St. Congar of Wales, November 27th.
St. Congar lived in the mid 6th century in Wales, but most of his biographical material, as with prior saints, is from the 12th century. He is reputed to have founded a church in the area around Somerset by helping to drain the marshland, then plunging his walking staff into the earth, were it immediately sprouted into a yew tree (see my notes from earlier on St. Digain and the importance of the yew trees!) Although he was associated with monastic groups in the area, the narration of his life stress his desire to be a "solitary." He would go through prolonged fasts and vigils, and set off to be alone and pray for long periods of time. This type of lifestyle was fairly typical of monastics during the 6th to 9th century in the Celtic lands, particularly Ireland, Wales and Isle of Man. There are numerous archeological sites of Beehive structures, used by solitary monks as a private abode for prayer. These would sometimes be clustered together in a monastery, but even then were often in a remote place. One of the most famous of these is Skellig Michael, 12 kilometers off the Irish west coast, which is now a UNESCO world heritage site.
I had mentioned in the post about St. Columbanus about the different "colors" of matyrdom. These were first mentioned in a 7th century Irish document called the Cambrai Homily. Red martyrdom was a violent death in service of Christ and Green was, as with Columbanus, the leaving of your home country to wander and preach. The third kind of martyrdom was White: this was a deliberate act to move apart into a solitary ascetic lifestyle, which involved prayer, fasting, and often acts that we as moderns find strange, like immersion in cold streams. The idea was both one of isolation but also to "share" in the suffering of Christ. Congar obviously was a White martyr, again remembering the original root of the word martyr was to be a "witness."
Some of what these early medieval Celts did was based on the lifestyle of the 4th and 5th Century Desert Fathers, the monastics in the deserts of Syria, Palestine and Egypt who went to great lengths to be ascetic. This makes a bizarre kind of sense when one realizes that this kind of lifestyle came as a reaction to the legalization of Christianity in 315 AD. Prior to this time, to be a Christian meant being in constant danger of your life, one had to be truly committed to profess Christianity, as your life expectancy could be pretty short, whether through crucifixion or the Roman game spectacles. All of sudden in 315, not only was Christianity legal, but it was now the official religion of the Empire. Everyone flocked to church and became Christian. Many Christians felt this watered down the commitment of the religion and so went off to the deserts for an isolated, ascetic lifestyle as a reaction, to somehow say "I am not one of those 'easy' Christians, I am committed." The Celts picked this up and ran with it, long after the area of the Desert Fathers was overrun during the spread of Islam.
What is interesting to me is the situation we are now in in the post-modern world. During the 18th, 19th and first 2/3 of the 20th Century in America, Christianity was "in," and frankly for the most part was an easy committment. As opposed the ascetic movement we had people who wanted to "assert" their Christianity go off to missions in dangerous places (as in the movie "End of the Spear.") or do some kind of hermit-like isolation but on a short term basis, such as Thomas Merton's hermit period at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky. Now in the early 21st Century we are seeing the rise of the neomonastic movement, with urban service-oriented fellowships as exemplified by Shane Clairborne.
There was a marvelous blog from The Ruthless Monk in 2012 that addresses "Why We need a New White Martyrdom." I am going to paste a brief portion of it as it spoke to me and my personal need for something beyond just showing up for a church service:
"But I’m not sure if white martyrdom in 2012 is quite as clear cut? If the point is to give up one’s life for Christ , then isn’t a defiant, active stance against consumerism, materialism, the cult of celebrity, the primacy of advertising, and the branding of Jesus as powerful a sacrifice as renouncing the comfort of a soft mattress? Isn’t it, in a way, much harder?
In his series, The Church as Counterculture, Mason Slater writes that he imagines church as 'the place where an alternative narrative to the narrative of empire and market is proclaimed, where an alternative reality is acted out in community and sacrament.' He then goes on to say that…
…In a time when the culture calls us to consume without question, the church calls us to be content and generous. In a time when the state is ever marching to war after war, the church calls us to be peacemakers and live in the reality that Jesus abolished war. In a time when we are surrounded by the endless noise of TV, social media, advertising, and smart phones, the church calls us to simplicity, deep sustained thought, and the messiness of face-to-face community."
I think that the early medieval Celts would have approved of the above sentiment.
Lord, sometimes when I read about saints like Congar and their lifestyle I get confused. How could they do that to themselves? Help me to understand their root motivations: the desire to be more sincere as Christian, to emulate Christ and to have integrity in their day to day existence. Help me to find ways to take that root motivation and bring it into my own life. Help me with this from You will and not my own.
Amen
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