Heavenly Father, who didst call thy servant Bede, while still a child, to devote his life to thy service in the disciplines of religion and scholarship: Grant that as he labored in the Spirit to bring the riches of thy truth to his generation, so we, in our various vocations, may strive to make thee known in all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Thanks, Kendall. I’m glad you keep posting these reminders to give thanks for the life and witness of “lesser saints.” Like that quintessentially English one, the Venerable Bede (AD 672-735). Without his history of the Ecclesia Anglicana, we wouldn’t know much about early medieval Christianity in Britain.
The winsome Northumbrian monk epitomizes that typically Benedictine twin ideal of “The Love of Learning and the Desire for God” (as in the classic book of that title by Dom Jean Leclerq).
David Handy+