining the identity of the people living in the semi-autonomous region known as the Palatinate of Durham. Within this area the Bishop of Durham had almost as much power as the king of England himself, and the saint became a powerful symbol of the autonomy the region enjoyed.

The inhabitants of the Palatinate became known as the haliwerfolc, which roughly translates as “people of the saint”, and Cuthbert gained a reputation as being fiercely protective of his domain. For example, there is a story that at the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346, the Prior of the Abbey at Durham received a vision of Cuthbert, ordering him to take the corporax cloth of the saint and raise it on a spear point near the battlefield as a banner.

Doing this, the Prior and his monks found themselves protected “by the mediation of holy St Cuthbert and the presence of the said holy Relic”. Whether the story of the vision is true or not, the banner of St Cuthbert was regularly carried in battle against the Scots until the Reformation, and it serves as a good example of how St Cuthbert was regarded as a protector of his people.

(Taken from Wikipedia)

St Cuthbert (2) - Bede on Cuthbert

In his Life of St Cuthbert, Bede offers an insight into Cuthbert the Man of Prayer and Cuthbert the Wonderworker:

Now one night, a brother of the monastery, seeing him go out alone followed him privately to see what he should do. But he when he left the monastery, went down to the sea, which flows beneath, and going into it, until the water reached his neck and arms, spent the night in praising God.

When the dawn of day approached, he came out of the water, and, falling on his knees, began to pray again. Whilst he was doing this, two quadrupeds, called otters, came up from the sea, and, lying down before him on the sand, breathed upon his feet, and wiped them with their hair after which, having received his blessing, they returned to their native element.

Cuthbert himself returned home in time to join in the accustomed hymns with the other brethren. The brother, who waited for him on the heights, was so terrified that he could hardly reach home; and early in the morning he came and fell at his feet, asking his pardon, for he did not doubt that Cuthbert was fully acquainted with all that had taken place.

To whom Cuthbert replied, “What is the matter, my brother? What have you done? Did you follow me to see what I was about to do? I forgive you for it on one condition,-that you tell it to nobody before my death”. In this he followed the example of our Lord, who, when He showed his glory to his disciples on the mountain, said, “See that you tell no man, until the Son of man be risen from the dead”.

When the brother had assented to this condition, he give him his blessing, and released him from all his trouble. The man concealed this miracle during St. Cuthbert's life; but, after his death, took care to tell it to as many persons as he was able.

As this holy shepherd of Christ's flock was going round visiting his folds, he came to a mountainous and wild place, where many people had got together from all the adjoining villages, that he might lay his hands upon them. But among the mountains no fit church or place could be found to receive the bishop and his attendants. They therefore pitched tents for him in the road, and each cut branches from the trees in the neighbouring wood to make for him self the best sort of covering that he was able.

Two days did the man of God preach to the assembled crowds; and minister the grace of the Holy Spirit by imposition of hands upon those that were regenerate in Christ; when, on a sudden, there appeared some women bearing on a bed a young man, wasted by severe illness, and having placed him down at the outlet of the wood, sent to the bishop, requesting permission to bring him, that he might receive a blessing from the holy man.

When he was brought near, the bishop perceived that his sufferings were great, and ordered all to retire to a distance.

He then betook himself to his usual weapon, prayer, and bestowing his blessing, expelled the fever, which all the care and medicines of the physicians had not been able to cure. In short, he rose up the same hour, and having refreshed him self with food, and given thanks to God, walked back to the women who had brought him. And so it came to pass, that whereas they had in sorrow brought the sick man thither, he now returned home with them, safe and well, and all rejoicing, both he and they alike.

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.

St Irenaeus on Law

Friday’s patristic reading at Vigil’s was taking from the Adversus Haereses of St Irenaeus of Lyons (2^nd century AD), and dealt with the difference between the Law of Moses and the “new covenant of liberty” introduced by Christ. Here are some highlights from a theologically meaty reading:

When…righteousness and love of God had passed into oblivion, and became extinct in Egypt, God did necessarily, because of His great goodwill to men, reveal Himself by a voice, and led the people with power out of Egypt, in order that man might again become the disciple and follower of God…

…He enjoined love of God, and taught just dealing towards our neighbour, that we should neither be unjust nor unworthy of God, who prepares man for His friendship through the medium of the Decalogue, and likewise for agreement with his neighbour…

…Now these things did indeed make man glorious, by supplying what was wanting to him, namely, the friendship of God….For the glory of God was wanting to man, which he could obtain in no other way than by serving God.

And therefore Moses says to them again: “Choose life, that you may live…to love the Lord your God, to hear His voice, to cleave unto Him; for this is your life.

Preparing man for this life, the Lord Himself did speak in His own person to all alike the words of the Decalogue; and therefore, in like manner, do they remain permanently with us, receiving by means of His advent in the flesh, extension and increase, but not abrogation…

…Those things, therefore, which were given for bondage, and for a sign to them, He cancelled by the new covenant of liberty. But He has increased and widened those laws which are natural, and noble, and common to all, granting to men largely and without grudging, by means of adoption, to know God the Father, and to love Him with the whole heart, and to follow His word unswervingly, while they abstain not only from evil deeds, but even from the desire after them.

