Daily Reading for September 16 • Ninian, Bishop in Galloway, c. 430
As I reflect on the devout conversation of this most holy man, I am ashamed of our sloth, and of the laziness of this miserable generation. Which of us, I ask, even among servants, does not more frequently utter jestings than things serious, idle things than things useful, carnal things rather than things spiritual, in common conversation and intercourse. The mouths that Divine grace consecrated for the praise of God, and for the celebration of the holy mysteries, are daily polluted by back-biting and secular words, and they weary of the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Prophets. They all the day busy themselves with the vain and base works of man. How do they conduct themselves when journeying? Is not the body like the mind, all day in motion while the tongue is idle? Rumours and the doings of wicked men are in men’s mouths; religious gravity is relaxed by mirth and idle tales; the affairs of kings the duties of bishops, the ministries of clerics, the quarrels of princes, above all, the lives and morals of all are discussed. We judge every one but ourselves, and, what is more to be deplored we bite and devour one another, that we may be consumed one of another.
Not so the most blessed Ninian, not so, whose repose no crowd disturbed, whose meditation no journey hindered, whose prayer never grew lukewarm through fatigue. For whithersoever he went forth he raised his soul to heavenly things, either by prayer or by contemplation. But so often as turning aside from his journey he indulged in rest, either for himself or for the beast on which he rode, bringing out a book which he carried about with him for the very purpose, he delighted in reading or singing something, for he felt with the prophet, “O how sweet are thy words unto my throat! yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth.” Whence the Divine power bestowed such grace upon him, that even when resting in the open air, when reading in the heaviest rain, no moisture ever touched the book on which he was intent. When all around him was everywhere wet with water running upon it, he alone sat with his little book under the waters as if he were protected by the roof of a house.
From The Life of St.Ninian by Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx; http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/ninian.html