Evenings With Bede are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector. The format is a Scripture passage, then a passage of commentary from the Venerable S. Bede, then a short homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 24.44

After His resurrection, Jesus spoke to the disciples in the Upper Room and said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things.

A Lesson from a Homily by the Venerable S. Bede (Homily II.9)

It was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead for this reason: that it was impossible for the world to be saved unless God came as a human being, appearing in the form of a human being; and unless He instructed human beings in divine things; and by undergoing death as a human being, He vanquished death by His divine power, and thus enkindled in those who believed in Him a contempt of the death they had to undergo, and enlivened them by the certainty of the resurrection and eternal life they were to hope for. By what other example could human beings more fittingly be aroused to faith in the glory in which they were to share, and in the immortal life which they were to merit, than by their acknowledging that God Himself had been made a sharer in their humanity and mortality? But what means might they be more effectively stirred up to tolerate adversities of every kind for their salvation, than by their learning that their Maker had been subject to countless kinds of abuses at the hands of the wicked, and even to the sentence of death, for their salvation? For what other reason might they more fittingly receive the hope of their own resurrection, than by their remembering that through His sacraments they had been cleansed and sanctified, and united to the Body of Him Who, when He had tasted death for them, presented an example of a speedy rising from death?

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