No Secrets (Proper 7A)

 

No Secrets

Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7 A)
June 25, 2023 
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D., SCP

Mission Church of the Holy Spirit

Sutherlin, Oregon

10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Jeremiah 20:7-13 Psalm 69: 8-11, (12-17), 18-20 Romans 6:1b-11 Matthew 10:24-39

           
God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

A few years ago, while traveling to a family wedding in Utah, I found myself at St. Mary’s, a small historic Episcopal Church in Provo, Utah, home of the LDS Church’s Brigham Young University.  A liberal church island in a sea of red state conservatism, the small congregation bills itself as “nourishing souls and saving lives in Provo since 1892.”

 

In this beautiful little gem of a church, not much unlike Sutherlin’s Holy Spirit, I saw on the hallway outside the Priest-in-Charge’s office a small framed calligraphic sign.  Its gothic black lettering had the air of an authoritative dictum from the wisdom of the ages, if not an oracle of God.  Its words?  “Thou shalt not …   whine!”  

 

 

Today’s scripture readings seem to have a whining tone to them:  Jeremiah complains,

 

“O LORD, you have enticed me,

and I was enticed;

you have overpowered me,

and you have prevailed.

I have become a laughingstock all day long;

everyone mocks me…

If I say, "I will not mention [God],

or speak any more in his name,"

then within me there is something like a burning fire

shut up in my bones;

I am weary with holding it in,

and I cannot.

For I hear many whispering…

"Denounce him! Let us denounce him!"

All my close friends

are watching for me to stumble.

"Perhaps … we can prevail against him,

and take our revenge on him."

 

The idea is that Yahweh’s word has possessed Jeremiah, taken him over, and made him the object of ridicule and persecution of all about him.  Jeremiah, despite himself, simply must speak God’s word in what we have come to call a Jeremiad, a non-ending stream of condemnation and woe, and simply accept the rejection of others and violent persecution.  So along with his prophetic woes, Jeremiah often violates the Commandment I saw in that church in Provo, “Thou shalt not whine!”

 

Jesus in today’s Gospel reading seems to take Jeremiah as the model prophet:  if you follow God, and say God’s word, you must expect rejection and persecution.   The disciple is no better than the teacher:  Jesus is rejected and killed; so will his disciples be.  But, he says, do not fear.  God will care for you.  But following the truth will bring conflict: I bring not peace, but a sword, not family unity, but family division.  So you better get your priorities straight: you will at times appear to hate your families if you really love me.  That is part of being Christian—take up a cross, just as I did.  This may not be whining, but certainly is a negative view toward life and family, one that sounds to us vaguely paranoid and extreme. 

 

So too today’s Psalm:  “Surely, for your sake, [O God,] have I suffered reproach, and shame has covered my face.  I have become a stranger to my own kindred, an alien to my mother's children.”  And why?  “Zeal for [God’s] house has eaten me up; the scorn of those who scorn [God] has fallen upon me.”  Acts of righteousness are turned on their heads and become things with which to taunt:  fasting triggers reproach; properly mourning the dead by putting on sack-cloth just brings on further curses.  The righteous person becomes the grist for common gossip and lewd songs by the less respectable members of the community. 

 

This sense of persecution despite—no make that because—of one’s religious faithfulness is a theme you see throughout the Psalter.  “God, I am faithful to you, but the bad guys around me lie in wait for me.”  “God, I love you, but they are coming after me with knives and whips!”  “Keep me safe, God, from my enemies!  Save me from the power of the dog!”

 

After Jesus’ unjust torture and death, early Christians saw these laments in the Psalms as some kind of prophetic description of Jesus.  But such a use ignores the fact that at times the Psalmist really does end up whining, and demands the most vicious sort of vengeance for the persecutors.  The Psalmist cries, “Don’t’ listen to his prayers!  Make his wife a widow, and his children orphans, with no one to help them!” Elsewhere, “Happy the ones who smash your little babies’ brains against the wall!”  This is far, far removed from “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

 

The basic idea behind the image of the persecuted prophet is profound:  this world is full of people and societal structures that are based on lies:  the lie that violence will set things right, that might makes right, that the dignity of a human being depends on such things as lineage, race, color, gender, religion, or class; the lie that ends justify means, that everything is O.K. as long as you get away with it, that appearance is all that matters. 

