Kindle Our Hope

Feast of St. Aidan: Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Bk 3, Ch 5

Ps 103:13-18; 1 Cor 9:16-23; Mt 19:27-30

The Rev. Cameron Partridge

August 31, 2025

Good Morning, St. Aidan’s. Happy Feast Day! As you know, the Feast of our namesake, our patron, Aidan of Lindisfarne, is today, the day of his death, his birth into eternal life, August 31, 651 C.E. We know this date because it was recorded by the monastic historical writer of early medieval, Anglo-Saxon England, the Venerable Bede (673-735 C.E.) who lived within a century of Aidan.[1] It is clear from Bede’s reflections on Aidan, scattered across several passages in his ecclesiastical history, that he has great respect for his leadership. Aidan is remembered as a wise and gentle monk who never aspired to the particular ministry he ended up carrying out, a bishop who helped renew and grow Christian community and life in Northumbria in a time of danger and struggle. As we consider his legacy today, how his life might speak to us in this moment, I am struck by its relational orientation, its generativity, and its persistence even in the midst of grave danger.

A strikingly consistent descriptor of Aidan is gentleness. It comes through in the passage we heard in our first reading from the Venerable Bede. The scene is the monastery at Iona where Aidan’s monastic life and ministry began. Iona is a monastery and ancient center of Celtic learning located on the west coast of Scotland amid the group of islands known as the Hebrides. The monastery had been founded in 563 C.E. by the Irish monk Columba (521-597 C.E.).[2] In fact, Iona became known as a place of Irish Christian influence, which is why we hear King Oswald referring to the monks as “the Irish.” In response to Oswald’s request, these Irish sent someone out to preach and teach, but this person was markedly unsuccessful. The problem? He was unduly harsh – “a man of austere disposition.” His complaint that the people were “ungovernable,” “obstinate,” and “barbarous” sounds stilted.[3] Aidan suggests as much through a combination of directness and reasonableness. Drawing on the Apostle Paul’s image of feeding with milk before more challenging fare (1 Cor 3:2), Aidan immediately captures the attention of his colleagues. Observing his particular gift of discretion, including how to say something challenging in a way that can be heard, his colleagues realized they could see him in this role of renewal, planting, and oversight. Or as Marilyn Geist put it in the introduction at the beginning of our booklet, “As happens to those who speak up, he was promptly consecrated bishop and given the job.”  We don’t hear from Bede of Aidan’s his reaction to this sudden turn. However he may have felt, he was off to the races. But the heart of his community’s discernment, “the grace of discretion,” is noteworthy. They seemed to see in him someone who could pay attention to his context and speak to it with care as well as clarity. He was relationally responsible—he cultivated and honored connections with the people among whom he shared in building community. He prayed for them, he worked with them, he respected them. Yes, he was gentle, but that quality seems to me to point to a deeper, relational way of being in ministry and in life. This is a quality worth being reminded of in a moment in our country and around the world, and in local life, that valorizes a kind of anti-relationality, the imposing of will, the disregard of impact, the blustering forward no matter what, the sounding off.  

Another quality of Aidan that speaks strongly in this moment is the generativity of his ministry. As a bishop he was charged with oversight – this is what episkopé means at its root. Yet his project was not simply to oversee what already existed but to help bring it back, to start it afresh. His predecessor Bishop Paulinus of York had established Christian communities in Northumbria with the encouragement of the previous king, Edwin, but after Edwin’s death the leadership that followed sought to remove Christianity from the area. Aidan had come from Iona, not from Canterbury, and the Christianity he fostered had a different tone, both Celtic and monastic.[4] Forming a monastery on a tidal island, Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England, he led a life of prayer and worship, of visiting and encouraging, and of lifting up local leaders. He supported the vocations of twelve young leaders who went on to deepen the roots of Christian community in the region.[5] Our reading from Matthew’s gospel reflects this iconically apostolic number, but it also uses a word that points toward this generative heart of Aidan’s ministry: Παλιγγενεσία. The term means a new birth, regeneration, renovation. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says in our passage, “at the [παλιγγενεσίᾳ] renewal of all things, when the Son of Humanity is seated [in] glory, you who have followed me” will do so as well. These twelve are then described in ascetic terms, as people who have turned and gone out into the world as followers of Jesus, relinquishing the trappings of a more secure, culturally expected life (Mt 19:28-29). The leaders Aidan lifted up were creative and resourceful. They ran schools and monasteries, they wrote and preserved learning, including the Celtic tradition of illuminated manuscripts as our introduction from Marilyn Geist emphasized. Aidan’s ministry exudes a generative wisdom and energy sorely needed in this moment.

