St Aidan of Lindisfarne

Aidan is one of the most attractive missionary portraits because his success begins in his manner before it appears in his results. When King Oswald asked the monks of Iona to send a bishop for Northumbria, the first missionary returned discouraged and blamed the English as rude and unteachable. Aidan replied that the fault lay rather in the approach: an ignorant people must first be nourished with gentler doctrine before they can bear stronger food. The monks immediately saw in that answer the prudence needed for the work and sent Aidan instead. He came to Northumbria and was established at Lindisfarne, which became the living center of his mission. Butler's picture of him is beautifully practical. He went about on foot, spent his spare hours in Scripture and psalmody, gave away to the poor what kings and nobles pressed upon him, and preferred apostolic labor to comfort at court.

He preached, visited the sick, trained clergy, redeemed slaves, and helped raise children for the service of God. Bede's witness, echoed by Butler, gives the whole thing unusual solidity: clerics and monks were welcomed with joy, villages gathered to hear the word of life, and the north of England began to feel the effects of a truly missionary Church. Lindisfarne became, in effect, an English Iona, and after Aidan it remained a nursery of saints. What makes the life so compelling is that gentleness in him was not softness. He could rebuke the proud, but without harshness; he could form a rude people, but without despising them. He succeeded where severity had failed because he joined poverty, patience, discipline, and fatherly mercy, becoming one of the real builders of Christian Northumbria.