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Run for Glory

In a sermon for the Feast of All Saints, eighth-century Northumbrian monk St Bede explains why it is worth going for the spiritual burn.

By St Bede of Jarrow 672-735

Part 1 of 2

700-735
In the Time of

Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066

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Run for Glory

By the Euphiletos Painter, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source
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Runners at the Panathenaic Games, by an artist active in the latter part of the sixth century BC and known to posterity as the Euphiletos Painter. The Panathenaic Games were held in Athens every four years, beginning in 566 BC. Thanks to its construction from marble, the stadium where they were held still exists (and is still used) to this day. Competitions ranged from music and athletics to equestrianism, and there was a strong religious flavour to the festival, though a pagan one. The games were still going in St Paul’s day, and local athletics contests in the Greek tradition were also held in Roman Judaea; there was even a stadium at Sepphoris, a few miles from Nazareth. Paul’s metaphor for the Christian life in Hebrews 12:1-2, drawn from footraces, would have been readily understood.

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By the Euphiletos Painter, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Runners at the Panathenaic Games, by an artist active in the latter part of the sixth century BC and known to posterity as the Euphiletos Painter. The Panathenaic Games were held in Athens every four years, beginning in 566 BC. Thanks to its construction from marble, the stadium where they were held still exists (and is still used) to this day. Competitions ranged from music and athletics to equestrianism, and there was a strong religious flavour to the festival, though a pagan one. The games were still going in St Paul’s day, and local athletics contests in the Greek tradition were also held in Roman Judaea; there was even a stadium at Sepphoris, a few miles from Nazareth. Paul’s metaphor for the Christian life in Hebrews 12:1-2, drawn from footraces, would have been readily understood.

Tag: Lives of the Saints (187)

Introduction

In a Sermon for All Saints Day, St Bede, a monk of Jarrow in early eighth-century Northumbria, picked up on a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews which compared the Christian to a sprinter in a race. His gaze is fixed on Christ, waiting at the tape, and he is surrounded by cheering spectators from among his own family who have finished the race before him.

LET it be our joy, then, to stretch forth after the palm of salutary works.* Let us one and all willingly and readily strive in this contest of righteousness; let us run with God and Christ for spectators and if we have already begun to rise superior to this world and this life, let us not allow our course to be retarded by any hankering after it.

If the Last Day shall find us running without hindrance and swiftly in this race, the Lord will never deny remuneration to our merits. For He Who will give a purple crown for their passion to them that conquer in persecution, the same will bestow a snow-white diadem, according to the merits of their righteousness, to them that triumph in peace. For neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob were slain; and yet, honoured by the merits of their faith and righteousness, they were reckoned the first among the Patriarchs; and whoever shall be found faithful, and just, and praiseworthy, shall sit down with them at the banquet.*

Continue to Part 2

* In ancient Greece and Rome, the palm was a symbolic prize given to a victorious athlete. Bede is extending the metaphor used by St Paul in The Epistle to the Hebrews 12:1-2, where the Christian life is spoken of as a footrace in an athletics stadium: Jesus Christ is the coach, standing at the finishing line; and a crowd of spectators, drawn from those who have died and gone to heaven before us, is cheering us on.

* See Revelation 19, where ‘the marriage supper of the Lamb’ features prominently. This is the great celebratory wedding feast for Christ and his bride, the Church, to which all are invited but which many decline to attend, having something better to to do: see Luke 14:15-24.

Précis

Drawing on a metaphor in St Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, St Bede compared the Christian life to a footrace. The Christian is competing for a heavenly reward, coached and cheered on by Christ. Though there are special garlands for martyrs, many of the greatest saints were not asked to shed blood, and their prizes are just as precious. (59 / 60 words)

Drawing on a metaphor in St Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, St Bede compared the Christian life to a footrace. The Christian is competing for a heavenly reward, coached and cheered on by Christ. Though there are special garlands for martyrs, many of the greatest saints were not asked to shed blood, and their prizes are just as precious.

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Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, despite, or, ought, since, whereas, whether, who.

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