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St. Aidan of Lindisfarne
Do you have details of other Orthodox Churches dedicated to St. Aidan with or without web sites? Please let me know and I will refer to them or link them here. Contact:- orthodox@clara.net St. Aidan Orthodox Mission Station of the Kootenays, British Colombia, Canada St. Aidan and St. Chad Orthodox Church, Nottingham, UK
Liturgical Material for the Saint St. Aidan was the first bishop and abbot of Lindisfarne, the small island off the coast of northern England, located between present-day Berwick-on-Tweed and Bamburgh. A native of Ireland, he was born in the latter part of the sixth century and became a monk of Iona, where St. Columba had established his monastery earlier. When King Oswald of Northumbria requested a bishop to help convert his pagan subjects, Aidan was consecrated and arrived in Northumbria in 635. He made his headquarters on Lindisfarne. From there he evangelised and founded missionary outposts, including a monastery at Melrose. Among his many Anglo Saxon proteges were St. Hilda of Whitby and St. Cuthbert. His biographer, the Venerable Bede, wrote more affectionately of Aidan than possibly any other saint except Cuthbert. The qualities that appealed to Bede were the very ones that contributed to St. Aidan's appeal as a teacher: passionate love of goodness, tempered with humility, warmth and gentleness. Stories of St. Aidan also clearly reflect one of the most ancient and enduring traits of authentic Christian spirituality: concern for and love of the poor and strangers ... St. Aidan died in 651. His feast day is celebrated on 31 August. from "Wisdom of the Celtic Saints" by Edward C Sellner, Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1993, page 49f. ISBN: 0-87793-492-4 (well worth having! written by a sympathetic Catholic) The actual Lindisfarne Gospels are housed in the British Library (Sacred Texts Exhibit) in London and this is well worth a visit. The figures of the Evangelists all reveal that spiritual formalism which is inherent in the icon but in a very definite Old English / Celtic style. Preaching the Gospel In the Other End of Nowhere by Fr. Lawrence Farley St. Aidan’s Legacy
The 31st August sees the celebration of the Feast of St. Aidan, the patron saint of our community in Manchester. The facts of St. Aidan’s life and work are well known but there are three aspects that often escape attention. First, St. Aidan was not the first monk from Iona to land in the northeast. The first returned post haste with lurid stories of the barbarism of the inhabitants and their resistance to the gospel. St. Aidan was wisely sent as a successor on the grounds that he was able to distinguish capacity for "spiritual milk" rather than "spiritual meat." "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food." (Hebrews 5:12) We do not know much more about this as a practical methodology but we do know of St. Aidan’s great humility and his commitment to education of the young, witness his establishment of a school for local youngsters on the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne which later produced both saints and bishops of the Church. Perhaps we should say that the saint knew what to share with the condition and temperament of each person according to the local culture. In the conditions of Church and Society today we must follow this same pattern. We must not simply expect those who know next to nothing about Christianity to embrace the fullness and richness of Orthodoxy "in one go." Those who have barely tasted and known that "the Lord is good," (1 Peter 2:2) can hardly be expected to understand the nuances of the "filioque" or the Orthodox sacramental theology … but they can be Orthodox Christians! Working out what that means is the Orthodox mission task for today. St. Aidan did not do any of this alone though as, initially, he did not even know the local language … which brings me to my second point. St. Aidan enlisted the help of others in his great task, no less than the king (later himself to be a saint, Oswald) who became his interpreter on his evangelistic journeys through the northeast. He also had the foresight to know that the Church had to be built through both sanctity and community … something, in a sense, that would be second nature to him as a monk of Iona. Similarly today, our mission task is a collaborative effort, a community based initiative, enlisting gifts and skills, sometimes from the most unusual quarters. There exist a plethora of voluntary activities and organisations today for various charitable causes but the Church cannot nor should not simply compete with these. Our missionary rationale is quite different. We serve because He served, we lay down our lives because He lay down his life, we preach the words of life because we have been given life. Orthodox missionary work is wholly about God the Life-Giver and bringing others to know Him and the gift of the gospel, each according to his own capacity and need. Finally, and curiously perhaps for our purpose here, the Lindisfarne monastic community did not survive St. Aidan for more than two centuries, which is a short time of course in the life of the Church. In 875 AD the monks hurriedly left as the Viking raids along the east coast became more persistent and dangerous. They fled with St. Cuthbert’s body, arguably, Lindisfarne’s greatest son. St. Aidan’s legacy, however, did not die with these terrible events. His witness is not limited to temporal constraints and human empires and therein lies his greatness and significance for the Church today. Our churches may well not survive in their present form. Historically, they have been closed by Muslims, atheists, communists, fascists. They have been plundered by invading armies. Their people have been persecuted, killed, scattered across the globe … just like the scattered children of Lindisfarne although on a much, much bigger scale. Orthodox Christianity, however, is not quenched by such attacks, such impermanence in its earthly foundations. Our life is hid in Christ and no one can touch that. This is what has preserved St. Aidan’s witness to this day. Against this faith and life the gates of hell itself can never prevail. Be of good courage, therefore, Christ has overcome … and so shall we! Troparion of St Aidan (tone 5) Kontakion of St Aidan (tone 2) |
