Out of the Ashes Flies a Bird of Great Beauty!
Gregory the Great, Giles of Provence, Aiden and Matthew 18:18:
Gregory the Great, Giles of Provence, Aiden and Matthew 18:18:
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on
earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed
in heaven’.[1]
This week has given us great
opportunities for contemplating many saints who have left us an inheritance of
great value. On Wednesday we had the feast day of St Aiden, that great
missionary of Iona who evangelised much of northern England. Aiden was the
pupil of St Columba and came from the tradition of Monks from the great
Monastery on Iona of the sixth, seventh and later centuries. Other monks of
this tradition include Cuthbert and Bede, but it is Aiden who first took up the
mantle from Columba and laid a very solid platform in the north of our country
which others were to later build upon.[2]
Then on Thursday we had the feast day of
Giles of Provence, a very popular hermit of the eighth century. In the
centuries following his death, a huge cult began to grow around Giles and even
here in England many churches of tenth century origin bear his name. Today,
however, very little is now known about this hermit, aside from his endearing
legend as a man of great self-sacrifice and faith.[3]
On Saturday we had the feast day of Gregory the Great, the greatest of the
popes who bear the name Gregory. He died in 604AD. Gregory the Great was the
first pope to come out of the cloister, first becoming a monk at the age of
thirty five. It appears that Gregory had great skill in uniting people of
different nations under the one religion and managed to order Rome’s assets so
that more money could be used more efficiently for the poor. It is said that
after Gregory saw an Anglo-Saxon for sale at a slave market in Rome, he felt
compelled to send missionaries to England: over forty monks from his own
monastery, which included the man we know as Augustine of Canterbury.[4]
Gregory’s great achievements came on the back of a time when the Western
Church had been very vulnerable indeed, and much of the reordering that Gregory
brought about was in direct response to problems that he had inherited.
Equally, Aiden’s great success in proclaiming the Gospel and evangelising
the North of England came out of a period of great darkness. There was a reason
why the North needed evangelising!
Be that as it may, many find what took place during these centuries and
the great spiritual focus that developed within the whole society as a result
quite awe inspiring. This was a time when much of the Western world appeared
very spiritually alive and very much in tune with the natural order. Especially
when we look at the kind of society we seem to inhabit today.
For many of us, the riots that we experienced a few weeks ago came as a
shock, but not a surprise. The spiritual poverty that has been developing in
our society over the past forty or fifty years comes at a price. A society impoverished
from its spiritual core brings with it spiritually impoverished thinking and
actions. If every individual is educated in the pursuit of individual
self-interest and monetary gain at the expense of all else, then we must expect
increasing numbers of our society to do whatever they can to benefit themselves
alone. Thus, today’s world can look like a very dark place indeed.
But before we give up on it all, we should perhaps take a step back,
because ‘whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever we
loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ This is a very sobering thought, and
a very important one. Our world appears dark only because we have forgotten
what it is like to be completely spiritually aware, completely in tune with the
natural order of things.
The great saints of our church were not born into sainthood. They simply discovered
this spiritual awareness and once in-tune with the natural order of things then
mastered the ability to teach others the same. This can be our focus too...
Last Saturday I returned home from a holiday in Ireland. It was a
beautiful holiday, but a very tiring one. We took our own car and drove and so
just the outward and inward journeys alone took 12 hours each. After arriving
home, I needed a day just to recover! So on Sunday I settled down to a nice
relaxing afternoon listening to the football. My beloved Arsenal were away to
Manchester United. 8 goals later...
Arsenal experienced their worst defeat for over a century.
But out of these ashes began to grow glimmers of hope. Over the next few
days, Arsenal purchased a world-class Brazilian right-back, a world-class
German centre-half, a world class Spanish midfielder and a world-class
South-Korean striker. Suddenly the future begins to look very bright indeed.
The same is true of our Christian inheritance. Throughout Christian
history cycles have emerged which see great gains in spiritual awareness
followed by periods of complacency, inward focus and a pursuit of worldly
values. These rock the faith to its core. Whether these periods are necessary
for fresh further spiritual growth or not, they are very uncomfortable to live
through at the time. Western Christianity may well just be coming out of one of
these periods, but in amongst the ashes we can see the embers of something very
exciting indeed.
The phoenix is a bird enfolded in
mythology. It is a sacred firebird that can be found in the mythologies of the
Arabian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian and Phoenician
cultures.[5]
A phoenix is a mythical bird with a colorful
plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet. It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle.
Mythology has it that when it nears the end of this period it builds itself a
nest of twigs. It then ignites and both nest and bird burn fiercely and are
reduced to ashes. All seems lost, but then from out of the ashes rises a new,
young phoenix reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as
long as its old self and is twice as splendid. Out of the ashes flies a bird of great beauty!
I am convinced that this is the future of our
Christian faith. Having lived through the building of the nice comfortable nest
and then watched it begin to disintegrate before our very eyes, we now find
ourselves confronted with something materializing that is twice as splendid as
what has gone before. Out of the ashes will
fly a bird of great beauty!
Whilst the works of Gregory, Giles and Aiden
might seem magnificent, and they truly are, they are no more magnificent than
the daily works of the people I see before me. Just like these saints of the
first millennium, you are the ones whom God calls to bring about a renewed
spiritual focus for our time. Therefore, use whatever you have at your disposal
to help those in our society out of their spiritual impoverishment. Who knows, they
might just become the Gregory and the Aiden of the next century.
Out
of the ashes will fly a bird of great beauty!
Amen
R.T. Parker-McGee 2012
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