The Great Rood Screen

Dcn. Seraphim tells us the story of St. Ninian, Apostle to the Picts, Scotland's first recorded saint and a great healer and wonderworker. In doing so, he draws on an epic poem written about the saint's life and miracles which has never before been translated into English. Walk with Dcn. Seraphim to Ninian's "wondrous cave of darkness," where he sought solitude amid his episcopal labors, and experience the wonders of his many miracles, especially to lepers and those struggling with mysterious skin conditions. After all, St. Ninian's suppliants include none other than Robert the Bruce himself! Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki Licensed through Envato

Dcn. Seraphim tells us the story of Saint Columba of Iona — the aristocrat-monk whose name means "dove" but whose life was shaped as much by penance as by prayer. Born of royal blood in Donegal, foretold by saints from the age of Patrick onward, Columba trains under Finnian at Clonard before a catastrophic quarrel over a copied psalter leads to the Battle of Cooldrevny and his exile from Ireland. Drawing on Adomnán's Vita Columbae, Dcn. Seraphim follows Columba from the green shores of Ireland across the sea to the windswept island of Iona, where the Dove of the Church founds the monastery that will become the spiritual heart of Scotland, faces down the beast of Loch Ness, and spends thirty-four years in unceasing prayer. The Life of St. Oran, and Poem Reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0o3O4Kgylk Music Used: Across the Fields of Gold - Yagull Music Licensed through Storyblocks

Dcn. Seraphim reads us the second Canto of the Saltair na Rann, which describes the glories of heaven, melding Celtic otherworld traditions with a vision of Paradise straight out of the Apocalypse of St. John.

Dcn. Seraphim tells us the life and miracles of Saint Brigid of Kildare — the only woman among Ireland's three patron saints, and perhaps the most beloved and mysterious of the three. Born around 451 to a pagan chieftain and a Christian bondwoman, Brigid enters the world between two religions and two social classes, marked from birth by a pillar of fire. Drawing on the earliest Latin Lives and the Old Irish Bethu Brigte, Dcn. Seraphim follows Brigid from her childhood of reckless generosity through her founding of the great monastery at Kildare, her miracles of abundance and healing, and her place in the hearts of the Irish as the Mary of the Gael.

For St. Patrick's Day, Dcn. Seraphim presents his own translation of a remarkable and little-known medieval Latin text: the Skellig Michael legend from the Regensburg Schottenlegende. In it, the saints of Ireland come to Patrick with a plea — the forests and caves and solitudes where they long to pray are crawling with venomous creatures and demons, and they cannot find peace. What follows is an account of spiritual warfare on an epic scale: Patrick summons a universal council of the saints, who march forth in ecclesiastical battle array against the hosts of evil, driving them step by step toward the western sea. At the climax, Patrick raises his hands like Moses against Amalek, his fingers burning like the unconsumed bush, and from a rock in the farthest ocean the Archangel Michael appears with companies of angels.

Dcn. Seraphim introduces us to the Saltair na Rann, the great tenth-century Old Irish poem that retells the whole of salvation history — from the first day of creation to the last judgment — in 150 cantos mirroring the 150 Psalms. Deacon Seraphim reads his own translation of Canto I, the magnificent canticle of creation, in which an anonymous Irish poet synthesizes the Genesis account with the cosmological learning of the early medieval world to sing the making of heaven and earth, the separation of the elements, and the glory of the God who fashioned all things from nothing.

Today, Dcn. Seraphim tells the story of Saint Finnian of Clonard — the "Teacher of the Saints of Ireland" — who traveled to Wales to study under the heirs of the British monastic tradition, then returns to found the great school at Clonard on the River Boyne. His students, known as the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, spread across the island founding monasteries: Ciaran at Clonmacnoise, Brendan the Navigator at Clonfert, Columba at Iona, and others who transformed Ireland from a mission field into the Isle of Saints.

Dcn. Seraphim tells us the story of Saint Patrick in his own words: a Romano-British boy is seized by Irish raiders and sold into slavery, where he discovers God on the cold hills of Ulster. After his escape, he hears the voice of the Irish calling him back to the land of his captivity. Drawing on Patrick's Confessio and Letter to Coroticus, Dcn. Seraphim explores the mystery of his return and the Trinitarian faith he planted in Irish soil.

After Rome's withdrawal from Britain, the faith survives and flourishes in Wales. Dcn. Seraphim tells the stories of Saint Dyfrig (Dubricius), the wonder-working bishop of Ergyng; Saint Illtyd, the soldier-turned-monk who founded the great school at Llantwit Major; and Saint Samson of Dol, the restless pilgrim who carried British Christianity from Wales through Cornwall to Brittany — the first great peregrinus of the Celtic tradition.

Dcn. Seraphim begins The Great Rood Screen Podcast with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea's arrival at Glastonbury, the miraculous Holy Thorn, and the founding of the first Christian church in Britain. He then discusses the podcast's mission and its name, drawn from Tolkien's vision of medieval literature as a "great rood screen" revealing the Holy of Holies. Finally, Dcn. Seraphim concludes with the story of Saint Alban, Protomartyr of Britain, and the earliest historical evidence for Christianity in the British Isles.