The Great Rood Screen

In this episode, Dcn. Seraphim tells the story of the man the medieval English considered to be no less than one of their three greatest saints, even though he spent most of his life not among the English, but evangelizing their ancient and still-pagan kin on the European mainland. From the famous scene at Thor's Oak to his martyrdom on the banks of the Boorne, we see his life not just as a series of accomplishments, but through the wonderfully intimate lens of his surviving letters, and the eyewitness accounts of the men and women who knew him and who aided him in his quest to bring the Gospel to the pagan Saxons. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

A student is halfway through Saint Matthew when another man asks to borrow his book. The student, St. Ciarán gives it away. The brothers call him "Half-Matthew" to mock him; but St. Finnian, the great teacher of the Apostles of Ireland, calls him Half-Ireland instead. Dcn. Seraphim follows this carpenter's son from the school at Clonard to the banks of the Shannon: a fox carrying his lessons, a cow feeding his fellow students, a tree seen in a dream, and a monastic city raised beside the river. Seven months later its founder is dying. Kevin comes to meet him, and Columba carries earth from his grave out onto a dangerous sea. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

Moses has died, and Joshua must lead the people across the Jordan. Dcn. Seraphim continues his verse translation of the Saltair na Rann through the fall of Jericho, the settling of the tribes, and the years of the judges. Gideon and Samson deliver Israel; the Ark falls into Philistine hands; Samuel calls the people back to God. At last they ask for a king, and Saul is chosen. In fifteen poems, the Irish poet carries us from the people Moses left at the edge of the wilderness to the beginning of Israel's monarchy.

What would you get if St. Anthony the Great and St. Moses the Black had been raised on the Beowulf poem before pursuing their monastic vocation? In the dark fens of the early 8th century English midlands, we find the answer: St. Guthlac, the great solitary and demon-fighter of early English Christianity. From his wars against demons to his devotion to a certain apostle, his life reminds us that Christ is triumphant over the monsters, and that it is only through violence that the Kingdom of Heaven is won. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

During his recent pilgrimage to the ancient Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd, Dcn. Seraphim takes some time at St. Cybi's well to tell us the saint's story: a difficult man, a man who sometimes did not get along with his fellow clergy, but a man who fundamentally rejected the allure of worldly power in order to seek the kingdom of God. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

Deacon Seraphim shares the life and many of the stories of St. Wilfrid of York, a Northumbrian Bishop who served the Church in the 7th century and reposed in 710 AD. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

A baby floats down the Nile in a basket of reeds, and a king's daughter kneels to lift him out. Eighty years later, Moses raises a bronze serpent on a pole, splits the sea, and carries down from Sinai the ten words that outlast every empire on earth. Dcn. Seraphim reads the whole life of Moses from the tenth-century Saltair na Rann: the burning bush, the plagues, the Paschal lamb and the blood on the doorposts, Miriam's song, manna in the wilderness, water from the rock, the golden calf, and the hidden grave on Nebo. Woven through the story is the Irish poet's boldest turn: as Pharaoh's host drowns, Gaídel Glas and Scotta put out to sea, beginning the long wandering that will end on Ireland's green shore. At the center stands the serpent lifted on a tree — a figure of Christ raised upon the wood of grace... Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

It is Lent in a steep valley of the Wicklow Mountains, and a man has stood at prayer so long that a blackbird mistakes him for a tree. She builds her nest in his outstretched hand, lays her eggs, and broods there — and Kevin of Glendalough does not move until the last fledgling flies. Dcn. Seraphim tells the story of the hermit who came to the valley of the two lakes to be alone with God and found the whole creation gathering around him: the cow that reveals his solitude, the doe that nurses an orphan, the wolf sentenced to a penance of mercy, and the otter that lifts his lost psalter from the lake unharmed... Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

It is Easter morning somewhere in the cold gray Atlantic fifteen hundred years ago, and fourteen monks light a fire to boil their Paschal kettle — and the island moves. It is not an island; it is Jasconius, the great leviathan of the deep, the first-made of the creatures of the sea, who labors night and day to put his tail in his mouth and cannot — and every Easter for seven years he will come back, gentle as a lamb, to serve as the nave of their church. Dcn. Seraphim turns the boat of our podcast west, back across the Irish Sea and back a full century to the springtime of the Irish church, to tell the most famous traveler's tale of the Middle Ages: the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, the ocean-quest of St. Brendan of Clonfert for the Land of Promise of the Saints. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki

Dcn. Seraphim continues the read-through of the Saltair na Rann through the three great patriarchs — Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph — finding there the most sustained foreshadowing of Christ in the whole poem so far. We follow the binding of Isaac, the stolen blessing, Jacob's long service for Rachel and his wrestling at the ford, and the twelve sons who become the tribes; and then Joseph, sold by his brothers for thirty pieces of silver, falsely accused and bound, raised at last to the right hand of the king — and the two prisoners of the dungeon become two condemned men, of whom one is crucified and the other lifted up. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki