Where has St David gone?

The Church calendar is often  a strange thing.  Take tomorrow for instance: millions of proud Welsh people will be celebrating St David's day; millions of people a lot of whom would describe themselves as agnostics or atheists honouring a Christian hero.  But look at the Church calendar and you will not find St David's day marked, at least not this year.

That's because of a technicality.  This year tomorrow (1st March) is Ash Wednesday - a 'Principal Holy Day' which marks the beginning of the church season of Lent, the 40 days (not including Sundays) before Easter.  The technicality is that Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting whereas St David's day is a feast, and you can't feast on a fast day nor fast on a feast day (incidently, this also explains why Sundays aren't included in the 40 days of Lent - Sundays are commemorations of Jesus' resurrection and so are always feast days therefore the Lenten fast doesn't apply on Sundays).  And in the battle of the fast and the feast, the fast of Ash Wednesday trumps all other days, including patron saints.

When special days clash in this way it is usual to transfer the 'losing' day to the nearest available day (i.e. one that doesn't have a more important designation already).  However, this only happens if the day is important enough - if it is not important it just gets dropped, and this is the case with St David's day this year, at least in the Church of England.  Obviously in Wales St David is much more important so the Church in Wales has transferred his feast to today, though this won't stop most Welsh people (or males called David!) celebrating it tomorrow as usual.

Part of the purpose of all this complexity is to ensure that days are given their proper focus and respect (that is, as long as they are important enough). But what would happen if instead we held both of these days in tension, or perhaps bashed them together to see what the effect is? What might it mean to view St David through the prism of Ash Wednesday fasting and to view Ash Wednesday through the prism of celebrating St David?

The first one is quite easy as by all accounts St David was quite into fasting. 'Exciting Holiness' (a book about some of the saints that have special days in the Church of England calendar) describes St David as an “exemplar of the ascetic, spiritual life...He is said to have based his Rule [code] for his monasteries on that of the Egyptian desert monks, with a strong emphasis on hard work, abstinence from alcohol and a refraining from unnecessary speech.” It sounds as if St David spent most days in the same way the most devout Christians spend Ash Wednesday! Indeed Exciting Holiness glosses over some of the details: St David and his fellow monks only drank water and only ate bread and herbs; they had to pull their ploughs themselves and couldn't use animals; they had no personal possessions and were forbidden to describe things as 'my …'! So in some ways Ash Wednesday as a day of fasting is the perfect way of commemorating St David in a way in which he would have approved!

But what about thinking of Ash Wednesday as a day of celebration? St David's final words were a sermon he preached a couple of days before his death. In this sermon he said “Lords, brothers and sisters, Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed, and do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. And as for me, I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us." St David's life may seem very drab and difficult to us but he obviously considered it to be joyful. The simplicity of his life enabled him to concentrate on what was truly important: his faith and caring for others and this is the way to a joyful life. Christians often only eat one small simple meal (if any) on Ash Wednesday and may also 'fast' from luxuries such as sweets or even T.V. and the internet! This discipline can be quite hard as self-denial is not a natural urge, but the time can be devoted instead to prayer, Bible reading or looking out for others and this can be celebrated. Ash Wednesday gives us the opportunity to concentrate on what is really important in life, the two great commands as Jesus taught us: love God and love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). And in doing so we will discover what Jesus describes as life in all it's fullness (John 10:10).

So whether you keep St David's day today, tomorrow or not at all; whether you fast or feast or neither; may God in his mercy grant that, following St David's purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ, we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life.