Saint Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne and Enlightener of Northumbria.
Saint Aidan was a monk of the Scottish island of Iona. When Saint Oswald, King of Northumbria, asked the Scottish clergy, from whom he had received Baptism when in exile among them, to send a bishop to teach the Christian Faith to his subjects, they first sent an austere man whose preaching the English did not wish to hear. Upon returning to the churchmen who sent him, he dismissed the English as obstinate barbarians. Saint Aidan was present and said he had been too severe on them, and ought to have begun more simply and gently until they were ready for the fullness of the truth. All present saw in Aidan the man for the task, and he was sent. Aidan requested and received from King Oswald the island of Lindisfarne as his see, of which he was the first bishop.
He was famous for his holy life of self-sacrifice and discipline. Whatever he received from the rich he gave to the poor. He refused to ride on horseback and walked wherever he went, and preached the Faith to all both by word and by way of life. Once King Oswald gave him an excellent horse for his missionary journeyings, but Aidan gave it to the first poor man he met asking him for alms. When later he went to dine with King Oswald, he reproved Aidan for giving away a royal horse chosen by the king for his own use, when there were plenty of less valuable horses good enough for beggars. In Bede’s words, “The bishop at once answered, ‘What are you saying, Your Majesty? Is this child of a mare more valuable to you than this child of God?’” After considering the bishop’s answer for a while, Saint Oswald knelt at his feet and asked forgiveness, promising never again to question what he gave away out of what he himself had given him. Aidan comforted Oswald and begged him to enjoy his meal without thinking of it any further, and so the king complied and made merry. But now the bishop was overcome with sadness, wept, and prophesied aside to his chaplain in Scottish so that none would understand, that this nation was not worthy to have such a humble and virtuous king, and that he would soon be taken from them, which came to pass when Saint Oswald died in battle, Saint Aidan dying eleven days later, in the seventeenth year of his episcopate, on August 31, 651.
The venerable Bede, whom we quote above, speaks highly of Saint Aidan’s sanctity and apostolic labors, and recounts a number of his miracles in his History of the English Church and People.
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