Today, the Sunday after all Saints, is the day in the Church that we celebrate, primarily, the holy ones of the country in which we live. We are blessed in this country and more widely in Britain and Ireland by having thousands of Orthodox Western saints who lived wholly for Christ and His Kingdom, professing the same faith and life as we do today. This is not just of historical interest. The British and Irish saints constitute not only the historic foundation on which we build, but also, as reigning with Christ, these saints pray and work with us still for the conversion of our peoples. Their holiness and labours inspire us; their intercessions avail before Christ; and their icons, relics, shrines and holy wells mediate their active and living presence in the Church today as healers, guides and fighters for truth.



I will speak today of one such saint, St Chad, a saint taught by our own St Aidan in his monastic school at Lindisfarne and belonging with his own three brothers to a missionary team that worked in Northumbria and here in the north-western part of the ancient kingdom of Mercia in the generation after St Aidan’s death. One of these three brothers, St Cedd, was also a saint. As far as we can tell the four brothers observed the old Irish Celtic practices before the Synod of Whitby, but it is noteworthy that none of them withdrew from active ministry when that Synod decided in favour of various Roman observances. There is one highly significant event to relate in the life of St. Chad, which we might call: “St. Chad’s Choice.”

St Chad was in his first base, Northumbria, at the time of this incident and Bishop of his episcopal see, York. St Wilfrid, who represented the triumphant Roman continental tradition at the Synod of Whitby returned to England in 666 after his ordination as a bishop in France.  He reasonably expected to be appointed to York although he did not challenge St Chad when he returned and found the saintly bishop already seated on the episcopal throne. In 669, however, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, St Theodore of Tarsus, set about uniting the English church and reforming its practices. He instructed St Chad to step down at York in favour of St Wilfrid.  Remarkably St Chad did precisely that without a moment’s hesitation or complaint. With great grace and humility he resigned as bishop of York and doubtless intended to spend the rest of his days in his beloved monastery at Lastingham in the York Moors where he had succeeded as abbot after the death of his older brother St Cedd in 664. It was St Cedd who in 654 built what is today the oldest surviving church in Britain—St Peter-on-the-Wall—a simple, beautiful little chapel at Bradwell-on-Sea on the coast at Essex, still open for daily worship.  However, it was St Chad who was to become the most famous of the brothers, remembered today at major pilgrimage sites in Lichfield, Lastingham and Birmingham. The Venerable Bede has described how pilgrims in earlier centuries could visit St Chad’s tomb, venerated earlier at Lichfield but now at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham. Yet modern pilgrims can no longer insert their hands beside the relics and take out some of the dust. In earlier centuries people often sought to reach out and unite themselves—mind and heart, body and soul—to specific saints.

St Chad’s great humility made him a saint. A lesser man would have grumbled and manoeuvred even knowing that he would eventually have to obey the instruction of his Archbishop. Not St Chad. He had the heart and mind of Christ who according to St Paul:

” ... being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11)

So great was the humility of St Chad that St Theodore the Archbishop eventually recalled him from his episcopal retirement to be the new Bishop of the Mercians (basically the north-west of England and the East Midlands) and the people of Lindsey (the East Midlands and Lincolnshire). St Chad’s humility remained as strong as ever. After the example of his spiritual father St Aidan, his hard work, prayer and shining holiness brought all these peoples to Christ. His incessant travelling as a missionary bishop led to certain places being associated as his stopping points for preaching, teaching and baptising, often in mass gatherings. There is one such country shrine and well of St Chad near Stockport called Chadkirk to which we as a parish make pilgrimage from time to time. The water still flows forth from that well, steady and clear—an invitation to pilgrims today to remember the life and work of St Chad and to bring his blessings into our lives.

Many Christians wonder how these Isles might once again be united to Christ. The Christian landmarks of our culture in church buildings and culture, in education and governance are now pale shadows of what they once used to be. The growth of heresy and schism over the last thousand years has taken its toll. The Protestant and even Catholic churches are now emptying faster than the statisticians can count. Their hierarchies are for the most part pursuing a policy of managed decline but nobody can doubt what is happening here. The British Isles and Ireland are becoming more secular and less Christian decade by decade, even year by year. Only those churches which put mission and evangelism at the top of their agendas are growing now and will continue to grow. The judgement of God on inward looking and complacent Christian communities falls upon parts of the Orthodox Church as well. The one difference that gives us a head start is that we have the fullness of Orthodox Christian faith and life but that is of little use unless we each rise to the challenge of living out the fullness of our faith and witnessing to that truth in our Christian lives. This is where St Chad and all the other countless British and Irish saints can help us.

No Church ever grew by well-intentioned committees, human-orientated planning and mere talk. The Church only grows by renewal of the Holy Spirit in the life of her members, making them holy, making all of us holy. Such holiness is not at all possible without acquiring a deep and abiding spirit of humility, the humility of St Chad—lived out in his choice when faced with the decision of whether to cling onto power or to surrender it. We face the same choices again and again in our lives. Will we be prepared to surrender every just claim we think we have as a so-called right for the sake of Christ? Will we choose to become nothing that He might become everything in us? Will we become worthy of our baptismal grace whereby we are united with Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit.  Will we teach the faith to our children and be good examples to them of the way of the cross?  Will we be prepared to witness to our faith as God calls, energises and inspires us?  Will we be prepared to be persecuted for this faith and yet always maintain a joyful spirit for the sake of Christ, praying for our enemies? Will we choose to be ambassadors of Christ in the world while not being of the world? 

Only with these choices and these commitments will this land become once again a land of saints and recover its Orthodox Christianity, its Western Orthodox Christianity. Such a vocation to fill this land again with saints will not happen without each one of us being challenged by St Chad and all the other saints of these Isles to become a servant of Christ, a true Orthodox Christian.  To St Chad, therefore, let us pray with fervour—that is, with genuine enthusiasm and intense eagerness—in the words of his troparion:

You received divine grace from God on high, and strengthened by the its power, Chad the glorious, you trod the straight and narrow path of the Gospel, and drew with you a multitude of the faithful; wherefore, dwelling now in the mansions of heaven, you have received rich reward for your labours from Christ, to Whom we pray to save our souls.