Our Patron Saint Edmund: A Man for the Times
The following is a homily written and delivered by Fr. Joseph Waite, S.S.E. at Saint Edmund’s Novitiate, Enders Island, Mystic, Connecticut on November 16th 1969.

Who is this Edmund whose feast day we celebrate today?

What do we know about him?

What possible meaning can a 13th century saint have for us today?

We know that Edmund was the first born son of Reginald, a merchant of Abingdon; that his mother Mabel set her son, at a very early age, up on the path that he would never turn aside from as long as he lived.

We know that that path was the very one Christ insisted His disciples must take: I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life; if you would be My disciple, deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me. I have not come to do My will, but the will of My Father Who has sent Me. He who loses his life for My sake will find it; abide in Me and My Father and I will abide in you…

We know that Edmund did just what Christ asked him to do – He rooted out all that was selfish in himself and gave himself entirely to the service of others by surrendering himself entirely to the will of Christ as he read it in the needs of those he met on his Christ-led way.

We know that that way led Edmund to become a scholar and doctor of great renown at Oxford and at Paris and we know further that the very truths he studied and taught to so many who would become the great teachers and churchmen of their day, led him beyond his initial identification with Christ, the Rabbi, Christ, the teacher – they led him to unite himself yet more intimately through ordination into the mystery, the service, and the salvation action of Christ, the High Priest.

We know that following upon his years of teaching theology at Oxford and preaching the Fifth Crusade in 1227, Pope Gregory IX called upon Edmund’s highly esteemed natural gifts as a mathematician and administrator by appointing him treasurer of the magnificent gothic cathedral just under construction at Salisbury.

We know that in addition to raising the funds necessary to equip and to enrich the new cathedral with its costly liturgical furnishings, Edmund was also able to see to the completion and dedication of the canons’ choir and stalls before he was called to a far more comprehensive duty.

Yet we know enough about Edmund to know that it was not so much the material success of his Salisbury mission that most gratified the humble merchant’s son of Abingdon – we know what pleased him most was the opportunity that his position as treasurer offered him – the opportunity to exercise his priestly ministry in the care of souls in the nearby village parish of Calne. If it is indeed true that one’s treasure is where one’s heart is, then there can be no doubt that Edmund’s treasure was ever with the poor, the humble, and the troubled people of God, and his joy was, as his Master’s was – to be among the children of men, to suffer them to come unto him that he might comfort, serve, and save them.

But we also know that Edmund’s quiet happiness at Salisbury and Calne was not to be long enjoyed. Christ the King and High Priest had need of his servant elsewhere and once again He called him through the voice of His Vicar, Gregory, the ninth – this time to crown his life’s work of striving always to shape himself and all those entrusted to his care to the one only pattern that mattered – the plan of God’s will that furthered the coming of His Son’s Kingdom on earth.

We know that this time Edmund was called not to a single English home, a single school, or a single church, but to the mission of another Christ, another Paul – to become completely "for others," for all, for the whole of England: people, Church, King, and Kingdom. Edmund had been called to become their Primate Archbishop of Canterbury – and time and God’s inscrutable will had begun to come around again as it then, now and always does – Edmund had come into the world a month or so before Thomas Becket was so brutally battered out of it – and now Edmund was asked to take up his crosier, his cross, in that same bloodstained Canterbury See. The year of Becket had been eleven seventy – now Edmund’s year had come twelve thirty-three – or was it just the other day? – or is it even now, today?

We know that those who then read anxiously the signs of the times saw those years 1233, 34, 36 as the most critical, challenging and crucial yet, to the just emerging English nation, and to the confusingly changing "post conciliar" church of their day. Everywhere they looked in those dark disturbing hours, they saw men and ideas rife with rebellion, adaptation and renewal – it was no time for those opposed to rocking the boat – the ship of Church and State was already tossing wildly to and fro upon the stormy seas of time’s realities. It was no time for the timid, the doubting, or the uncommitted – What was called for, what was needed, was Christ’s steadying presence of hope in the boat – a man for the times – a man of courage, a main of faith, of hope and unflinching loyalty.

