From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Help for a Complete Conversion   
      
   "When we transform our old life and give our spirit a new image, we   
   find it very hard and tiring to turn back from the darkness of earthly   
   passions to the serene calm of the divine light.   
   We thus ask God to help us that a complete conversion may be brought   
   about in us."   
   --St. Augustine--Commentary on Psalm 6, 5   
      
   Prayer: Because of your Name may you have mercy on me according to   
   your great mercy, Lord, and by no means abandon the work you have   
   begun but complete what is imperfect in me.   
   --St. Augustine--Confessions 10, 4   
      
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   21 March – St Enda of Aran   
      
    (c 450 – c 530)   
      
   Priest, Monk, Abbot of Aran “Patriarch of Irish Monasticism”  and Aran   
   is known as “Aran of the Saints” – also known as Éanna, Edna, Éinne,   
   Endeus, Enna – born in Meath, Ireland and died in c 530 of natural   
   causes. Enda was a warrior-king of Oriel in Ulster, converted by his   
   sister, Saint Fanchea, an abbess. About 484 he established the first   
   Irish Monastery at Killeaney on Aran Mor. Most of the great Irish   
   saints had some connection with Aran.   
      
   According to the Martyrdom of Oengus, Enda was an Irish prince, son of   
   Conall Derg of Oriel (Ergall) in Ulster. Legend has it that when his   
   father died, he succeeded him as king and went off to fight his   
   enemies. The soldier Enda, was converted by his sister, Saint Fanchea,   
   an abbess. He visited St Fanchea of Rossory (died c 585), who tried to   
   persuade him to lay down his arms. He agreed, if only she would give   
   him a young girl in the convent for a wife. He renounced his dreams of   
   conquest and decided to marry. The girl she promised turned out to   
   have just died and Fanchea forced him to view the girl’s corpse, to   
   teach him that he, too, would face death and judgment.   
      
   Faced with the reality of death and by his sister’s persuasion, Enda   
   decided to study for the priesthood and studied first at St Ailbe’s   
   monastery at Emly. Fanchea sent him to Rosnat, a great centre of   
   Monasticism. There he took Monastic vows and was Ordained. In this   
   way, St Fanchea succeeded in turning her brother not only from   
   violence but even from marriage. He left Ireland for several years,   
   during which time he became a Monk and was ordained as a Priest.   
      
   Upon his return to Ireland, he petitioned his King Aengus of Munster –   
   who was married to another of Enda’s sisters – to grant him land for a   
   Monastic settlement on the Aran Islands, a beautiful but austere   
   location near Galway Bay off Ireland’s west coast.   
      
   During its early years, Enda’s island mission had around 150 monks. As   
   the community grew, he divided up the territory between his disciples,   
   who founded their own Monasteries to accommodate the large number of   
   vocations. Enda did not found a religious order in the modern sense   
   but he did hold a position of authority and leadership over the   
   Monastic settlements of Aran – which became known as “Aran of the   
   Saints,” renowned for the monks’ strict rule of life and passionate   
   love for God.   
      
   Enda’s monks imitated the asceticism and simplicity of the earliest   
   Egyptian desert hermits. He established the Monastery of Enda, which   
   is regarded as the first Irish Monastery, at Killeany on Inismór. He   
   also established a Monastery in the Boyne valley and several others   
   across the island and along with St Finnian of Clonard is known as the   
   Father of Irish monasticism. At Killeaney, the monks lived a hard life   
   of manual labour, prayer, fasting and study of the Scriptures. The   
   monks of Aran lived alone in their stone cells, slept on the ground,   
   ate together in silence and survived by farming and fishing. St Enda’s   
   monastic rule, like those of St Basil in the Greek East and St   
   Benedict in the Latin West, set aside many hours for prayer and the   
   study of scripture.   
      
   Enda divided the island into two parts, one half assigned to the   
   Monastery of Killeany, and the western half to such of his disciples   
   as chose “to erect permanent religious houses on the island.” Later he   
   divided the island into 8 parts, in each of which he built a “place of   
   refuge”. The life of Enda and his monks was frugal and austere. The   
   day was divided into fixed periods for prayer, labour and sacred   
   study. Each community had its own church and its village of stone   
   cells, in which they slept either on the bare ground or on a bundle of   
   straw covered with a rug but always in the clothes worn by day. They   
   assembled for their daily devotions in the church or oratory of the   
   saint under whose immediate care they were placed. The monks took   
   their meals in silence in a common refectory, from a common kitchen,   
   having no fires in their stone cells, however cold the weather or wild   
   the seas.   
      
   They invariably carried out the monastic rule of procuring their own   
   food and clothing by the labour of their hands. Some fished around the   
   islands, others cultivated patches of oats or barley in sheltered   
   spots between the rocks. Others ground grain or kneaded the meal into   
   bread and baked it for the use of the brethren. They spun and wove   
   their own garments from the undyed wool of their own sheep. They could   
   grow no fruit in these storm-swept islands, they drank neither wine   
   nor mead and they had no flesh meat, except perhaps a little for the   
   sick.   
      
   During his own lifetime, Enda’s Monastic settlement on the Aran   
   islands became an important pilgrimage destination, as well as a   
   centre for the evangelisation of surrounding areas. At least two dozen   
   Canonised Saints had some association with “Aran of the Saints.”   
      
   Enda’s Monastery flourished until Viking times but much of the stone   
   was ransacked by Cromwell’s men in the 1650s for fortifications, so   
   only scattered ruins remain. Most survive as coastal ruined towers.   
   Cattle, goats, and horses now huddle and shiver in the storm under   
   many of the ruins of old walls where once men lived and prayed. These   
   structures were the chosen home of a group of poor and devoted men   
   under Saint Enda. He taught them to love the hard rock, the dripping   
   cave and the barren earth swept by the western gales. They were “Men   
   of the Caves” and “also Men of the Cross.”   
      
   St Enda himself died in old age around the year 530. An early   
   chronicler of his life declared that it would “never be known until   
   the day of judgment, the number of saints whose bodies lie in the soil   
   of Aran,” on account of the onetime-warrior’s response to God’s   
   surprising call. His remains are buried at Tighlagheany, Inishmore,   
   Ireland.   
      
   During his own lifetime, Enda’s monastic settlement on the Aran   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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