Bible and Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Bible and Saints’
Cynewulf reflects on the mystery of the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary.
‘Christ’ is an Anglo-Saxon poem in three parts by Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop Cynewulf of Lindisfarne, in the Kingdom of Northumbria). In this extract, the poet reflects on the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, to tell her that she is to become the earthly mother of the Son of God.
Passengers sharing Bishop Nicholas’s Moscow-bound flight found his blessings faintly silly — but that was when the engines were still running.
St Nicholas Mogilevsky (1877-1955) was Bishop of Alma-Ata (Almaty) in Kazakhstan during the Soviet era. He endured repeated imprisonment and ill-use at the hands of the Nazis, the Communists and state-sponsored Church ‘modernisers’ with remarkable forbearance. This is just one of several tales from his own lifetime.
Chad, the seventh-century Bishop of Mercia, seemed to be making a lot of music for one man.
After St Chad was consecrated Bishop of Mercia in 669, he took up residence in Lichfield at a monastery of his own foundation, and soon people were coming from miles around for his advice and healing prayers. He also built himself a little private chapel, and spent many hours there alone.
Nicodemus did not allow intellectual doubts to get in the way of what he knew in his heart.
Nicodemus is remembered as the man whom Jesus urged to be ‘born again’. Some scold him for his hesitation, much as they scold Thomas for his ‘doubt’; but the Byzantine churches honour both for letting love carry them through, and remember Nicodemus on the second Sunday after Easter, together with the women who brought spices to Christ’s tomb.
The saintly Bishop helped the captain of a merchant ship to cut through the red tape, and save his town from starvation.
St Nicholas (d. 343) was Bishop of Myra, a town in the Roman Province of Lycia, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). According to his 9th-century biographer, Michael, one miracle in particular gained him a reputation in the Imperial capital itself.
The Northumbrian saint warned of an enemy who would stop at nothing to silence the good news.
While he was a monk at Melrose in the Scottish Borders, then part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, St Cuthbert used to visit lonely villages to tell people about a God very different from the capricious pagan spirits they feared and worshipped. He became a popular figure, able to draw surprising crowds.