 

Humanity on its good days can bear only so much truth, and on its bad ones cannot bear any truth at all.  A person living in the truth, however feebly, is bound to be an affront to the world of lies, and attract the enmity of people of the lie.  Thus arises the persecuted prophet, the martyred righteous.   Encouraging those who seek the truth to not fear, but to expect conflict, as Jesus does in today’s Gospel, is a grace rooted simply in acknowledging the hard facts of life in a world full of lies.   

 

But the idea that the righteous will be rejected and persecuted has become a commonplace all too often abused.   “I am being persecuted on account of my religion” is a plaint often heard when law and government in a pluralistic society ends up prohibiting retrograde actions like discrimination or hate crimes motivated by bigotry that may happen to have the endorsement of some religion or another.   It is also heard when the government requires businesses to provide basic conditions for work and standard-of-care health coverage for workers.   Such whining—and whining it is—abounds even when the law provides for exemptions on grounds of religion or conscience, even in the absence of a legal requirement to operate the specific kind of business at issue.   

 

Beyond this, we see occasionally in churches, both traditional and progressive, a sick twisting of the image of the persecuted prophet.  Since true prophets are persecuted in this world of lies, so goes the reasoning, then I should act in ways will bring about my persecution.  Martyrdom for the true way thus becomes a way to reassure oneself of the rightness of one’s cause. 

 

There is a great difference between this and real persecution.  I know that people are suffering for their faith in this day and age.  I once saw neat little rows of cigarette burns up and down the back of a man who was questioned by his country’s security forces because he had attended church with me.   Confusing real religious persecution with not having one’s way in public policy cheapens the idea of religious freedom and makes it harder to see it when persecution actually occurs. 

 

There is a difference between deliberately provoking persecution and milking martyrdom and the Satyagraha, or Truth Force, of the non-violent activist seeking rightness and justice.  One is sectarian and partisan; the other aimed at applying universal truth to all of us equally. 

 

This difference is hinted at in today’s Gospel reading. 

 

We are called to companionship with each other, sharing with each other (“companionship” comes from Latin cum panis, sharing bread with).  We are called to walk the way with others, not stand in opposition to them.  Sectarian concern, partisan interest, an “us vs. them” mentality works against this.  If we claim to have the truth against someone else’s lie, and actively try to fix them and convince them of the error of their ways, to turn them from being one of them to one of us, this is not only bad psychology and poor salesmanship, it turns us into opponents, as antagonists, not comrades walking the path together.  It is the difference between cold hearted sectarian propaganda and authentic, heart-felt sharing of good news, evangelism.

 

This is why in today’s Gospel, after saying not to fear the persecution that is sure to come, Jesus tells us to not keep secrets or hidden doctrines, plans, and teachings, and to tell publicly what he taught us privately.  No special knowledge, privileged doctrine, or insiders’ path for Jesus’ disciples! No special class of initiated, “in-the-know,” true believers over against the great unwashed, the uninitiated, the unenlightened outside the ambit of some hidden truth.   

 

It is not about us vs. them.  We are all in this together.  And living in the truth means accepting sharing that truth with all, without fear or favor.  If they cannot bear the truth, and turn against it and us, then it is they who have drawn lines and stood in opposition.  But we must always continue to consider them as in this together with us.  “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!”   “Forgive them seventy seven times, not just seven.”  “Be perfect in compassion and grace like our father in heaven, who gives the blessing of rain and sunshine equally on the righteous and the wicked.” 

 

Sisters and brothers, we are only as sick as the secrets we keep.  We are only as sectarian and partisan as the exclusions we impose on those who differ from us.  Faith in a loving God, gracious and kind to all, demands that we live in truth without fear.  While expecting rejection and meanness from those who cannot bear quite as much truth as God has graced us to bear, we must never feel smug in having a special secret truth that marks us as special, as ones apart.  We must continue to welcome, love, and let our lights shine.  No secrets, no sects.

