Extracts from Christian Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Christian Literature’
In The Copybook
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Christian Literature’
In The Copybook
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Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham in the reign of Æthelred the Unready, reflects on two appearances of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.
Elfric was Abbot of Eynsham near Oxford during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Here, he reflects on the Baptism of Christ and on Pentecost, explaining why the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus as a dove, but on the Apostles as tongues of fire.
Cynewulf encourages his listeners to remain committed to the Christian life, by reminding them of the reward that awaits them.
What shines out of every page of the New Testament is the promise of eternal life. In Christ, a narrative poem written in Old English sometime around 800, the poet Cynewulf drew together a number of Scriptural quotations to remind his listeners of the reward that awaits those who do not turn aside.
The lives of men are like voyages across stormy seas, but we no longer have to sail them as if they were uncharted waters.
Christ is a long narrative poem by Cynewulf, a poet writing in Old English at the turn of the ninth century, about seventy years after the death of St Bede. In the following extract, he likens human life to the tossing of ships on stormy seas, and the Christian gospel as a chart to bring our ‘sea-steeds’ safely to heaven’s harbour.
The Tilers and Thatchers of fourteenth-century York tell how Joseph and Mary fared after they were turned away by the innkeepers of Bethlehem.
From at least the 1370s, a series of pageants was put on in the city of York for Corpus Christi, a summertime Church festival dedicated to the Eucharist. Dramatising the life of Jesus Christ, the plays were performed by members of the Guilds of skilled trades or ‘mysteries’ (hence ‘mystery plays’). The Nativity fell to the Tilers and Thatchers, who began with Joseph and Mary trying to settle into a tumbledown Bethlehem stable.
While Joseph is away trying to find light for the darksome stable, Mary brings into the world the Light of everlasting Day.
The Tilers and Thatchers of fourteenth-century York continue their Nativity play, with Mary alone in the ramshackle Bethlehem stable — Joseph her betrothed guardian has gone out into the cold night air to find some light. She is praising God, and awaiting the birth of the miraculous child foretold to her by the archangel Gabriel nine months ago in Nazareth.
The chill of the night is relieved by the warmth of the beasts in their stalls, prompting Mary and Joseph to reflect on the promises of Scripture.
The Tilers and Thatchers of fourteenth-century York bring their Nativity play to a close, back in the Bethlehem stable where Mary and her guardian Joseph have been forced to find shelter. Mary has given birth to a son and laid him in a manger, while her guardian Joseph was out looking for candles. Now he has returned, to find that his candles are superfluous for another Light is shining in the darkness.
Like the legendary phoenix, the Christian must spend his life making a nest fit for his rebirth in fire.
In The Phoenix, the author (possibly Cynewulf, certainly an admirer of his work) mused on the legend of the firebird that dies in its nest, and is reborn in fire. A godly man builds himself a nest out of his repentance and his love and charity with all men; in life the nest protects him from spiritual enemies, and in death the nest is consumed in fire so that the man may be reborn in a mansion of glory.