Patrick Comerford
The Season of Lent began last month on Ash Wednesday (14 February 2024), and this week began with the Second Sunday in Lent (Lent II, 25 February 2024). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today commemorates Saint David (ca 601), Bishop of Menevia and Patron of Wales (1 March).
Throughout Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated in Common Worship.
Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on an early, pre-Reformation English saint;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
Early English pre-Reformation saints: 17, Saint Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth
Benedict Biscop is commemorated in Common Worship on 12 January as Abbot of Wearmouth and Scholar. He was born a Northumbrian nobleman in 628, and served at the court of King Oswiu of Northumbria until he joined Wilfrid of York on his pilgrimage to Rome to the tombs of the apostles.
Benedict made a second trip to Rome accompanied by the king’s son and on his way home was clothed a monk at the Benedictine house of Lérins. On his third visit to Rome, Benedict he met and returned to England with Theodore, the newly-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, who made him Abbot of Saint Augustine’s in 669.
Five years later, Benedict was permitted to make his own foundation at Wearmouth, which he had built in the Roman style and endowed with a huge library. He encouraged the development of the Uncial script which also acted as a means of encouraging use of the Roman Rite.
His scholarship and the scholarship promoted through the religious houses he founded, played a large part in the acceptance of the primacy of Roman over Celtic practice throughout northern England. Benedict Biscop died on 12 January 689.
Matthew 16: 24-27 (NRSVA):
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.’
Today’s Prayers (Friday 1 March 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Lent Reflection: Freedom in Christ.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Bianca Daébs (Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil).
The USPG Prayer Diary today (1 March 2024, Saint David’s Day) invites us to pray in these words:
Let us pray for the Church in Wales and give thanks for the life and legacy of Saint David.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who called your servant David
to be a faithful and wise steward of your mysteries
for the people of Wales:
in your mercy, grant that,
following his purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ,
we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant David revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflection: Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne
Tomorrow: Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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