 

“Thou shalt not whine.”  This week I invite each of us to look at the things where we believe we may be better informed, or more truthful, or closer to God than those about us, both in and outside the Church.   Let us ask whether we are walking beside these others, or setting ourselves in opposition, however benign, to them.  In the process of this reflection, let us find ways to better connect with those about us, to walk with them and share bread with them, and not judge or stand in opposition with them, even if this is as a teacher.  Let us seek ways to be channels of God’s love and grace to all. 

 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.

 

Real Presence (Corpus Christi)

 

Real Presence

(The Feast of Corpus Christi)

Homily delivered at the Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist

Kapahulu, Honolulu, Hawaii

Sunday June 11, 2023 8:30 Low Mass and 10:30 Solemn Mass with Benediction

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Homily starts at 28:00 

 

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), at the request of Pope Urban IV (1261-1264)  when the Pope first established the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264,  composed one of my favorite hymns in honor of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  The hymn is found in the Roman Missal as a prayer of thanksgiving after Mass.

 

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas: tibi se cor meum totum subiicit, quia te contemplans totum deficit.      

 

I worship Thee devotedly, O God who is hidden, Thou who in these simple                          signs art hidden, yet truly art present.  All my heart throws itself before Thee, since in meditating on thee thus, everything fails me.

 

We are celebrating Corpus Christi today.  Some people mock belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as superstitious “cookie worship.”  When I first became a chorister in the Episcopal Church, my section leader not only taught me how to do plain song and anglican chant, but also thought I needed to be read into the culture of Anglican choirs,   So he taught me, among other things, the “naughty choir boy” versions of songs:  “While shepherd washed their socks by night, all seated on the ground,” among others, and a very protestant parody of Thomas’s eucharistic hymn:

“Humbly we adore thee in thy little box.

We’re not here to eat thee 

We’re just here to watch.

Monstrances and incense clouds are only just to scare 

But I sit here wondering:

Are you really there?” 

I sometimes wonder whether we moderns and post-moderns can hold anything in awe or reverence. 

 

Part of the problem, of course, is that some people do indeed have superstitious and magical ways of seeing the Eucharist.  “Hocus-pocus” as a way to mock superstition is a corruption of the Latin translation of Jesus’ words when he instituted the Eucharist, “Hoc est corpus meum (This is my body).”  

 

But some peoples’ bad opinions or misuse of doctrine should not lead us to the opposite error of rejecting true doctrine.  We need to follow here the example of the young Elizabeth I, who affirmed her faith in the Real Presence in the elements while ambiguously declining to over-define the matter.  When queried under threat of torture or death as a Protestant heretic by Queen Mary’s inquisitors about her belief regarding the Eucharistic elements, Elizabeth is said to have replied with an affirmation that was later memorialized by John Donne in this quatrain: 

 

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

 

“What his words did make it,” of course, refers to Jesus’ words of institution at the Last Supper, “This is my body, this is my blood.”   While explicitly rejecting radical Protestantism’s belief that the Lord’s supper was a mere ordinance that remembered Christ’s passion, Elizabeth thus affirmed the real presence.  She also implicitly rejected receptionism, the belief that the bread and wine remain merely bread and wine but with added symbolism and meaning attributed to them by those consuming them.  She declined to endorse transubstantiation, the Roman doctrine of the miraculous substitution of the elements’ character as bread and wine with that of the Body and Blood of our Lord, despite visible appearances, as well as the more Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation, or the adding of Christ’s Body and Blood to the elements’ character as bread and wine.  We Anglicans, like the Elizabeth and the Eastern Orthodox, have been content to leave the matter undefined, and simply trust Jesus’ words, that the consecrated Bread and Wine of Eucharist are truly the Body and Blood of Christ, even while we decline to say exactly how this is so. 

 

I must say that I stand in awe and wonder at how beautifully you worshippers here at St. Mark’s Kapahulu express in your liturgy faith in the real presence:  the placement of the epiclesis before the words of institution, the ringing of the sanctus bells at all the moments in the eucharistic prayer where the common—bread and wine—are made holy, the very body and blood of our savior.  I feel blessed to have celebrated mass here with you in your way,  which is to my mind, the best way.   

 

Key in experiencing and honoring the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is having a general idea about what a sacrament is: an outward and visible expression that not only points to, but participates in and achieves an inward, hidden reality.