Additionally significant is how all of this took place amid danger and precarity, which points to the role of persistence and perseverance in Aidan’s ministry. The whole Northumbria project came about because of the political turbulence of the era. Rulers fought for territory and influence, and they did so violently. One such ruler, Penda of the nearby region of Mercia, comes up repeatedly in stories of Aidan. His warriors attacked towns, burning them down. In one story, Penda’s troops tried to burn down the royal city of Bamburgh using beams, wattled walls, and thatched roofs from the towns they had already ransacked to basically provide kindling. Aidan could see their approach from his place of prayer on one of the Farne Islands, a smaller, rockier island near the larger Lindisfarne. Bede reports, “when the saint saw the column of smoke and flame wafter by the winds above the city walls, he is said to have raised his eyes and hands to heaven, saying with tears: ‘Lord, see what evil Penda does!’ No sooner had he spoken than the wind shifted away from the city and drove back the flames on to those who had kindled them.”[6] They abandoned their attack on the city, not wanting to assail God’s own protection. Talk about powerful prayer! This is far from Aidan’s only encounter with Penda. Indeed, he would die before Penda, leaning up against a church beam that subsequent fires would leave untouched.[7] But notice how this prayerful turning of the wind works: Aidan asks God to see what this tyrannical monarch, whom he specifically describes as evil, is doing. Behold, O God, the arrogance of this leader. Behold the destruction he seeks to inflict upon this city. See the horror, O God. Even if God already saw it—for surely God did and does – there is something about the naming of evil as we see it, asking God to see it, that is crucial to the prayer Aidan models. This is the engine of his persistence. Grounded in his monastic vocation, yet easily accessible to any of us. See, O God, what we see. Hear, O God, our cries. We can add more specific requests to be sure, even if Aidan’s prayer did not need to ask for the wind to turn. Persistence in prayer, in visiting and cultivating, in being-in-relation – these are Aidan qualities for this moment. I know I need them as I struggle each and every day with the news of our world, our country, our state and region.

Last month our family had a chance to breathe and enjoy time together in the beauty of Lake Tahoe and its surrounding mountains for two weeks. When we go, we hike. Usually we do at least one big climb. This year the four of us did a few smaller ones while our oldest and I tackled one from my bucket list: Pyramid Peak, the tallest mountain in the Desolation Wilderness at just under 10,000 feet. I’ve looked at it for years, even in a painting by one of my great, great aunts that hangs in our dining room. As day hikers, the one route available to us was the so-called Rocky Canyon route, which ascends 4100 feet. Wikipedia describes it as “the mountain's most popular approach although it is very arduous.”[8] When an All Trails reviewer said a member of their group had vomited during the early part of the hike due its arduousness, I thought that seemed a little overly dramatic. But no, it wasn’t. We nearly turned around several times within the first hour. We called Kateri on speaker phone at one point, just to share how terrible it was. We agreed to take it section by section, stopping as much as we wanted, knowing we could turn around at any point. But then, amid that steep ravine, something shifted. We started to feel better, truly taking in the beauty around us. It was also an unusual beauty in this early stage: we were in a burn scar from the Caldor Fire. Many of the trees around us were charred sticks pointing to the sky. But below, where we struggled upward, the verdant landscape was stunning. All sorts of green growth reached up toward the sunlight, fed by snow runoff and the stream below. Wildflowers were stunningly abundant. I took a photo and – I couldn’t help myself – I texted it to our parish administrator Cary saying simply, “I’m working on the cover of the Lent booklet.” It felt like we were in the arduous yet beautiful churn of the renewal of all things. In the wake of calamity, new life was emerging that would have been unimaginable on August 31, 2021,[9] a day I remember posting a prayer recalling that Aidan is the patron saint of fire fighters. Over the ten and a half hours of our hike we saw more life, more possibility, more hope. Finally arriving at the top (or pretty much, but that’s another story) we confirmed that going down was just as arduous (if not more so – I’m still in the process of losing a toenail). We were exhausted and exhilarated. We had climbed in relation; persisted through overwhelm and destruction; we had seen signs of God’s boundless creativity to bring new life out of death, tendrils of hope and possibility for a time such as this.

  This morning, in the spirit of Aidan, together with you, I lift up these longings to the God who made us, redeemed us in Jesus Christ, and abides with us in the Holy Spirit: for a renewed recognition, especially among the leadership of this country, that relationships are sacred; that what we say and how we say it matters; that creation is not to be disregarded but honored; that human beings are not to be demonized, cast out, but treated with dignity and respect. O God, I long for the renewal of all things, which is your kin-dom, your reign, what Verna Dozier called your dream:[10] the upending of our systems of status and power, the uplifting of all whom those systems consider last, the planting of divine justice on earth. Your kingdom come, O God, and generate new life and love. Light our imaginations on fire and push away the flames of destruction. And in the wake of destruction, O God, kindle our hope with your persistent beauty. Amen.

[1] Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 177.

[2] Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 843

[3] Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People trans. By Leo Sherley-Price, revised by R.E. Latham (London, UK: Penguin Random House,1965, 1995), p. 151.

[4] Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 31

[5] Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 31

[6] Bede, Ecclesiastical History, p. 168

[7] Bede, Ecclesiastical History, p. 169

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Peak_(California)

[9] https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2021/8/14/caldor-fire/updates/b75f9abc-db44-4658-aaa2-cb38c96fa0e0

[10] Verna Dozier, The Dream of God: A Call to Return (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1991).