One of Father Faber’s legacies at the London Oratory is an extensive library on the lives of the saints. A good number of these volumes were written by the Oratory Fathers themselves, in a series which began with Father Faber’s own biography of St Wilfrid, the Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Northumbria and one of our house’s patrons. The feast of another great missionary, whose life and apostolate overlapped with that of St Wilfrid, is celebrated on 3rd December. Saint Birinus was a Frankish monk who became the first Bishop of Dorchester in the 630s and is venerated as “Apostle to the West Saxons” for his conversion of the Kingdom of Wessex to Christianity. The most prominent monument to this saint is the beautiful Catholic church of St Birinus in Dorchester-on-Thames, magnificently restored and embellished by the parish’s present incumbent.
It has to be confessed that a search through that thick forest of hagiography in the Oratory library yields little material on St Birinus. But the fact that most of the details of his earthly life seem to have been lost in time does not diminish the brilliance of his achievements or the power of his intercessions for us at the Throne of Grace. What we do know about his mission provides rich material for inspiration and encouragement. One miracle that is recounted tells how, on setting out by boat on his missionary endeavours, he suddenly remembered that he had left behind some prerequisite for Mass. At once he jumped overboard, swam back to land to retrieve what he needed, and was lifted back into the boat as dry as he had been before disappearing over the side. This miracle led to the conversion of the pagan crew.
Birinus’ mission was carried out in a time of particular turmoil and intrigue within the Church. When he left Rome to begin his mission, the incumbent of the See of Peter was Pope Honorius I. This pope had some marvellous qualities, but the memory of his pontificate has been forever tarnished by one grave failing: he was one of those popes, mercifully few in history, who have allied themselves with heretics. Contrary to the Catholic teaching that in Christ there are two wills, human and divine, Honorius allowed himself to be associated with those who argued that Our Lord only possessed one divine will. This constituted an assault on the perfect human nature of the Word Made Flesh. While the Holy Ghost’s protection of the Church prevented him from ever proclaiming this gross error ex cathedra, his fence-sitting on the matter led to the singular embarrassment of a Pope being posthumously anathematized by name at the Third Council of Constantinople in 680.
When an elected successor of St Peter, the rock on whom Our Lord founded His Church, becomes wobbly on doctrine either by omission or commission, then one can only imagine that this must be like a virus attacking the central nervous system of the Body of Christ on earth. Along with the scheming and division that heresy always engenders, it can only afflict the whole organism with devitalisation and debilitation. But young Birinus did not allow himself to become devitalised or debilitated by this malady deep within the Church. Instead, he left his cell in Rome and launched out on his mission to convert the pagan northerners with a heart on fire with supernatural Faith, Hope and Charity. Like that water that did not even dampen his clothes when he jumped into the sea, error and intrigue had no hold on him.
If Rome at this time was a hotbed of political manoeuvring and theological conflict, England presented its own challenges. Paganism was still deeply entrenched, and it would be centuries before the different kingdoms would be united in one realm. Undaunted by the hostility of the heathens, however, Birinus travelled tirelessly, preaching and consecrating churches. In converting the Kingdom of Wessex he ploughed the rich earth of this region and planted a vineyard which would yield magnificent harvests in the golden age of King Alfred. Birinus laid the foundation for the cultural and religious flourishing that characterised Anglo-Saxon England.
Fourteen hundred years later, we might be tempted to ask what have we to show for those achievements? We find ourselves in a post Christian society, in which life and death decisions are made without any deference to the laws that the Creator has written into human nature. The Ten Commandments, which God revealed to Moses amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, are disdained by our politicians, some of the most prominent of whom have been educated at establishments that were originally dedicated to great saints. Has the Christian patrimony that made this country and Europe civilised not been squandered, almost to the last penny?
This is why we need to pray to St Birinus. We should pray to him for hope – the same supernatural virtue of hope that inspired him to leave his beautiful monastery on Rome’s paradisiacal Caelian Hill and to make the arduous journey to the northern wilds in search of souls. The truth is that there have been many occasions when the land cultivated and planted so diligently by St Birinus and the other saints of his age seems to have been reduced to the condition of a devastated vineyard. There would be the wanton vandalism of the Viking raids, and the scorched-earth destruction of the Reformation and the centuries of persecution that ensued. The history of our realm teaches us that no stretch of drought has ever been able completely to suppress the green shoots of new life, and that every famine has been followed by a new era of renewal and spiritual flourishing.
At this time of year, we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child into a world that was in the grip of pagan superstition. No sooner had this Light arrived than Herod would attempt to extinguish its presence in his massacre of the Innocents. Our Lord’s earthly mission would lead Him along the way of Calvary to His Passion and Death. The Resurrection, however has the last word over lies, evil and death. It might well feel in our own day as if a new dark age is swirling in around us like a heavy black fog. Saint Birinus has been there before us. Ask that his prayers, and those of Our Blessed Mother, and all those holy confessors, bishops and kings, all those holy monks and hermits, all those holy virgins and widows, who made this once an island of saints, will gain for us the hope and the zeal to bear witness to the coming of the Christ Child this Advent.
Father Julian Large