Commontide
Proper 3
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 1st Sunday after Trinity
O Lord, we entreat you mercifully to hear us, and grant that we, to whom you have given the desire to pray, may by your mighty aid be defended and comforted in all our adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
First Archbishop of Canterbury and Apostle to the English
Anglican Commemoration
Augustine, a Roman monk sent by Pope Gregory the Great, landed in Kent in 597 and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. He baptized King Æthelberht, founded the see and the monastery outside Canterbury's walls, and failed to reconcile the older British church to Roman practice. He died on 26 May, in 604 or 605, having already consecrated his successor.
Almost nothing is known of Augustine's life before his mission. He was prior of the monastery of St. Andrew on the Coelian Hill in Rome when Pope Gregory the Great selected him to lead a missionary expedition to Britain in 596. Gregory had long desired to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons — Bede records the tradition that Gregory, seeing fair-haired English slaves in the Roman market, declared them 'not Angles but angels' (non Angli sed Angeli).
The mission nearly collapsed before it began. The monks, intimidated by reports of the ferocity of the Anglo-Saxons and the dangers of the journey, persuaded Augustine to return to Rome and beg release. Gregory refused, sent Augustine back with letters of encouragement and formal authority, and the party finally crossed the Channel in 597, landing on the Isle of Thanet in Kent.
King Æthelberht, though still pagan, received them cautiously — insisting on meeting outdoors, where he believed magic would have less power. Impressed by their sincerity, he granted them a residence in Canterbury and permission to preach. Within a year Æthelberht himself was baptized, and mass conversions followed.
Augustine established his cathedral at Canterbury and was consecrated archbishop by Gallic bishops, receiving the pallium from Gregory. He founded the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul (later St. Augustine's) and consecrated Mellitus as Bishop of London and Justus as Bishop of Rochester.
His efforts to bring the existing British Christian communities into unity with Canterbury were less successful. A conference with British bishops at a location Bede calls 'Augustine's Oak' broke down over disputes about Easter dating and other customs. Augustine died around May 26, 604 or 605.
Traditionally, Augustine's mission was confirmed by miraculous signs. According to Bede, drawing on earlier Canterbury sources, Augustine performed healings that convinced the pagan English of the power of the Christian God. Gregory, writing to Augustine in a letter preserved by Bede (HE I.31), counseled him not to take pride in miracles but to rejoice that his converts' names were written in heaven — a caution that itself confirms miracle claims were circulating during Augustine's lifetime.
Bede also records a story — which he presents cautiously — that when British bishops refused to cooperate with Augustine, the archbishop warned them that they would suffer at the hands of the Saxons, a prophecy connected to the later massacre of the monks of Bangor-Is-Coed by King Æthelfrith of Northumbria (HE II.2). The story serves Bede's narrative purpose of vindicating the Canterbury mission against Celtic resistance, and the prophetic framework should be read with that in mind.