Saints & Sinners!

It’s funny how things happen sometimes – by chance or design. Last night we watched

BBC4’s Saints & Sinners which we really enjoyed but it left us pondering in two ways. Firstly,

the presentation of the programme was surprisingly palatable for one which delved into the

murkier realms of religious history. Despite being concerned initially by the outward

appearances of the presenter (Dr Janina Ramirez) she turned out to be an interested and

energetic proponent of the aims of the programme and the investigations involved.

Secondly, I really could not detect any sense of real bias or even popularist determination to

rubbish religion or dismiss the core meaning and message of the phenomena it examined

and attempted to make sense of. In fact, rather than supply some brand of modern

psychological superiority as a solution to the ignorance of religious people of the ancient

world, the programme actually left me trying to fill in gaps myself. I know it was only Episode 1, and the quality could decline, but I felt challenged to do some thinking for myself:

1. Why did people feel the need to establish monastic communities in the parts of

Britain and Ireland that would be considered utterly inhospitable and practically

uninhabitable (and even inaccessible for much of the year!) in the twenty-first

century? Our Isles are littered with such outposts (e.g. Rame Head) but the Scottish

and Irish footprints (the programme made productive use of Skellig Michael)

remaining from the first monastic pioneers is quite extraordinary.

2. What motivated people to live lives that, to this day, their very bones attest to

serious privations that, quite clearly, caused them persistent pain and a premature

death?

3. Why did people leave the known and civilised world and, in the worst and most

unlikely contexts, create human community in such a severely austere way?

Rame Head, Cornwall, is a twelfth-century example of the Christianising of shores closer to

home.

Skellig Michael, of the Atlantic south west shores of Ireland, was a monasticism of a more

extreme and challenging calibre!

In the end, I think there are two dimensions to the answer.

Firstly, St Paul, in Thessalonians, clearly reveals his views and those of the early Christian

community. At that point, they believed they were all living in the ‘end times’. In St Paul’s

worldview, Christ’s return was imminent, there was much to prepare for to be ready for the

Final Judgement but marriage and family was really only for those who really had to! In

other words, rather than meet God Himself as a fornicator, you better get married.

‘The Day of the Lord is going to come like a thief in the night … as suddenly as labour pains

come on a pregnant woman … I want to add for the sake of widows and those who are not

married: it is a good thing for them to stay as they are, like me, but if they cannot control sexual urges, they should get married.’ (1 Thess 5:2-3; 1 Cor 7:8-9)

The first saints of the desert continued this early Christian train of thought in a most dramatic way. St Anthony was the most famous of these and characteristically he headed out into a desert region about 59 miles west of Alexandria and remained there for some thirteen years. St Anthony’s lifestyle was remarkably harsher than that of any predecessors. According to St Athanasius, the devil fought St. Anthony by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, and the phantoms of women, which he overcame by the power of prayer. After

that, he moved to a tomb, where he resided and closed the door on himself, depending on some local villagers who brought him food. When the devil perceived his ascetic life and his

intense worship, he was envious and beat him mercilessly, leaving him unconscious. When his friends from the local village came to visit him and found him in this condition, they carried him to a church. By these standards, life on Skellig Michael would have been luxury!

St Anthony beset by demons

Secondly, the gospels for the beginning of Lent supply much more of the impetus and drive

behind the commitments made by people to renounce civilisation and embrace life beyond

the fringes of the known world. On the first Sunday of Lent Mark’s Gospel simply

summarises how Jesus departed, driven by the Spirit, from civilisation to the desert. The fact

that he was alone ‘with the wild beasts’ and the assistance of angels was required is

testimony to how the first century Jew would view the desert as not only inhospitable and

uninhabitable but a place beyond ‘cosmos’ and cultivation – the domain of the Evil One no

less! Further to this, in another event in Matthew’s gospel the devil’s minions are given a

voice when they ask Jesus, “Have you come to torture us?” The dangerous ‘wild animals’

roaming around were the least of it – the Judean desert was the realm of Satan himself and Jesus deliberately entered it before embarking on his official ministry.

So there we have it. The founder of Christianity Himself departed from civilisation to

demonstrate God’s victory over the Evil One. At their beginning and their end, the gospels

are framed with victory over evil. My view is that good is stronger than evil in the new era of

the Incarnation and, however harsh it may be, those early Christian pioneers of

monasticism, with one foot in this world and the other in the next, would have been graced

with the fundamental satisfaction that they were not only following the first saintly heroes of the desert, but the example of Christ Himself.

‘Saints & Sinners’ – a great watch for the start of Lent!