St Chad

Chad is one of the most appealing bishops in the English Church because holiness in him looks simple, obedient, and entirely unpretentious. Formed in the Irish monastic tradition and shaped by prayer rather than ambition, he was drawn into the difficult ecclesiastical unsettledness of seventh-century England almost against his nature. The crisis over the see of York might easily have made another man defensive. When Archbishop Theodore explained that Chad's consecration had not been canonically regular, Chad did not argue or cling to office. He answered that if he had received it wrongly, he was ready to step down. That response reveals why later generations loved him. Humility was not an ornament in Chad.

It was the governing fact of his life. Theodore, moved by such meekness, kept him in service and entrusted him with the Mercians. There Chad became the kind of bishop Bede most admired: close to his people, missionary in spirit, prayerful in private, and laborious in travel. He preferred to go on foot when he could, preaching and ordering church life among ordinary Christians rather than governing from a distance. The beloved account of angelic song before his death fits the rest of the life because by then his sanctity had already been visible in daily conduct. Chad endures in memory as a bishop who made authority gentle, and correction fruitful, because he had truly learned obedience.