Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
The Gospel reached England no later than the 2nd century, where at the beginning of the 3rd century, Tertullian could already write, The haunts of the Britons are inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ.
The Roman Empire extended into Britain, but didn't cover the whole island, so he may mean that there were Christians even beyond the northernmost limits of the empire.
A few decades later, Origen confirmed this by also speaking of Christians in Britain.
From England, St. Patrick set out to evangelize Ireland, but when the Celtic people who had accepted the faith were conquered by the pagan Saxons, England ceased to be a Christian country.
The Christians who were left were unable to convert their conquerors, they either fled to the west of the island, or were enslaved.
Things remained like this for about a century and a half.
Late in the 6th century, St. Gregory the Great learned about this pagan population, and wanted to evangelize them, but was unable to do so personally.
First he was appointed the Pope's ambassador to Constantinople, and then in 590, became Pope himself.
An opportunity to do something came when the Saxon king of Kent, in the eastern part of the island, wrote to the Pope asking him to send missionaries.
His wife, Bertha, was a Christian princess, a Catholic princess, the daughter of the king of Paris.
She had been a pupil of St. Gregory of Tours when he held a leading position in the Merovingian court.
Their marriage agreement stipulated that she have a chaplain, so that she could continue to practice her religion.
After several years, King Ethelbert was interested enough to ask for missionaries to come and speak about this religion.
So in 596, St. Gregory sent a group of nearly 40 monks, led by St. Augustine, the prior of the Roman monastery of St. Andrew on the Caelian hill.
Along the way, the missionaries sought information about the people they were going to evangelize.
By the time they got to Provence, they had been told that the Saxons were a barbarous, savage, and incredulous people.
This, combined with the language difficulties they expected, convinced the missionaries that their errand was hopeless.
They wrote to St. Gregory to ask for permission to abandon the mission, but he responded by ordering and encouraging them to continue.
Setting out again, they reached the kingdom of Kent in the spring of 597.
The king did not want to adopt their religion hastily, but he granted them food, protection, and the freedom to preach and to build and repair churches.
Outside Canterbury, there was a small church dedicated to St. Martin, dating back to the time before the Saxon conquest.
This is where the queen had worshipped with her chaplain.
St. Augustine made it the center of his apostolate, and organized monastic life in a monastery he built next to it, which his successor would dedicate to St. Peter and Paul.
The missionaries preached the Word of God, which was confirmed by the simplicity and innocence of their lives.
Like the man in today's Gospel, they had left everything to follow Christ.
It was also confirmed by miracles that St. Augustine and other missionaries worked.
Conversions began to multiply, and it was only a couple of months before King Ethelbert asked St. Augustine for baptism on June 1, 597.
This was particularly important since the king had been the head of the Anglo-Saxon confederation since 593, so it had an influence that went beyond the limits of his kingdom.
The monarch did not pressure his subjects to become Catholic, but his example certainly encouraged them.
St. Gregory had instructed the bishops of Gaul that they were to elevate St. Augustine to the episcopate if his mission was successful.
So in the fall of 597, he went to Arles and was consecrated bishop by Virgilius, the primate of Gaul and papal legate.
Upon his return to Canterbury, he had the joy of baptizing over 10,000 Anglo-Saxons on Christmas Day.
They had been won over to the faith by the king's example and the zeal of the monks, and you have to be pretty convinced to undergo baptism by immersion at Christmas.
In 601, he received the Palio, a sign of an archbishop from St. Gregory, which made him the primate of England.
Around 603, he sought to win over Celtic Christians to Rome.
The Britons had many traditions that seemed strange to St. Augustine, such as celebrating Easter on a different day than all other Christians.
With the help of King Ethelbert, he got the leaders of the nearest province of the Britons to meet with him.
He asked them to bring someone sick, whom he would heal as a sign from God that his faith and the customs he brought were to be followed.
So they brought him a blind man, and he promptly healed him.
He found this pretty convincing, but said that they could not change their customs independently of the other Britons.
A larger synod would be needed.
Before the second synod, the Britons went to consult a wise and holy man for advice.
He told them to look for humility.
If St. Augustine arose to meet them when they entered the hall for the synod, they should listen to him.
But if he remained seated, this would mean that he was a proud man and not a man of God.
When the Catholic bishops entered the hall, St. Augustine remained seated because, as the representative of the Pope, he outranked them.
So they refused to listen to him.
The task of convincing them to conform to the universal tradition on the date of Easter would have to be left to his successors.
Following instructions from St. Gregory, with whom he was in contact by letters, St. Augustine consecrated other bishops in 604.
He consecrated two of his monks.
Justus became the Bishop of Rochester, Rochester England, not New York, and was sent to preach in the western part of Kent.
He also revived, that is, St. Augustine revived the See of London by consecrating Meletus, its bishop, and sending him there to work among the East Saxons.
St. Augustine died on May 26th of 604, or perhaps 605, after consecrating the monk Lawrence as his successor.
In the following centuries, his successors won over the rest of England to Christianity.
In that fervent climate, many people became monks, even kings and queens.
Even today, England has the most kings and queens recognized as saints.
But things changed in 1066 when another invasion replaced the aristocracy with Frenchmen.
The kings continued to be Catholic, but were no longer saints.
Canterbury remained the foremost Episcopal See in England, and a place of pilgrimage, as witnessed by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
In 1531, Henry VIII had the Parliament declare him Supreme Head of the Church of England.
Though he was fairly Catholic in his ideas, the allies that he found to lead his independent church were not.
The relics of St. Augustine of Canterbury were almost all destroyed in order to prevent the so-called superstition of venerating them, and probably also because they were a reminder of England's debt to Rome, that the faith had come from Rome, and England had always been united to Rome since that time.
Since Anglo-Saxon times, England was called Mary's Dowry, so let us entrust its return to the fullness of the faith and to unity to her.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.