But He has also increased the feeling of reverence; for sons should have more veneration than slaves, and greater love for their father…that we may know that we shall give account to God not of deeds only, as slaves, but even of words and thoughts, as those who have truly received the power of liberty, in which [condition] a man is more severely tested, whether he will reverence, and fear, and love the Lord.

More on "Divinization"

A few weeks ago I put up some posts about the idea of salvation as theosis or “divinization”. Acolyte4236 has recently added to the debate in the combox by underlining the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox approaches to divinization (Acolyte4236 writes from an Orthodox perspective), with particular reference to the differences between the soteriologies of Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas (1296-1359).

Basically, Catholic advocates of the idea of theosis have tended to see divinization in terms of imitatio and of a created likeness to the divine nature, whereas Orthodox theologians think more in terms of a participation – a kind of bodily and spiritual immersion – in the uncreated energies of the Godhead.

The debates between Thomists and Palamites are too complicated to address adequately in a blog-post, but, if anyone wants to get an idea of how Orthodox theologians understand this participation, the articles on Palamas and on essence and energies at Wikipedia seem like useful introductions, and the essays on St Gregory Palamas by M.C. Steenberg on his excellent monachos.net website are well worth consulting.

My own view is that a rediscovery of the “existentialist” (in Etienne Gilson’s sense of the word) and Trinitarian dimensions of Aquinas’s thought could help carry the debate forward.

An Alternative to Comic Relief

Mulier Fortis and Fr Tim Finigan have both written excellent posts about Comic Relief (aka “Red Nose Day”), pointing out that it gives money to some morally objectionable causes such as promoting abortion in the third world.

I’m always suspicious of “Big Charity”, and of the idea that The State, or Oxfam, or Cafod, or Comic Relief, can be relied upon to spend our money in a wise and ethical way.

That being the case, I’d like to put in a plug for The Little Way Association. They fund missionaries and medical workers, mostly in the third world. They help establish and maintain convents.

They provide food, education and health-care for people in some of the most deprived parts of the planet.

They help the homeless build houses. They help communities build chapels, medical centers, etc. They’re steeped in the spirituality of St Thérèse of Lisieux, and they see themselves as perpetuating her charism and mission.

They don’t seem to have a website, but, if you write to them, they send a copiously illustrated quarterly magazine with loads of information about their wide range of appeals and projects.

The LWA doesn’t say to you (as Comic Relief does) "we know best how to spend your money". On the contrary, the LWA lets you choose on what project your money is to be spent and which priest/sister/brother is going to be responsible for spending it.

It’s all very personal. You really can specify which of the projects you want to give money to – to the extent that you can say “I want to make a donation to Sister Mariana in Bolivia to help with her project looking after street-children in La Paz”.

You can contact the LWA at

The Little Way Association
Sacred Heart House
119 Cedars Road
London
SW4 0PR

Tel: 02076227413

Registered charity number: 235703

St Leo the Great: Fasting from Heresy

According to St Leo the Great, the Lenten fast is a fast from error as well as a fast from food and other worldly pleasures.

When he speaks of “error”, Leo always means error concerning the fact that Jesus Christ is truly human and truly divine, that he truly suffered and died for our redemption, that he truly rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and that he is truly present in the Eucharist.

For Leo, Lent prepares us to participate worthily in the Easter festival, and this preparation involves both “mortification of the flesh” and “purification of the mind”.

Leo also sees Lent as a time when the devil attacks Christians and the Church with renewed hostility, and these attacks include temptations to heresy. Firm adhesion to the teachings of the Creed helps to defeat the wiles of the devil, and at the same time prepares us for the outpouring of Christ’s grace at Easter.

From Sermon 46,1; 3.

because the right practice of abstinence is needful not only to the mortification of the flesh but also to the purification of the mind, we desire your observance to be so complete that, as you cut down the pleasures that belong to the lusts of the flesh, so you should banish the errors that proceed from the imaginations of the heart. For he whose heart is not polluted with false belief prepares himself with true and reasonable purification for the paschal feast, in which all the mysteries of our religion meet together.

For the mind then only keeps holy and spiritual fast when it rejects the food of error and the poison of falsehood, which our crafty and wily foe plies us with more treacherously now, when by the very return of the venerable festival, the whole church generally is admonished to understand the mysteries of its salvation. For he is the true confessor and worshipper of Christ’s resurrection, who is not confused about His passion, nor deceived about His bodily nativity.

This belief in the Lord’s incarnation, dearly-beloved, through which the whole Church is Christ’s body hold firm with heart unshaken and abstain from all the lies of heretics, and remember that your works of mercy will only then profit you, and your strict continence only then bear fruit, when your minds are unsoiled by any defilement from wrong opinions. Cast away the arguments of this world’s wisdom, for God hates them, and none can arrive by them at the knowledge of the Truth, and keep fixed in your mind that which you say in the Creed.