Today March 1

Today is the feast day of St. David (c. 520 - 589), bishop and patron of Wales. All good Welshmen wear leeks around their necks on this day. You ask why they do this thing. I'll tell you. I don't know. Tradition!

David, aka Dewi, was born a Welshman, his father a prince named Sant and his mother St. Non. (So he was, in fact, "son of Non.") He learned the Scriptures, knew the psalms by heart, and was known to play with doves (a dove is his symbol). He was a serious, even perhaps severe, young man. He never drank alcohol; he was nicknamed "the Waterman" for this reason. In time he became the leader of the monks, but though he was of princely estate himself, he lived as simply and worked as hard as the least of them. He'd grab a hoe and till the fields (no horses or oxen to help) himself. He founded 12 monasteries/churches throughout the kingdom of Wales, and as far as Glastonbury and Bath in England. He retired to a little abbey in the extreme southwest corner of Wales in Menevia, or Mynyw, in the vowel-challenged Welsh tongue.

St. David was prevailed upon to attend the synod at Brefi in Cardigan to address the heresy of Pelagianism which, once dead in the region, had flared up again. This heresy maintained that God's grace (and thus, by extension, the sacraments as well) was not strictly necessary for salvation -- that salvation could be "earned" through good works alone. St. David spoke so well and so eloquently, he was made bishop by acclaim on the spot. Wow! We don't do things quite that way today. The proceedings of both that synod and another he attended and wrote down have been lost, due to "age and negligence, and also in the frequent attacks of pirates who, arriving in summertime in ships of war from the Orkney Islands, had been wont to lay waste the maritime provinces of Wales." - Rhygyfarch, his early biographer.

He lived a long time and ruled wisely and well. His last words were: "Be joyful, brothers and sisters. Keep your faith, and do the little things that you have seen and heard with me." St. Kentigern, at some distance (in Llanelwy) saw his soul ascend into heaven. His relics were buried in Mynyw, now called St. Davids in his honor. The tomb is now empty; the remains were moved somewhere (probably to Glastonbury) sometime after 1346.

Today is a feast approved by Pope Callistus II in 1120 for Wales and several dioceses in England as well. St. David, pray for us.