Birinius, our ‘local’ saint

These words were actually spoken by the Ethiopian eunuch, a serious seeker of the truth who encountered the deacon Philip on his way home from Jerusalem in a chariot. However, I feel they’re also quite appropriate to put into the mouth of the most distinguished convert of our ‘local’ saint, Birinus of Dorchester, whose feast day falls on 4 September. The convert in question was king Cynegils of Wessex. He had been under instruction (rather longer than the eunuch!) by Birinus, and was finally baptized in the waters of the river Thame at Dorchester in about 635AD.

His baptism went a long way to guaranteeing the success of Birinus’s missionary activities among the West Saxons, whom he had found depressingly pagan. They had apparently been immune to the mission launched earlier by Augustine of Canterbury, but the conversion of their king seemed to tip the balance, and from then on Birinus was able to plant churches throughout the region. Birinus was not, sadly, a native Saxon. He had been sent by the Pope, probably from his home in Lombardy. But, in the true spirit of the evangelist, his heart warmed to the people of Wessex and longed to see them turn to Christ. The dramatic act of the king's baptism in a river – something of an indignity, in the circumstances – must have been an enormous encouragement. He became the first bishop of Dorchester and died in 650.

According to St Paul, in baptism we are buried with Christ into death, so that , ‘just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life’ (Romans 6:4). The language is stark and vivid. Baptism is a death to the old life, and a resurrection into the new one. The image of king Cynegils going down into the waters of the Thame and emerging a new man may picture for us not only a new start for the West Saxons of long ago, but for us, too.