 

An early Christian hymn by Ephrem of Edessa, whom we commemorated yesterday, expresses wonder and reverence before the consecrated elements of the Eucharist this way:

 

Lord, your robe’s the well from which our healing flows.
Just behind this outer layer hides your power.
Spittle from your mouth creates a miracle of light within its clay.

In your bread there blows what no mouth can devour.
In your wine there smoulders what no lips can drink.
Gale and Blaze in bread and wine: unparalleled the miracle we taste.

Coming down to earth, where human beings die,
God created these anew, like Wide-eyed Ones,
mingling Blaze and Gale and making these the mystic content of their dust.

Did the Seraph’s fingers touch the white-hot coal?
Did the Prophet’s mouth do more than touch the same?
No, they grasped it not and he consumed it not. To us are granted both.

Abram offered body-food to spirit-guests.
Angels swallowed meat. The newest proof of power
is that bodies eat and drink the Fire and Wind provided by our Lord.
                                          (tr. Geoffrey Rowell) 

 

A hymn we sing from time to time speaks of how our worship in the sacrament of the Eucharist must fit into a larger sacrament of life for us:  

 

Draw us in the Spirit’s tether;
For when humbly, in thy name,
Two or three are met together,
Thou art in the midst of them:
Alleluya! Alleluya! Touch we now thy garment’s hem.

As the faithful used to gather
In the name of Christ to sup,
Then with thanks to God the Father
Break the bread and bless the cup,
Alleluya! Alleluya! So knit thou our friendship up.

All our meals and all our living
Make as sacraments of thee,
That by caring, helping, giving,
We may true disciples be.
Alleluya! Alleluya! We will serve thee faithfully.

And simply, in the hymn, “Lord you give the great commission”:  “Lord, you make the common holy, this my body, this my blood.  Let us all, for earth’s true glory, daily lift life heavenward.” 

 

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask “give us this day our daily bread.”  But this is not simply a prayer for basic physical sustenance.   The Greek words—and Aramaic before them—translated by “our daily bread” actually mean something more like “our bread for the morrow,” the bread of the great feast on the Day of the Lord, or “the bread beyond what you meant when you said, ‘man shall not live by bread alone.’”  It is for this reason that the Lord’s Prayer has always been recited as part of the Great Thanksgiving, just before the breaking of the bread. 

 

There is perhaps a larger issue at stake when we talk about Real Presence.  Franciscan friar Richard Rohr writes the following: 

 

“The Eucharistic body and blood of Christ is a place we must come to again and again to find our own face, to find our deepest name, and our absolute identity in God. It takes years for this to sink in. It is too big a truth for any one moment, too grand and wonderful for our small hearts and minds.  So we keep eating this mystery that is simultaneously the joy of God and the suffering of God packed into one meal. (Some have seen the body/bread as eating the joy and the blood/wine as drinking the suffering.) All we can really do is to be present ourselves, because we cannot ever rationally understand this. Presence cannot really be explained.  When the two presences meet, Jesus and the soul, then we have what Catholics brilliantly call “the Real Presence.” We did maintain the objective end of the presence from God’s side rather well, but we seldom taught people the subjective way of how to be present themselves! Presence is a relational concept, and both sides must be there, or there is no real presence.” 

 

That is what St. Paul is talking about when he warns us about taking the eucharist unworthily, without “discerning the body.”  Real presence in the Eucharist requires our real presence, otherwise, we risk missing what it going on, missing the saving act of God in the Eucharistic sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. 

 

May we all be present, truly present, when we come each to the altar rail to partake the Body and Blood of our Lord.  May we honor Christ in the sacrament through such devotions as Eucharistic benediction and adoration. Let us not be naughty choir boys who ridicule the sacred.  This is just too sweet, too blessed, to make fun of.  It is the way our Lord taught us to welcome him personally into our lives, spirits, and bodies.    

 

Thanks be to God.

 

Ephrem of Nisibis (June 10)

 

Ephrem the Syrian, icon by Fr. Tobias Haller, BSG

The Harp of the Holy Spirit

Ephrem of Edessa 

10 June 373

Ephrem (Ephraim) of Nisibis (also honored as Ephrem of Edessa and Ephrem the Syrian) was a deacon, hymn-writer, teacher, poet, orator, and defender of the Faith.   Though born in Nisibis, most of his later adult life was spent in Edessa (now Urfa), a city in what is now Turkey about 100 kilometers from Antioch (now Antakya).  Edessa was an early center for the spread of Christian teaching in the East.

