It was a typical February Sunday, cold and wet and blowy, but even so the church was packed - and not just the church building; even the yard outside the doors was crammed with folk. For word had gone round that the old man himself was going to come, maybe even speak - that this would be the very last chance to see him, at least in this life. A ripple ran through the crowd, necks craning to get one last glimpse of him, and a sigh as they saw him supported - no, in truth carried - by two of the brothers to the pulpit. Many wept, openly wept, to see that huge powerful frame shrunk to a feeble shadow of what it had been.
Then total silence, as everyone strained to catch his last words -what would he say, here at the end? Would he just say goodbye, or would he give them something special, something to remember him by? He gave them even more: in the whisper of a man leaving time behind he gave them words that have rung down the centuries: "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."
Two days later, on Tuesday 1 March, Dewi ap Non - Saint David -died. But his words live on, and even now, a millennium and a half later, every schoolkid in Wales, whatever their mother tongue, knows "gwnewch y pethau bychain" - do the little things.
So the tale was told to me, but not in school - ignorant Sais that I am, I first heard it barely a decade ago. When I heard it, I saw how David’s words were rooted deep in the Celtic tradition: of an unconquerable joy in Christ; of a living faith in Christ’s love and kingship nurtured in everyday life; of a daily life overflowing with that faith and joy. A threefold understanding familiar from Patrick, from Columba, from all the Celtic saints.
But - keep your creed? What was that about? Why did David put my creed on the same footing as my faith? Surely he could not value a mere list of things to agree to as much as a living faith in a living Lord? It took me quite a time to see where I was wrong: to recognise that the commonly held view of a creed as a list of dogmas to be accepted is utterly false. Whatever those argumentative bishops in Nicaea, Ephesus and Constantinople thought they were doing, what they produced was something completely different: a description of someone to believe in. That’s believe IN, not believe THAT.
And later: in the Middle Ages, you still did not have to believe the creeds: you simply had to agree that the Church approved them -the idea that the creeds were used to trap heretics is pure Hollywood. The proof of this is very simple: there was a list of things to believe, but it wasn’t a creed: it was the Catechism. Which nobody used.
No: the creed was not used to teach or control thinking; it was used to say ‘I love you, God!’ - to wrap your self in his love, to commit yourself to his care. So to Celtic saints like Dewi, the creed was a means of asserting trust in God, of invoking God’s presence - and therefore invoking His protection and companionship. You hold on to your creed as you hold on to your lover - and not believing some clause or other was no more serious than getting the name of your lover’s second cousin wrong. Hold to your creed, therefore. And don’t be afraid to use it, not to assert truth, but to embrace a living, loving God, and to wear his faith and his love as a breastplate against the attacks of evil, whether human, physical or spiritual evil.
In the Irish tradition, the creed became a model for other creeds, for other breastplates, which were associated with many of the great Irish and Scottish saints. Saint Patrick’s Breastplate - versified as ‘I bind unto myself this day’ - is perhaps the most well-known, but Saint Dallan’s Breastplate - ‘Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart’ - is almost as well- known, and probably sung even more often.
So ‘hold to your creed’ - ‘wear your armour’ - ‘tell God you love Him’ - all these are one and the same. Hold to your creed, therefore. And don’t be afraid to use it, not to assert truth, but to embrace a living, loving God, and to wear his faith and his love as a breastplate against the attacks of evil, whether human, physical or spiritual.
It may not seem like much, just a little thing, but Dewi was right: gwnewch y pethau bychain - do the little things.