Feast Day ~ May 7
Today, we would not look to an academic institution to produce saints of the Church. But in 7th and 8th century Britain, a school founded by St. Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, provided the spiritual atmosphere for learning to live a holy life. The school was directed by the monk, Adrian, who had accompanied St. Theodore when he came to England from Rome.
One of this school’s pupils who learned not only academic subjects but also how to live a holy life became St. John of Beverly. John was born in Yorkshire and went as a young man to Canterbury to study with Adrian. John’s studies there included music, law, and mathematics as well as the Bible. This well-rounded education, taught by a holy monk, contributed to John’s decision to enter the monastic life, and he returned to the north of England to enter the double monastery of St. Hilda at Whitby, where in 664 a Synod reconciled Celtic practices and those of Rome, particularly the dating of Pascha.
When the see of Hexham became vacant in 687, the monk John was chosen as the new bishop. He made a great effort to continue, as much as was possible, the monastic life of prayer and contemplation while carrying out the duties of a bishop.
During Lent, Bishop John made it his custom to retire to a more remote area where, in addition to prayer and fasting, he would devote himself to serving and caring for some poor or ill person. In his History of the English Church and People, St. Bede tells us of the Lenten season in which Bishop John healed a young man who had been mute from his birth and who also had a skin disease. John prayed constantly for the man and combined his prayers with what we would now call “physical therapy” helping the man to loosen his tongue little by little and to learn to form words. The bishop’s prayers and the ministrations of physicians also healed the young man’s skin disease and, thereafter, he never ceased to praise God for his health and for Bishop John.
With a restructuring of dioceses, John was made the Archbishop of York in 705. He established a monastery at Beverly, a short distance from the city and it was to this monastery that he retired when the infirmities of age led him to resign his office in 717. He had been a faithful pastor, a devout monk and a worker of miracles. St. Bede the Venerable, who was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood by St. John, was one of his many spiritual children.
May we remember that the goal of all education should be to learn how to live a holy life, and may the prayers and example of St. John of Beverly help us to reach that goal.