Aidan: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Aidan was an Irish monk of Iona, the monastery founded by St Columba, known there for his strict life of fasting and prayer. When King Oswald of Northumbria asked Iona for a teacher for his people, the first monk sent came home complaining that the English were too hard to teach. Aidan answered that they should first have been given milk, as St Paul says, and not solid food, and so he himself was made bishop and sent. In 635 the king gave him the island of Lindisfarne, near the royal seat at Bamburgh, and there he founded his monastery. Since Aidan had no English, King Oswald, who had learned Gaelic in exile, translated his sermons himself. Bede tells how Aidan walked from village to village, speaking with rich and poor alike, taught nothing that he did not live, and gave away whatever kings and nobles gave him, using money to feed the poor and to ransom those sold into slavery. When King Oswin gave him a fine horse, he gave it to a beggar. He fell asleep in the Lord at Bamburgh, by the west wall of the church, leaning on one of its beams, on 31 August 651, and the young shepherd Cuthbert saw angels carrying a soul to heaven at that hour. The Church remembers him on 31 August (13 September on the Old Calendar), and the faithful ask his prayers for humility and a generous heart.

What the faithful pray for

• a humble and gentle heart
• generosity to the poor and to those in need
• those who teach and share the faith
• those held captive or in bondage
• the Church in Britain and Ireland