Augustine maintained a steady line of communication with his patron, Pope Gregory, in Rome, asking him questions about Church policy and allowing the pope to influence the basic shape of the newly born English Church. One question that confused Augustine was the sharp divergence in customs between Christians in Rome, where he had been raised, and those in France. (Some French Christians had immigrated to England, so at this time England had been influenced by French customs.) As a Roman missionary, how aggressive should he be in forcing the English to accept Roman customs? (From Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People)
Augustine’s second question: Even though the Christian faith is one and the same everywhere, why are there different customs in different churches? Why is the Mass said one way in the Roman churches, and another way in the French churches?
Pope Gregory’s answer: You know, my brother, only the customs of the Roman Church in which you were raised. But if you found anything more acceptable to God in any church—Roman, French, or any other—it would make me happy if you made use of it. You should carefully teach the English people, who are very new to Christianity, anything useful you can gather from the various churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of the places they are found, but places for the sake of good things found in them.
Therefore, you should choose things that are devout, holy, and orthodox from every church, and make them into one body, so to speak, and only after that should you introduce them to the English.
The Slow and Patient Task of the Missionary
Every missionary faces the question of pace: How quickly should one try to move a convert from his false opinions and practices to true ones? Should the convert be pushed to abandon his old life “cold turkey,” all at once, or can he be allowed to take more gradual steps, growing accustomed to his new life more slowly? Pope Gregory gave clear instructions to Augustine that he should opt for a more gradual pace in England, hoping that this would draw in more converts than an all-or-nothing approach. (From Gregory’s Letter no. 76)
I have put a lot of thought into the case of the English. I have decided that their pagan temples should not be destroyed, but only the idols that are inside them. Instead, just sprinkle these temples with holy water, and put new altars in them with Christian relics inside. After all, if the temples are well-built, they can simply be transferred from the worship of idols to that of the true God.
This way, when the people see their beloved temples not destroyed but preserved, they might be more willing to abandon their error. They can continue to visit the places they are comfortable with, and can gradually learn to adore the true God there. Since they have a long habit of offering animal sacrifices to demonic idols, they might be allowed to continue some similar practice, in a different form. For example, on the anniversary of the saints whose relics are in the temple, they might carry out some ceremony using branches from the trees around the temple, once that temple has become a church, and thus celebrate the saint’s feast day.
They might even continue to kill animals, but not to sacrifice them to the devil, but rather to eat them, while giving thanks to God for giving all things to them. In this way, they can outwardly carry out some of the same activities they have always enjoyed doing, while inwardly we can gradually steer their minds toward other enjoyments. The reason is that it is no doubt impossible to remove all bad habits immediately from hardhearted people. Someone who wants to get to a high place must get there by small steps, not by huge leaps.
After all, God treated the people of Israel this way. They had grown accustomed to offering animal sacrifices to demonic idols while in Egypt, and He did not prevent them from offering such sacrifices, but simply instructed them to offer them to himself, in order to change their hearts. In this way, some elements in their sacrificial worship changed, but others remained the same, and since they were offered to God and not to idols, while they may have looked the same as before, they were actually quite different.
St. Willibrord (658–739)
Though little is known of Willibrord’s life, this has not stopped the citizens of Luxembourg from their rather quirky celebration of his life, the annual Procession of Holy Dancers, wherein every year thousands hop in a coordinated dance for a mile to the abbey church at Echternach which Willibrord founded. Perhaps it is an appropriate celebration for the life of a man whose miracles, nearly half of the time, involved the multiplication of wine flasks for festivities.
An Englishman of Saxon stock, Willibrord joined the Benedictines at the young age of fifteen, studying for over a decade under the best and brightest of his day, both in England and in Ireland: he had both St. Egbert and St. Wilfrid for educators. His burning desire to preach to the barbarians in Frisia (modern-day Holland) couldn’t be quenched, however, and in his thirties he journeyed to Utrecht with eleven companions to establish a missionary headquarters there.
Willibrord set the example for later European missionaries by seeking out the military protection of the strongest Catholic kingdom of the day—that of the French rulers Charles Martel and Pepin—and by voluntarily submitting their missionary endeavors to the patronage of the bishop of Rome.
Willibrord struggled to establish a functional church in Frisia, even collaborating with the young St. Boniface for several years. When the pagan king Radbod seized power, however, he destroyed almost all of the churches Willibrord had built, replacing them with pagan shrines and killing any missionary he could lay hands on. Patiently, Willibrord returned and rebuilt the devastated churches once the Frankish king could guarantee his safety.
Though well trained as a scholar, the only confirmed writing we have from Willibrord is a note in the margin of a calendar, where he scribbled the date of his arrival in Frisia. Thankfully, St. Alcuin of York, Willibrord’s blood relative and the greatest scholar of his day, wrote a biography to record Willibrord’s legacy for later generations.
The Beginnings of the Dutch Mission
St. Alcuin’s biography of his relative St. Willibrord shows how the monastic schools of England could become breeding grounds for future missionaries. We also see, in these selections, how French military power served as a necessary support for European missions.
By the age of thirty-three [Willibrord’s] religious fervor had reached such a pitch of intensity that he decided it was not worthwhile to continue to increase his own holiness, unless he could also preach the Gospel to others and increase their holiness as well. He had heard that in the northern regions of the world “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Lk 10:2). Therefore, in fulfillment of his mother’s dream, Willibrord, knowing only of his own decision, and not of God’s preordination, decided to sail for these parts, so that if God willed it he would bring the light of the Gospel message to those whose unbelief had not been stirred by its warmth.
So he departed on a ship, taking eleven others who shared his enthusiasm for the faith. Some of these companions gained a martyr’s crown through their constant preaching of the Gospel; others later became bishops and have since died in peace, after their labors in the holy work in preaching.
Thus the man of God and his brothers, as we have said, set sail, and after a successful crossing they moored their ships at the mouth of the Rhine River. Then, after resting, they set out for the castle of Utrecht, which lies on the bank of that river, and where some years later, after God had increased the faith of the people, Willibrord built his cathedral church.
But the Frisian people, and Radbod their king, still preferred their pagan practices. So Willibrord set out for France instead and met with its king, Pepin, a man of immense energy, military success and high moral character. Pepin received him respectfully,
