For St Edward, who some say would make a far more fitting patron saint of England than George, on this his feast day. A sermon by Ronald Knox Mans happiness lies in devoting himself When we venerate Saint Edward, we venerate a failure. We do so advisedly. Not because success in life necessarily falls to the grasping and the unscrupulous, so that success itself should be mistrusted by Christians as a sign of rascality. Not that there have not been great saints who were also great kings, great statesmen, great warriors — Saint Oswald, Saint Dunstan, Saint Joan of Arc. But because we will not let ourselves be blinded by the lure of worldly success so as to forget that the true statesmanship is exercised in the council chamber, and the true warfare fought on the battlefield of the human soul. Ask yourself which you would rather have been in life, of all those great dead who lie in Westminster Abbey, and you will find it a difficult question to answer: there is so much that dazzles, so much that captivates the imagination. Would you rather have written this, have painted that, have built that, have discovered that, have won this triumph or have carried that enactment? You can hardly say. But ask yourself which of those great dead you would rather be now. Is there any Christian who would not ask to change places with the Confessor? Who would not choose his resting-place, there to wait for the opening of the great Doomsday Book, in which nothing is recorded of men but whether they meant good or evil, whether they loved or neglected God? Many of those who sleep in King Edward’s Abbey were devoted servants of their kind, who left the world better for their passing. But this is certain, that true satisfaction came to them and true success crowned them only so far as their ambitions were for a cause, not for a party; for others, not for themselves. Man’s happiness lies in devoting himself; his success in the offering he can make. And our Confessor was a successful man, yes, even in this world, because in his simple piety, in the unaffected generosity of his nature, he set himself to serve the men about him by easing their burdens, by relieving their necessities, by confirming them in their allegiance to the faith. Great opportunities passed him by, and he never marked them; he might have altered the dynastic history of England, have left us different manners and a different political constitution, if he had been other than he was. Instead, he left all these things to God’s Providence; and God’s Providence, using the ambitions of human agents as its puppets, moulded our history beyond man’s expectation. The Conqueror, who diverted the stream of history, went to his grave disappointed, and lies there a historical memory. The Confessor, whose ambitions could be satisfied by finding a poor man his dinner, saw no corruption in death, and lives the patron of his fellow countrymen.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 08:39:30 +0000
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