Religion & SpiritualityChristianity

The Great Rood Screen

Dcn. Seraphim Richard Rohlin, and Ancient Faith Ministries

The Insular Saints and Stories of the British Isles

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September 4 · length unknown
The Psalter of the Quatrains - Out of Egypt
A baby floats down the Nile in a basket of reeds, and a king's daughter kneels to lift him out. Eighty years later, Moses raises a bronze serpent on a pole, splits the sea, and carries down from Sinai the ten words that outlast every empire on earth. Dcn. Seraphim reads the whole life of Moses from the tenth-century Saltair na Rann: the burning bush, the plagues, the Paschal lamb and the blood on the doorposts, Miriam's song, manna in the wilderness, water from the rock, the golden calf, and the
August 27 · length unknown
The Blackbird's Nest - St. Kevin of Glendalough
It is Lent in a steep valley of the Wicklow Mountains, and a man has stood at prayer so long that a blackbird mistakes him for a tree. She builds her nest in his outstretched hand, lays her eggs, and broods there — and Kevin of Glendalough does not move until the last fledgling flies. Dcn. Seraphim tells the story of the hermit who came to the valley of the two lakes to be alone with God and found the whole creation gathering around him: the cow that reveals his solitude, the doe that nurses an
August 20 · length unknown
The Voyage - St. Brendan the Navigator
It is Easter morning somewhere in the cold gray Atlantic fifteen hundred years ago, and fourteen monks light a fire to boil their Paschal kettle — and the island moves. It is not an island; it is Jasconius, the great leviathan of the deep, the first-made of the creatures of the sea, who labors night and day to put his tail in his mouth and cannot — and every Easter for seven years he will come back, gentle as a lamb, to serve as the nave of their church. Dcn. Seraphim turns the boat of our podca
August 14 · length unknown
The Psalter of the Quatrains - The Patriarchs
Dcn. Seraphim continues the read-through of the Saltair na Rann through the three great patriarchs — Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph — finding there the most sustained foreshadowing of Christ in the whole poem so far. We follow the binding of Isaac, the stolen blessing, Jacob's long service for Rachel and his wrestling at the ford, and the twelve sons who become the tribes; and then Joseph, sold by his brothers for thirty pieces of silver, falsely accused and bound, raised at last to the right hand of
August 6 · length unknown
The Candle of the Church - The Venerable Bede
The plague of 686 has emptied the new monastery at Jarrow, and when all the dead are buried only two voices are left who can sing the full daily office — the abbot Ceolfrith, and one small boy of about thirteen whom he had reared in the house. For a week they try the psalms without the antiphons, and they cannot bear the praise of God going up maimed; so the old man and the child sing the whole liturgy of the hours alone, day after day. This boy was none other than the Venerable Bede, whose voic
July 30 · length unknown
The Tree Speaks - The Dream of the Rood
In a small parish church in the Scottish lowlands stands a stone cross eighteen feet high, carved around the year 700, and up its sides, among the vine-scrolls and birds, someone has cut runes runes that hearken back to one of the oldest surviving English poems. This podcast is called The Great Rood Screen — rood is the old English word for the Cross — and in this episode, at last, Dcn. Seraphim reads the Old English poem "The Dream of the Rood" and comments on both its uniqueness, and its beaut
July 23 · length unknown
The Philosopher of Canterbury - St. Theodore of Tarsus
Rome, 667, and the plague is burying the dead again: among them the Englishman sent from Canterbury to be made archbishop, dead within days of arriving. The Pope, with the letters of the English kings in his hand and the candidate in the ground, must find someone to send to that island at the end of the world. The man he finds is a sixty-six-year-old Greek monk, a refugee from the eastern edge of Christendom, born under the walls of St. Paul's Tarsus, so learned that men called him "the Philosop
July 16 · length unknown
The Psalter of the Quatrains - From the Flood to the Friend of God
Dcn. Seraphim continues his reading of the Saltair na Rann from the Flood to Abraham, the friend of God. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, the poet pauses to recount the years up to his own time, fixing his own year to A.D. 988. Around that window into the poet's own day runs the great chronology of the ages of the world, and then Noah and the ark and the dove, the division of the earth among the nations, Nimrod the hunter and the tower of Babel, and at last the call of Abraham and the thr
July 9 · length unknown
A Light in Kent - St. Augustine of Canterbury
In a Roman slave market around the year 575, a monk stops before a stall of fair-haired boys from a far northern island and asks where they are from. Told they are Angles, and pagans, he answers that they have the faces of angels and ought to be coheirs with the angels in heaven — and he never forgets them. His name is Gregory, and when he becomes Pope he sends a reluctant monk named Augustine with forty companions to the edge of the world. Dcn. Seraphim turns the map around — away from the Celt