Edessa was a commercial center.  The main language in use there was Syriac, a late form of the Aramaic language written in its own script, whose early cursive form was later adapted by the Arabs.  Aramaic had been the lingua franca of the Southwest and Central Asian areas for centuries just as Greek was the lingua franca farther West.  Aramaic, you may remember, was the native tongue of Jesus of Nazareth.   Edessa in the early Christian era was the home of one of the greatest theological schools of the age, along with Constantinople and Alexandria Egypt. 

Edessa was later to become a center for Christians who took issue with the Council of Chacedon’s definition of the two natures of Christ—human and divine—held in hypostatic union as one person, called dyaphytism (from the Greek dya “two” and physis “nature.”)  They were labelled heretics and “Monophysite” (from Greek “one and only one nature”) by their detractors, though they themselves actually believed in two natures inseparably bound in the one person of Christ and preferred to call themselves “miaphysite” (“one among several nature”), basically the same position as orthodox or catholic dyaphystism with a slightly higher stress on the union part of the hypostatic union.  Labelling them "Nestorian" further complicated the misunderstanding since the later Syrian bishop Nestorius, anathematized at Chalcedon, was neither a Monophysite nor a leader of a split off church faction.  As in most of the divisions of the church along national lines in those early centuries, the problem was that native Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic speakers had difficulties with theological refinements based wholly on Greek language subtlety—this has now been recognized by modern Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians and bishops, who have now dropped their anathemizing of these traditions. 

Because some people anathemized after Chacedon fled the Roman Empire and its religious orthodoxy though police for the East, Edessa thus was in some ways the source from which flowed the Great "Church of the East" that proselytized and set up schools, churches, and monasteries throughout the entire South, Central, and East Asian area, including Tang, Yuan, and Ming dynasty China.

Ephrem in 325 is said to have accompanied his bishop, James of Nisibis, to the Council of Nicea.   His writings are an eloquent defense of the Nicene faith in the Deity of Jesus Christ.   He countered the Gnostics' use of popular songs to spread their message by composing Christian songs and hymns of his own, with great effect. He is known to the Syrian church as "the harp of the Holy Spirit."

Of his writings there remain 72 hymns, commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, and numerous sermons. In exquisite Syriac, they are rich in alliteration, assonance, and consonance, plus homophony and word plays.  

One of his hymns reads:

From God Christ's deity came forth,

   his manhood from humanity;

 his priesthood from Melchizedek,

   his royalty from David's tree:

 praised be his Oneness.

 

 He joined with guests at wedding feast,

   yet in the wilderness did fast;

 he taught within the temple's gates;

   his people saw him die at last:

 praised be his teaching.

 

 The dissolute he did not scorn,

   nor turn from those who were in sin;

 he for the righteous did rejoice

   but bade the fallen to come in:

 praised be his mercy.

 

 He did not disregard the sick;

   to simple ones his word was given;

 and he descended to the earth

   and, his work done, went up to heaven:

 praised be his coming.

 

 Who then, my Lord, compares to you?

   The Watcher slept, the Great was small,

 the Pure baptized, the Life who died,

   the King abased to honor all:

 praised be your glory.
(Tr. John Howard Rhys, adapted by F Bland Tucker, [Episcopal] Hymnbook 1982)

 
Here is another one, a favorite of mine, most appropriate for this week in which we celebrate Corpus Christi (from Ephrem's Madroshe on Faith)

Lord, your robe’s the well from which our healing flows.
Just behind this outer layer hides your power.
Spittle from your mouth creates a miracle of light within its clay.

In your bread there blows what no mouth can devour.
In your wine there smoulders what no lips can drink.
Gale and Blaze in bread and wine: unparalleled the miracle we taste.

Coming down to earth, where human beings die,
God created these anew, like Wide-eyed Ones,
mingling Blaze and Gale and making these the mystic content of their dust.

Did the Seraph’s fingers touch the white-hot coal?
Did the Prophet’s mouth do more than touch the same?
No, they grasped it not and he consumed it not. To us are granted both.

