Feast Day of St. Augustine Of Canterbury

Icon by Monk Aidan of Shropshire.


From St. Hilarion Monastery:

St. Augustine of Canterbury, Apostle of England

The figure of St. Augustine, the great Wonderworker and Apostle of the English people, is somewhat controversial. He represented the Orthodox Patriarch of the West, the Pope of Rome, whereas the Celtic Christians were without a Patriarch and were, indeed, hostile to the concept of being placed under a Patriarch! St. Augustine moreover committed a great faux-pas when in meeting with a delegation of the anti-Patriarchal Bishops he remained seated when they approached him, rather than rising to greet them or even prostrating himself humbly before them. Due to his conduct, springing either from a protocol the Celts misinterpreted or from carelessness, he alienated them--and on this account the integration of the non-English Christians of Britain into the Patriarchate was delayed for many centuries. In the meantime, an uneasy situation prevailed. The decision of St. Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek-bred Archbishop of Canterbury who brought a comprehensive canonical structure to the English Church, and of several Church Synods, was that the Celtics could only be received after Chrismation and renunciation of error. It was felt that their Baptism rite was incomplete, their method of tonsure unsatisfactory, and their dating of Pascha, which had been superseded elsewhere in Orthodox Christendom by the pan-Orthodox method still used today in the Eastern Church, was faulty. Despite these difficulties, certain Hierarchs accepted the Holy Mysteries of the Celtics. St. Bede, in his History, proves himself to be a moderate in his ecclesiology, both accepting their essential character as Orthodox Christians and criticising their "uncanonical" mores.

St. Hilarion is an Orthodox monastery in Austin, Texas.


PRAYER

O Lord our God, who by your Son Jesus Christ called your apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless your holy name for your servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating your Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom you call and send may do your will, and bide your time, and see your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.