We know that Gregory chose well, and that Edmund, scholar, teacher, priest and bulldog Englishman he was, never faltered once – never disappointed Gregory, his Church, his King, his country or his countrymen, because he never disappointed Christ.

We know that with the candor and kindness of the Prince of Peace, he won over the rebellious, restored the warring barons to their king’s allegiance and good graces, averted a civil war and brought peace and security to the country and the king’s council in a matter of months.

We know that with the courage and conviction that is born of trust in God, the new Archbishop forced the King to reaffirm his coronation oath to his own people and to their way of doing things – to abide by their "great charter of rights, liberties, and customs."

We know how with the sword of truth and righteousness the intrepid Archbishop ousted those in the king’s council who for their own personal gain under the guise of the common good had dared to misdirect and mislead the king in governing the realm contrary to its hallowed will and constitutions. And, until his death,

we know how Edmund, fired by devotion to that freedom which belongs to the sons of God, labored tirelessly, bravely, and even boldly to secure and to increase in every quarter the rights and privileges of the Universal Church which he, as chief shepherd in England, firmly believed he was bound by God’s will to protect, to defend, and to further.

We know that Edmund, like Archbishop Langton before him, identified himself to the last, with Christ the Good Shepherd whose duty it was, not only to redeem what was lost, but to gather all to the one only unity that is, was, and always will be, all in all, the one body, the one vice, Christ Jesus the Lord.

Finally we know that Edmund’s fierce and often fiery loyalty to law and to order – his endless battles for the rights and privileges of both the realm and the church – forbid us to imagine that this man of God, so steeped in the timeless Christ-affair, ever played the role of the hireling who runs away and leaves the flock to the wolves. We can never again accept the fallacious image of Edmund as the quiet, withdrawn, and "out of it" hermit. He never ran away from a fight for Christ in his life; and we would miss his meaning and relevance for us today completely if we were to imagine that Edmund of Abingdon ever fled from "where the action was" into some safe and pious pout at Pontigny. No, all Edmund needed in that autumn of 1240 was time to marshal more ammunition for his cause from Rome; and this is precisely what he took – time out to present his case at Peter’s Court – but – for God’s own good reasons – that time was not allotted to him, for he fell ill on his way to the Vicar of Christ on earth, and he turned back towards Canterbury – he died on November 16th at Soissy – as far as he was able to proceed on his way back home.

Edmund, Christ’s Champion, had indeed "gone home", and henceforth his battles for his Lord and His Kingdom on earth would be fought from a higher and more powerful vantage point – for, you see, my whole point is this: I like to think he still has a share in those battles – still has a hand in the action – that he is still inspiring others to join in the battle to bring Christ’s Kingdom to be.

Indeed I make bold and claim that this is his meaning for us here today – he would be our ‘man for the times’ – he would be our leader, our inspiration, our ideal – "as we anxiously read and meet the signs of the times and see them as the most critical challenging and crucial yet, to our community, and to the confusingly changing ‘post conciliar’ church of our day!"

Edmund would be our patron-intercessor, our mediator with Christ who would surely make us men of courage, of faith, of hope and of unflinching loyalty in Edmund’s continuous crusade to bring all to a oneness in Christ.

A prominent modern historian wrote a few years ago: "Edmund of Canterbury has a quality too easily overlooked in the appraisals of political and social life of his time – the power of an admirable character to influence men of action by firing their imagination and sustaining them in their high purposes."

We have said that Pope Gregory chose well in choosing Edmund, Chief Shepherd of England – can we not believe that Edmund has chosen well in choosing us his heirs?

Here indeed we have: a great priest, a just man, and a peacemaker, whom the Lord made great in the sight of kings. He had no equal in keeping the Law of the Most High. For this reason God promised him to have him grow into a ‘people of God’. God made with him a lasting covenant, appointed him high priest, and blessed and glorified him that he might continue to serve God through his everlasting priesthood and bless his own throughout the ages in the name of Christ the Lord." Eccl. 44; 45.