St. Cuthbert

Who they were

Cuthbert was a Northumbrian shepherd boy who entered Melrose the morning after seeing, he said, a soul carried heavenward on the night Aidan died, and he became the best loved figure of Anglo Saxon Christianity: prior of Lindisfarne, healer and peacemaker through the plague years, then hermit of the Inner Farne, where he built his cell with a wall high enough that he could see only sky. St. Bede the Venerable wrote his life within living memory, including the account of the otters that dried his feet after he had spent the night praying in the sea.

On Farne he issued what historians count among the earliest wildlife protection rules anywhere: the eider ducks nesting on his island were not to be harmed. Northumbria still calls them Cuddy's ducks. He was dragged to a bishopric, accepted it for two years, and then went back to his island to die in 687.

Why people turn to St. Cuthbert

Birders, conservationists and wildlife rehabbers, with St. Kateri Tekakwitha and St. Francis of Assisi. Shepherds. And everyone whose vocation keeps changing shape, since he held four offices and was one man in all of them.

How to ask their intercession

Outdoors, if you can manage it. And for the discernment between engagement and withdrawal, which was his whole life's rhythm: ask which one this season is actually asking for.