‘The Mother of Christian Europe’

 

From the Macedonian

Womb sprang Christian Europe,

Fathered by the Apostle Paul, whose words

In Philippi brought new life

To Lydia, baptized

With her household in Gangites’s

Waters.  And Holy Paul, having

Attacked the avarice of heathen

Europe by casting out a spirit

Of divination, was beaten

And cast in stocks with Apostle

Silas; who, after their angelic

Hymning opened the prison doors,

Baptized their jailer and his fam’ly,

And returned to the refuge

Of Lydia’s home.

 

                                                For hundreds

Upon hundreds of years, Europe

Followed the simple ways of her

Mother in the Faith, sheltering

The Apostles and their followers,

Rejecting the rule of Mammon,

Renouncing any other gods.

But what a change has come of late,

As believers in Jesus Christ

Again are pressed and hounded

To extend the reach and reign

Of worldly gain, and loose the wicked

Spirits chained by the Gospel’s Grace.

 

And now at night, when the frantic

Motion of frenzied men has ceased,

And the shining silver light

Of the moon and stars falls quietly

Down upon the earth, the sound

That greets the ear is the weeping

Of Lydia for her children,

The falling of her tears

Into the Gangites River,

Who flows sadly past the homes

Of multitudes who cannot

Tell their right hand from their left.

***

The life of St Lydia is recounted here:

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2021/05/20/205364-saint-lydia-of-philippi

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!