LANDING OF ST. AIDAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 224, 21 August 1935, Page 10

LANDING OF ST. AIDAN.

COMMEMORATION ON HOLY ISLAND. 1,300 th ANNIVERSARY.

The Archbishop of York, who had with him the Bishops of Durham, Newcastle, and Argyll and the Isles, led a pilgrimage early in July to Holy Island, Northumberland, to commemorate the landing there 1,300 years ago of Aidan, first Bishop of Lindisfarne. The first of the pilgrims crossed the sand wastes from the mainland at an early hour of the morning, before the sea covered the pilgrim way. There was no formal procession to Linuisfarne. Many of tho pilgrims took the easy course of a bumpy ride witii an occasional splash in old motor-cais, or still older farm carts. The Archbishop of York and the Bishops airived in a far ironx episcopal wagonette drawn by two horses. It was lelt to a commendable minority t.o be. loot travellers. ’The chief service of the da.v was the Choral Eucharist in the ruins of the twelfth-century priory ol Lindisfarne, which is reputed to stand on the sire of the original church built by St. Aidan. , ~ -,, The Priory, under the care ot the Otliee of Works, is now well and tidily kept and what is left of the nave and chancel rises from the greenery of the lawns. The people stood in the ancient aisles, or found a seat on the brown sandstone walls and the stumps ot columns. The clergy robed in the village institute, and a procession was formed. The gathering must have numbered at least 2,000. Tho Archbishop of York, who preached, had for his pulpit the .base of a pillar in the south aisle, lie said that m the history of our own Church in its infancy, there could have been no darker moment than that which followed the Battle of Hatfield in A.D. 633 Then came Aidan, of whom Bede wrote that he was a man of surpassing gontleness, piety, and self-restraint. He could imagine no better epitaph tor a Christian preacher. Bishop Lightfoot, continued the Archbishop, who was not given to rhetorical exaggeration, said or Jiini “Not Augustine but Aidan was the true apostle of England. Augustine was the apostle of Kent, but Aidan was the apostle of England.” The' Bishop of Newcastle prefaced the general thanksgiving with thanks to God that He sent His servant Aidan to this Island 1.300 years ago and that with the co-operation of Oswald he brought the tidings of the Gospel to this part of England.