Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today is the feast day of Saint Cuthbert of Lindesfarne (c. 634-686).

Recently, I heard a message about Saint Cuthbert that hit home for me. The speaker identified a periodic temptation to complacency, a tendency at times to feel a kind of self-satisfaction with life. I can identify with this problem.

Perhaps this complacency can be a temptation for folks who have achieved a certain number of accolades or accreditations for certain achievements, particularly in a world where such markers serve as a measurement of worth. These things, it seems, do not help one draw nearer to God.

Saint Cuthbert, on the other hand, would regularly and intentionally put himself in perilous situations. At night, he would go out into the ocean, into the cold North Sea, and stand in the deep and cold water up to his neck and offer his prayer. There, in what must have been dangerously cold water, in the darkness of night, for long stretches of time, Cuthbert spoke to God.

Who could manage such a rigorous exercise? St. Cuthbert seemed to do this because it put him on the edge, in immediate danger of drowning, and one might well think, of hypothermia. In this exposed, endangered situation, Cuthbert could really pray.

Could this explain why the most genuine prayers of ours seem to come from adversity, from our suffering, or from a desperate sense that we have put our trust in something other than God, and that we need to return to him? Even though my life has been relatively easy and happy by many standards, I do suspect from my own experience that all of this is true.

What do I need to do to make a genuine prayer? How do I strip away the distractions?

Holy Father Cuthbert, pray to God for us!

—Justin