Magic Statistics

Latest in an occasional series of prayers by Christians of ages past.  Previous entry here; complete list of entries here.

I implore you, good Jesus, that as in your mercy you have given me to drink in with delight the words of your knowledge, so of your loving kindness you will also grant me one day to come to you, the fountain of all wisdom, and to stand for ever before your face.  Amen.

St Bede the Venerable (673 - 735),
Monk, Doctor of the Church, Father of English History

St Bede was born and, as far as we know, lived his entire life in the north of England, yet he became perhaps the most learned scholar in all of Europe.  At the age of 7, he was sent to Wearmouth Abbey for his education; at age 11, he continued his education at the new monastery at Jarrow, eventually becoming a monk and remaining there until his death.  He lived a routine and outwardly uneventful life of prayer, devotion, study, writing, and teaching.

Bede’s writings cover a very wide range of interests, including natural history, orthography, chronology, and biblical translation and exposition.  He was the first to translate the Bible into Old English.  In his view, his 25 volumes of Scripture commentary were his most important writings.  His best-known book is Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731.  This work earned him the popular title “Father of English History”, and not just because it was the first attempt to write a history of England.  His historical research was thorough and far-reaching.  For example, he asked friends traveling to Rome to bring him copies of documents relevant to English history, and he made use of oral traditions when written materials were not available.  The book provides much historical information that can be found in no other source.

His pupil Cuthbert, later Abbot of Jarrow, has left a moving eyewitness account of St Bede’s last hours. Bede fell ill shortly before Easter 735, when he was in the midst of translating the Gospel of John into the Anglo-Saxon language.  Everyone realised that the end was near, but he was determined to complete the translation.  Between Easter and Ascension Day, he persisted in the task while continuing to teach his students at his bedside.

After a restless night, he resumed dictating the translation on the morning before the Ascension.  That afternoon he called the priests of the monastery to him to distribute his remaining earthly possessions.  Seeing they were overcome with grief, he comforted them with these words:

"If it be the will of my Maker, the time has come when I shall be freed from the body and return to Him Who created me out of nothing when I had no being.  I have had a long life, and the merciful Judge has ordered it graciously.  The time of my departure is at hand, and my soul longs to see Christ my King in His beauty.”

The young man who had been writing down the translation said there was still one sentence remaining, and Bede dictated the final words.

After a short while the lad said, "Now it is finished.”

"You have spoken truly," he replied. "It is well finished. Now raise my head in your hands, for it would give me great joy to sit facing the holy place where I used to pray, so that I may sit and call on my Father."

And thus, on the floor of his cell, he chanted “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit" to its ending, and breathed his last.

When he received word of the great scholar’s death, St Boniface, who had used Bede’s Bible commentaries, said, “The candle of the Church, lit by the Holy Spirit, has been extinguished”.  Within a generation or two, St Bede was being called “Venerable”.  His bones were translated from Jarrow to Durham Cathedral in the mid-11th century; in 1370 they were placed in the cathedral’s Galilee Chapel.  (A photo of the tomb can be found about halfway down this page).

St Bede is the only Englishman named in Dante’s Paradise.  He is also the only English Doctor of the Church.

More information can be found on the internet at the Venerable Bede Page, the Christian History Institute, and Bede’s World.

Source of prayer: The final words of Ecclesiastical History of the English People, as copied on the prayer card at right.  The picture at the top of this post shows Bede sharpening his quill, from a codex at Engelbert Abbey, Switzerland.  (The immediate source is the cover of my copy of the Ecclesiastical History.)

Through its Texas-based subsidiary Citgo, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company offers deeply discounted or free home heating oil to Americans living in poor circumstances.  As part of this year's program, Citgo has offered to provide at no charge 100 gallons of heating oil to each of 12,000 households in rural Alaska.  Most of the approximately 150 eligible Alaska Native villages have accepted the offer, but a few have not.

In Alaska's native villages, the punishing winter cold is already coming through the walls of the lightly insulated plywood homes, many of the villagers are desperately poor, and heating-oil prices are among the highest in the nation.

And yet a few villages are refusing free heating oil from Venezuela, on the patriotic principle that no foreigner has the right to call their president "the devil."

The heating oil is being offered by the petroleum company controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President Bush's nemesis. While scores of Alaska's Eskimo and Indian villages say they have no choice but to accept, others would rather suffer.

Because Citgo does not actually operate in Alaska, the company is sending over $5 million in cash so heating oil can be purchased from local suppliers.

Four remote villages are known to have refused the free oil: Nelson Lagoon, Atka, St Paul, and St George.

The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, a native nonprofit organization that would have handled the heating oil donation on behalf of 291 households in Nelson Lagoon, Atka, St. Paul and St. George, rejected the offer because of the insults Chavez has hurled at Bush.
. . .
Dimitri Philemonof, president and chief executive of the association, said accepting the aid would be "compromising ourselves." "I think we have some duty to our country, and I think it's loyalty," he said.

Since the association announced its rejection of Venezuelan aid, contributions have poured in from across the US, so the villagers may well have enough donated oil to last the winter.

The controversy over Venezuela’s offer has heightened interest in the impoverished condition of many Alaska Natives.  Many find it ironic that the state government, which last year received over $2.8 billion in oil revenues, is unable to ensure that poor residents get enough heating oil at reasonable prices.

The donation has refocused attention on the rampant and long-standing problems in the oil-rich state's Native villages, where poverty, fuel prices, unemployment and unchecked crime far surpass national averages.

For years, Alaska Natives have reproached the state and federal governments for sending too little money to their tiny, far-flung communities. Many lie at least 100 miles off the state's skeletal road system in climates where winter temperatures routinely plummet far below zero. Fuel and grocery prices are bloated by the high costs of long-distance shipping by small plane and barge.

The expense of transporting heavy goods, such as oil, over long distances between sparsely populated settlements readily explains the exorbitant cost of home heating oil in rural Alaska.  Nevertheless, the alacrity with which Native villages okayed Citgo’s offer has proved very embarrassing to the state.

The map below, from Google Earth, shows Nelson Lagoon and Atka, two of the four villages mentioned above.  Also shown for reference are Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, and Whitehorse, Yukon.  (Click for larger view.)

Previous related post: Some Alaska natives support oil drilling in ANWR