Ps 23:4a
Even when I go through the dark valley1,
I fear no evil, for You are with me.
When death lurks around the corner, joyful singing has become a memory, and the future is gloomy; a forgotten hero from the past comes alive once again to witness the struggle against illness and death. His weapon is gratitude expressed in songs and Psalms he invariably invokes. As a young man, he survived a plague that devastated his settlement. And as an adult, he had to face a disease that ended his life. The Venerable Bede was the most outstanding scholar of the early medieval era, famous for producing the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical history of the English people) and other works on theology, chronology, poetry, and biography. But it is not extraordinary learning that draws attention. It is a personality shaped by the true devotion and faith gloriously manifested at the end of his life as presented in the Epistola de obitu Bedae (Letter on the death of Bede), an admirable eyewitness account written by Cuthbert, a pupil of Bede2.
He was taken ill, in particular with frequent attacks of breathlessness but almost without pain, before Easter, for about a fortnight; and after it he continued in the same way cheerful and rejoicing, giving thanks to almighty God day and night, and indeed almost hour by hour, until Ascension Day, which was the twenty-sixth of May. Daily he gave us lessons, who were his pupils, and spent the rest of his day in chanting the Psalter, as best he could. The whole of every night he passed cheerfully in prayer and giving God thanks, except only when brief slumber intervened; and in the same way, when he woke up, he would at once take up again the familiar melodies of Scripture, not ceasing to spread out his hands in thanksgiving to God.
This example of the invincible, battle-hardened spirit spoke directly to the hearts of those present, as witnessed by Cuthbert:
In all truth I can say it: I never saw or heard of any man so diligent in returning thanks to the living God. Surely a blessing was upon him!
In his last days, he remained active. He sang, exhorted, implored, and thanked.
And he used to repeat that sentence from St. Paul ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’, and many other verses of Scripture, urging us thereby to awake from the slumber of the soul by thinking in good time of our last hour. And in our own language, — for he was familiar with English poetry, — speaking of the soul’s dread departure from the body, he would repeat:
Facing that enforced journey, no man can be
More prudent than he has good call to be,
If he consider, before his going hence,
What for his spirit of good hap or of evil
After his day of death shall be determined.
He used to sing antiphons too, for his own comfort and ours, of which one is ‘O King of glory, Lord of might, who didst this day ascend in triumph above all the heavens, leave us not comfortless, but send to us the promise of the Father, even the Spirit of truth. Alleluia.’ But when he came to the words ‘Leave us not comfortless’, he broke down and wept; it was an hour before he tried to repeat what he had left unfinished, and so it was every day. And when we heard it, we shared his sorrow; we read and wept by turns, or rather, we wept continually as we read.
In this exaltation we passed the days between Easter and Pentecost as far as the date I have named; and he was filled with joy, and gave God thanks that he had been found worthy to suffer this sickness. He used to say repeatedly: ‘God scourgeth every son whom He receiveth’, and that sentence of St. Ambrose: ‘I have not so lived, that life among you now would make me ashamed; but I am not afraid to die either, for the God we serve is good.’
He did not allow his bodily illness to infect his soul with discouragement and horror. He entrusted his condition to God and further worked for the glory of God!
During those days there were two pieces of work worthy of record, besides the lessons which he gave us every day and his chanting of the Psalter, which he desired to finish: the gospel of St. John, which he was turning into our mother tongue to the great profit of the Church, from the beginning as far as the words ‘But what are they among so many ?’s and a selection from bishop Isidore’s book On the Wonders of Nature; for he said ‘I cannot have my children learning what is not true, and losing their labour on this after I am gone.’
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| The last chapter3. |
On the day of his death, completing the translation of the last chapter of the book, he asked his student:
‘[...] Hold my head in your hands, for it is a great delight to me to sit over against my holy place in which I used to pray, that as I sit there I may call upon my Father.’ And so upon the floor of his cell, singing ‘Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit’ and the rest, he breathed his last. And well may we believe without hesitation that, inasmuch as he had laboured here always in the praise of God, so his soul was carried by angels to the joys of Heaven which he longed for. So all who heard or saw the death of our saintly father Bede declared that they had never seen a man end his days in such great holiness and peace; for, as I have said, as long as his soul remained in the body, he chanted the ‘Gloria Patri’ and other songs to the glory of God, and spreading out his hands ceased not to give God thanks.
Bede achieved what the author of the Book of Wisdom wrote about4. May we follow in their footsteps.
Therefore I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
And deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
Because all gold, in view of her, is a bit of sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and beauty I loved her,
And I chose to have her rather than the light,
because her radiance never ceases.
Yet all good things together came to me with her,
and countless riches at her hands;
I rejoiced in them all, because Wisdom is their leader,
though I had not known that she is their mother.
Sincerely I learned about her, and ungrudgingly do I share—
her riches I do not hide away;
For she is an unfailing treasure;
those who gain this treasure win the friendship of God,
being commended by the gifts that come from her discipline.
Notes
[1] My translation is closest to the Lexham English Bible (LEB). The background of this Psalm is an agricultural image of sheep farming. The peace of the sheep lying down in green pastures and beside quiet waters contrasts well with the dangers of the ‘dark valley’, which symbolizes the spiritual struggles of the leader of the nation, such as David. Therefore, ancient attempts to translate this part of the verse more abstractly are justified, e.g. LXX (μέσῳ σκιᾶς θανάτου, in the midst of death’s shadow), TgPs (במישׁר טולא דמותא, by the plain of the shadow of death), Peshitta (ܒܢܚ̈ܠܝ ܛ̈ܠܠܝ ܡܘܬܐ݂, in the valleys (wadis) of the shadows of death), Vetus Latina (in medio umbrae mortis, in the midst of death’s shadow), Vulgata (in valle mortis, in the valley of death). Especially since the noun צלמות used here opens up room for interpretation. For details see: Van Acker D. 2017. צלמות, an etymological and semantic reconsideration. Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages. 43(2):97–123.
[2] Cuthbert. 1969. Epistola de obitu Bedae (Cuthbert’s letter on the death of Bede). In: Colgrave B, Mynors RAB, editors. Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Oxford medieval texts). p. 579–587.
[3] Penrose JD. 1902. The last chapter. Wikimedia Commons.
[4] The New American Bible. Revised edition. 2011. Washington: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Ws 7:7-14.
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