Birinus, the Monk-Missionary

Every true vocation lived well preaches the Gospel.

Readings: 1 Cor 9:16-19,22-23; Mt 9:35-38

The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:

I became a Dominican because I wanted to be a “Monk-Missionary”. Our brother Aidan Nichols used this phrase “monk-missionary” to describe his own attraction to Dominican life. Now being a monk and missionary at the same time seems contradictory, but we see this vocation lived out again and again in the history of The Church – and it’s the tension we see too in the life of monk St Birinus, whose feast we celebrate tomorrow.

Two miracles and two paragraphs from Bede’s Histories are all we know about Birinus. Bede says Birinus promised to the Pope that he would “sow the seeds of the holy faith in the most inland and remote regions of the English, where no other teacher had been before him.” That’s how he ended up in Dorchester-on-Thames! Because once he’d arrived in England, in the “nation of the West Saxons”, where Bede says “he found all to be confirmed pagans, he thought it more useful to preach the word there, rather than to go further looking for people to whom he should preach”.

He didn’t have to go further afield to look for people who need to hear the Gospel. And here, now, in England today, neither do we. We don’t have to go far to find those who need to meet Christ: they are on our doorstep. In the street; in our workplaces. Among our friends and family. Every time we meet someone who is without Christian faith, we have an opportunity to share the Gospel with them.

Now Birinus set out to do something which he did not achieve. We too may have grand aspirations for how we are going to preach the Gospel, but God does not ask us to be successful in our personal ambitions. Instead, he provides us with plenty of opportunities to preach in our daily lives. So we may set out to do something remarkable, but most of the time we won’t. And we don’t need to, because where we are most needed is often closest to home.

Every Catholic is called to measure his or her discipleship by an evangelical criterion: “How, in … my life, am I bringing others to the Lord Jesus?” Its a daunting challenge, but we should not forget that living out any vocation – like that to religious life – is itself a missionary endeavour. What we need today are priests, religious and spouses who just live out their faith, and that’s difficult enough! But it can be attractive to those who have no faith. The future of the Church in this country looks bleak, but one thing seems certain: as we once again enter another dark night in our island’s history, to keep the torch of faith burning we need more monk-missionaries.

What we need today is another – doubtless very different – Saint Birinus.

Image: Stained glass from the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, photographed by Br George Dominic Gillow OP.