St David inspiring Wales

Yesterday Wales celebrated St David’s Day.

There’s not a huge amount known about David, but from what we do know there are lessons for us all… This year the day falls just before Lent but much of the reflection on thelife of David suits a Lenten sort of lifestyle because without dwelling on the details too much it seems that David lived a very frugal life. 

 

David lived in the 6th century and we know that he founded a monastery. It is thought that he came from a noble family... There is often discussion of people who have been well brought up having to remain in the manner to which they are accustomed – but this was not so for David.  

 

David’s lifestyle did not encourage comfort. The idea of remaining in the style to which he would have been accustomed was thrown out of the window as he encouraged an ascetic lifestyle. He seems to have believed that the world was full of temptation and the less you indulged within it the more time you had to get closer to Christ. The lifestyle seems to have included times of pain such as wading in water to pray and eating horrendous foods - all in the pursuit of the ultimate holiness and access to heaven.

 

It may not be a life which is very appealing to us at all but there is a most important thing that we can learn from it and that is the need to continually try to get closer to God in our lives. As we head into Lent on Wednesday, we will be asked to challenge ourselves to follow the instruction of Jesus who said, ‘If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ 

 

Jesus goes on, ‘For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life.’

 

The whole sense that is being portrayed by Jesus is a sense that David understood well – that whatever material benefits we have and enjoy in our lives they ultimately mean absolutely nothing in the end. 

 

During Lent we will be called to consider our own relationship with God – we are called to make changes where they are necessary. We are called to get closer to God through prayer and the study of his word in the Bible as we continue our journey through life.

 

As I mentioned we have few actual historical facts about David but many of the ideas have come from the writings of Bishop Rhigyfarch who was writing some 500 years after the death of David. There is one quote that is particularly important as he writes,  

 

“To all, the holy bishop Dewi is the supreme overseer, the supreme protector, the supreme preacher, from whom all received their standard and pattern of living virtuously. To all he was their regulator, he was their dedication, he was their benediction, he was their absolution, their reformation. To the studious life he was instruction; to the needy, life; to the orphans, upbringing; to widows, support; to fathers, a leader; to monks, he was their rule; to non-monastic clergy, the way of life; to all men he was all things.”

 

It’s quite an incredible tribute to a man and if David followed this life as Rhigyfarch suggested then he is undoubtedly a remarkable man, but all of the things that were mentioned are things that we can follow even more closely from Jesus… As we celebrate the life of St David we use that fact to point us to the life of Jesus and the gifts that he offers to us today and every day. 

 

So the first lesson of St David that we learn is to look to God for all of our support, our strength and our wisdom. 

And as we celebrate the life of this Patron Saint, the second thing I want to think of is the lessons we must learn from the past:-

 

David sought to follow Christ more closely and to let nothing get in the way and as a Church, and as individuals, we must always examine ourselves to see what is getting in the way of our relationship with God – Is it tradition, is it being too busy to make time for God, is it that we think we can manage quite well without God anyway…?  

 

St David put aside the material comforts of life – he tried to remove from his life anything that separated him from God, and we are called and challenged to do the same today, because

as we rightly celebrate the lives of the Saints of the past, we recognise also that we are called to be the Saints of today, offering Christ’s very relevant and life changing message of hope to all people.  

 

In his first letter to the Thessalonians Paul wrote that ‘we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the face of great opposition.’ Today, the world seems to be in a fairly perilous position but in this country we are not faced with great opposition in terms of physical persecution – but we will be faced with apathy and indifference and we must seek the power of God to break down that apathy and banish that indifference. 

 

Those who wrote about the lives of the Saints, and St David is no exception, wrote about the best, the juiciest and the holiest parts of their lives. 

 

They may have led exceptional lives and done incredible things, but they were however, and we must never forget this, normal people, but normal people who allowed themselves to be used by God for his service… 

 

Some people today will suggest that the gospel is irrelevant but

Jesus came to bring a message of hope, peace, reconciliation, compassion, justice and love into the world – there is nobody that can say that the world today could not do with a little bit more, perhaps a lot more, of all of these things. 

 

As we consider the example of St David and we give thanks for his life and for that example, we seek God’s help and God’s strength to help us to allow ourselves to be filled with strength and hope and joy, that we may really benefit from the fullness of life that he offers and that we may be used for his service and in doing that, as saints have done through the centuries, to change the world for the better today. AMEN