“If anyone desires to come after me,” Christ exhorts, “let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

One man who has borne his cross further than most is Cumbria’s only Orthodox priest, Fr John Musther, defying Parkinson’s disease to follow in the footsteps of the saints across the wilds of northern Britain.

As if this were not challenge enough, Fr John Musther, who is 77, has also written a 300-page, lavishly illustrated book, Sacred North, about his pilgrimage.

Fr John’s research for Sacred North has taken him tens of thousands of miles by boat, plane, camper van, and on foot, from the Outer Hebrides to the northernmost part of the Shetland archipelago, as well as to holy sites across Durham, Northumberland, and Cumbria. His gruelling mission took him to some of the most isolated and inhospitable places in Britain…

St Fillan’s Cave, Pittenweem. Most of St Fillan’s life was spent as a hermit in this fishing village, which was named after him (Pittenweem means “place of the cave”). Tradition says that he was able to pray and write thanks to a light that emanated from his arm.

The main contention of Sacred North is that some of the Desert Fathers — early Christian hermits who lived mainly in Egypt — followed trade routes northwards to found early monasteries, spread the gospel, and search for suitable places to practise their rather extreme brand of asceticism here in Britain.

“All my life, I have been fascinated by the question of who these men were, what they were doing, and where did they go?” Fr John explains. “We were familiar with the great sea highway around the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, which was used by the earliest of monks; we followed them, first, up through the west of Scotland, then up the east coast all the way to Shetland. We made a third journey going south into northern Britain.

“We found well over a hundred inspiring and often hidden little-known sacred sites on Arran, Bute, Mull, Skye, Loch Shiel, Raasay, Islay, Colonsay, Eigg, the Outer Hebrides, Barra, St Kilda, Orkney, Shetland, as well as more well-known holy sites such as Iona, Lindisfarne, Jarrow, and Durham. We began our journey in Ardwall and finished in Shetland.

“We discovered the same life, the same solitude, the same prayer, and the same holiness in place after place in between. Their journey and ours became slowly entwined.”

For these early hermits, taking up the cross was not only a solemn instruction to bear life’s burdens with faith in the face of persecution and even death: it was also a call to accept the “new martyrdom” — that of dying to the world and crucifying the flesh through the rigours of the monastic life. They were prepared to go to the ends of the earth to seek a fuller union with Christ, to live on the very edge of what was possible.

“Some of these places were extremely dangerous and exposed, particularly in Shetland,” Fr John observes. “Some were just inaccessible. There were steep and crumbling paths with hundred-foot drops below.

St Moluagh’s, Raasay, Isle of Skye. It is believed that there has been a place of Christian worship on this site since the latter half of the 500s. The chapel was built in the 1200s.

“These hermits had gone to expose themselves to the worst the weather could throw at them, to hardships, winds, and huge seas rolling in. At times, we really were risking life and limb following in their footsteps. But the sense of discovery is enormous. We found some of these places only after years of research.”….

“People are often surprised to discover that the living tradition of the saints has been followed in the British Isles and Ireland since the second century after Christ,” he says. “This book gives a view of the spiritual landscape they would have known. It ran for hundreds of years. Then it was steadily pushed aside. Now we live in another world, an almost totally different one.

“But not quite. There are still Desert Fathers living today.”

From: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/27-april/features/features/in-the-footsteps-of-the-fathers

Sacred North, published by Culture & Democracy Press, complements Fr John’s previous works, including The Living Tradition of the Saints in the East and West, representing almost half a century of research, study and prayer, and Springs of Living Water [Createspace Independent Pub; 2 edition, 2017], about Cumbria’s holy wells.

The sections of The Living Tradition of the Saints in the East and West are available on-line, see, for example: http://www.orthodoxcumbria.org.uk/couch/uploads/file/Booklets-pdf/4%20Dumfries%20%26%20galloway.pdf

For Fr John, see also: http://orthochristian.com/77852.html

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