July 2 · length unknown
Caedmon's Call
Imagine a hall in Northumbria, thirteen hundred years ago, and the harp going round the benches after supper — and one man rising in dread and slipping out into the dark, because in his whole long life he has never been able to sing. His name is Caedmon, and tonight, in a cattle-shed, God will give him the gift he has run from his entire life. In a deliberately quieter and more intimate episode, Dcn. Seraphim reads and talks through Bede's account of the first Christian poet of the English langu
June 25 · length unknown
The Psalter of the Quatrains, Cantos VIII-XII - The Tree and the Cross
Dcn. Seraphim reads cantos eight through twelve of the Saltair na Rann in a single great sweep: the whole story of Adam and Eve, from the serpent in the garden to the skull beneath the Cross. The Devil, envious that this creature of clay is bound for the heaven he has lost, works the Fall; Adam and Eve do penance standing in the cold rivers; and the Devil comes a second time, disguised as an angel of light, to deceive them again — and then turns and laments what he has done in the haunting cry,
June 18 · length unknown
The Shepherd who Saw a Saint
A shepherd boy on a Northumbrian hillside looked up one night and saw the heavens open, and angels carrying a soul of fire into the light. The next morning he learns that Bishop Aidan died in that very hour, and from that moment the boy called Cuthbert gives his whole life to the God who took Aidan home. This is the story of the boy who became a monk at Melrose became the hermit who sailed to the demon-haunted rock of the Inner Farne to be alone with God. Dragged twice from his solitude to serve
June 11 · length unknown
Mother of the English - St. Hilda of Whitby
Dcn. Seraphim tells the story of St. Hilda of Whitby: born into the royal house of Northumbria, baptized at Easter beside King Edwin by a missionary from Rome, called back from the very ship that would have carried her to a monastery in Gaul, and formed in the Irish discipline of Aidan. Hilda's own life is the meeting of two streams — Roman water at her baptism, Irish discipline in her vocation — and her great double monastery at Whitby becomes a school that sends five bishops out into a unified
June 4 · length unknown
The Psalter of the Quatrains, Cantos IV-VII - Between the Devil and Paradise
Dcn. Seraphim reads us cantos 4-7 of the Psalter of the Quatrains, and we learn the strange and wonderful Irish version (by way of Syria) of the creation of man, the fall of the Devil when he refuses to venerate him, and the nature and secret meaning of the earthly paradise. Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki
May 28 · length unknown
The Raven-King - St. Oswald of Northumbria
You met Oswald in the Aidan episode — the king who knelt in the dirt and translated the gospel for his people, who broke a silver dish on Easter and gave the pieces to the poor. Now we tell the story from his side: Exile on Iona. The Battle of Heavenfield. A death on a battlefield with a prayer on his lips. But this episode goes somewhere no one expects: after Oswald dies, his story keeps going — across the sea to Luxembourg, into Bavaria, and all the way to the German-speaking Alps, where a tho
May 21 · length unknown
Orthodox Christianity in Wales - Then and Now | Interview with Fr. Jacob Siemens
Dcn. Seraphim is joined by Fr. Jacob Siemens, a priest in Cardiff, Wales under the Archdiocese of Orthodox Churches of Russian Tradition in Western Europe (MP). Fr. Jacob, an expert on the early Welsh church as well as the life and ministry of St. Theodore of Tarsus, talks to us about the Celtic Church, its myths and misconceptions, and tells us about the important missionary work going on there today. Find Fr. Jacob's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@orthodoxexchange Music used: "Across The
May 14 · length unknown
The Apostle to the North - St. Aidan of Lindisfarne
The Venerable Bede knew Aidan's disciples personally — and he wrote about Aidan with a warmth he showed almost no one else, even though they disagreed on the Easter question. In this episode, Dcn. Seraphim tells the story of the monk from Iona who became the Apostle of Northumbria, not through force or spectacle, but through a gentle, walking, giving-everything-away kind of holiness. Link to The Orthodox Pilgrim: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOrthodoxPilgrim
May 7 · length unknown
The Psalter of the Quatrains, Canto III - The Angels
Dcn. Seraphim reads us the third Canto of the Saltair na Rann, which describes the heavenly orders -- the nine ranks of the angels and the tenth rank as redeemed humanity takes their place in the cosmic dance. Watch the first episode on the Psalter to learn the history of these psalms and why they are important to ancient Celtic Christianity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRR4m9Zh4cY&t=32s Music used: "Across The Fields Of Gold" Yagull Music - Sasha Branislav Markovic, Mayu Saeki
April 23 · length unknown
The White House - St. Ninian of Whithorn
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 sk
April 16 · length unknown
St. Columba, the Dove of the Church
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 a

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