Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

A stone box about a foot wide but going down fifteen feet of the church’s aisle. Somehow secreted there underneath the tiles over a century before. Inside, amidst other things was an oblong package of sealed lead.

The notation written on the package marked it as the few remnants of the Shrine to Saint John of Beverly, destroyed by Henry VIII in 1541 amidst the English Reformation. 

John was a bishop in the 700s who was consistently called out of the solitude and monastic life he loved to engage in the administration of the church. His most notable protégé was the Venerable Bede, who he ordained to the priesthood, and who went on to be the first writer of English History.

Devotion for him arose quickly after his death and centuries later he was beloved by many, including Julian of Norwich. All of which paused with the destruction of his shrine and the English Reformers shying away from such devotion.

Yet now on this day of his death the well near his parish church is covered in flowers. Anglicans walk from celebrating the Eucharist in the parish he loved to the cathedral where he worked. They sing Evensong as they remember over a millennium of worship in that space.

As we near the end of Eastertide the intensity of Holy Week and Easter may have waned a bit, as will happen, but it is not gone from our lives nor can it be destroyed. Even if it lays dormant we will uncover it and take it up again.

We can rest, like Saint John of Beverly, trusting in God and that the Church may foible for a while but that in Walking with Christ we shall right ourselves again.

Pax,

—Ben