CHAPTER 8: How Cuthbert was cured of a disease, and how the dying Boisil prophesied what was in store for him
CHAPTER 8
How Cuthbert was cured of a disease, and how the dying Boisil prophesied what was in store for him
ALL the ways of this world are as fickle and unstable as a sudden storm at sea. Eata and Cuthbert and all the rest were thrown out of Ripon and the monastery they had built was given over to other monks. This change of place did not weaken our athlete of Christ in his determination once taken to do battle for Heaven. He followed the words and actions of Boisil with undiminished fervour, but he was struck down about this time by a plague which was ravaging the length and breadth of the country. (My source for this is Herefrith, a priest of the saint’s own community and later Bishop of Lindisfarne, who had the story from Cuthbert himself.) The monks spent the whole night in prayer, for they felt they could not do without him on account of his holiness. His reply the next morning when one of the monks mentioned the vigil – for they had kept it quiet from him – was: ‘Then what am I lying here for? God will certainly have heard the prayers of so many good men. Fetch me my shoes and stick.’ He got up there and then and tried to walk with the stick. Day by day his strength came back until he was quite recovered; only the swelling on the thigh seemed to move inwards, and for almost the whole of his life he was troubled with some internal pain, so that, to quote the apostle, ‘strength was made perfect in weakness’.
Boisil saw that he was better and prophesied that he would never again be stricken by the same malady. ‘At the same time,’ said Boisil, ‘I warn you not to lose the chance of learning from me, for death is upon me. By next week my body and voice shall have lost their strength.’
Cuthbert knew that he was telling the truth.
‘Then tell me what is the best book to study, one that can be got through in a week.’
‘St John the Evangelist,’ Boisil answered. ‘I have a commentary in seven parts. With the help of God we can read one a day and perhaps discuss it if we want.’
It was done as he said. They were able to finish quickly because they dealt not with the profound arguments but with the simple things of ‘the faith which worketh by love’. On the seventh day, when the reading was finished, illness overtook Boisil, and – this I recount with gladness – he entered into the joy of eternal bliss. He is believed to have unfolded all Cuthbert’s future during that week. He was a prophet and a very holy man. Three years before the epidemic came he foretold it to Abbot Eata and did not conceal the fact that he would perish. Eata, he said, would not be carried off but would die of what the doctors called dysentery. His prophecy turned out right. He hinted to Cuthbert that he would be a bishop. Afterwards, when he was living a hermit’s life, Cuthbert would not mention the predicted honour, except occasionally to his brethren.
‘If,’ he would lament, ‘I could live in a tiny dwelling on a rock in the ocean, surrounded by the swelling waves, cut off from the knowledge and the sight of all, I would still not be free from the cares of this fleeting world nor from the fear that somehow the love of money might snatch me away.’