Abram offered body-food to spirit-guests.
Angels swallowed meat. The newest proof of power
is that bodies eat and drink the Fire and Wind provided by our Lord.
                                                 (tr. Geoffrey Rowell) 

 

A measure of his spirituality and ethical teaching is found in his Lenten Prayer:

 

O Lord and Master of my life!

Take from me the spirit of sloth,
faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity,
humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Yea, Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors
and not to judge my brother,
for Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.

 

 

 

Columba of Iona (June 9)

 

Columba of Iona, by Dabile Matsui

Columba of Iona 

June 9 

In the troubled and violent period in Northern Europe after the collapse of Roman authority in the 500s CE, monasteries served as inns, orphanages, centers of learning, and even as fortresses. The light of civilization flickered dimly and might have gone out altogether if it had not been for these convent-shelters.

Columba (Latin “dove or pigeon,” translated from Irish Colm Cille, 'church pigeon-dove’), was a stern and strong monk from Ireland, founded three such establishments. He founded the monasteries of Derry and Durrow in his native Ireland, and then the island monastery of Iona on the west coast of Scotland within sight of his native Ireland.  Iona was the center of operations for the conversion of the Scots and Picts, seen by the southern Britons as wild and savage. (“Picts” were so called in Latin because of their use of body art—probably tattooing—in bluish color from copper pigments and not the indigo-producing from woad shrub, as often thought.). Iona became the most famous religious house in Scotland. There Columba baptized Brude, King of the Picts, and later a King of the Scots came to this Abbot of the "Holy Isle" for baptism.

Saint Bede in his history of the Church in England, tells us that Columba led many to Christianity by his "preaching and example." He was much admired for his physical as well as spiritual prowess. He was a strict ascetic and remained physically vigorous and unflagging in his missionary and pastoral journeys throughout his seventy-six years of life.

A reading from St. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England (c. 731 CE).  

 

In the year of our Lord 565, when Justin, the younger, the successor of Justinian, obtained the government of the Roman Empire, there came into Britain from Ireland a famous priest and abbot, marked as a monk by habit and manner of life, whose name was Columba, to preach the word of God to the provinces of the northern Picts, who are separated from the southern parts belonging to that nation by steep and rugged mountains. For the southern Picts, who dwell on this side of those mountains, had, it is said, long before forsaken the errors of idolatry, and received the true faith by the preaching of Bishop Ninias.

Columba came into Britain in the ninth year of the reign of Bridius, who was the son of Meilochon, and the powerful king of the Pictish nation, and he converted that nation to the faith of Christ, by his preaching and example. Wherefore he also received of them the gift of the aforesaid island whereon to found a monastery. It is not a large island, but contains about five families, according to the English computation; his successors hold it to this day; he was also buried therein; having died at the age of seventy-seven, about thirty-two years after he came into Britain to preach.

Before he crossed over into Britain, he had built a famous monastery in Ireland, which, from the great number of oaks, is in the Scottish tongue called Dearmach- The Field of Oaks. From both of these monasteries, many others had their beginning through his disciples, both in Britain and Ireland; but the island monastery where his body lies, has the pre-eminence among them all.

That island has for its ruler an abbot, who is a priest, to whose jurisdiction all the province, and even the bishops, contrary to the usual method, are bound to be subject, according to the example of their first teacher, who was not a bishop, but a priest and monk; of whose life and discourses some records are said to be preserved by his disciples. But whatsoever he was himself, this we know for certain concerning him, that he left successors renowned for their continence, their love of God, and observances of monastic rules.

It is true they employed doubtful cycles in fixing the time of the great festival, as having none to bring them the synodal decrees for the observance of Easter, by reason of their being so far away from the rest of the world; but they earnestly practiced such works of piety and chastity as they could learn from the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Apostolic writings. This manner of keeping Easter continued among them no little time, to wit, for the space of 150 years, till the year of our Lord 715.

But then the most reverend and holy father and priest, Egbert, of the English nation, who had long lived in banishment in Ireland for the sake of Christ, and was most learned in the Scriptures, and renowned for long perfection of life, came among them, and corrected their error, and led them to observe the true and canonical day of Easter.

Bede, The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, trans. A.M. Sellar (London: George Bell & Sons, 1907).