John Donne, Priest & Poet
31 March -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Spiritual Writers, page 473
John Donne was born in about the year 1571 and brought up as
a Roman Catholic. He was a great-great nephew of Thomas
More, although this seems to have had little influence on
him, as he led a somewhat debauched youth and was extremely
sceptical about all religion. He went up to
Oxford when he was
fourteen, studied further at
Cambridge and perhaps on
the Continent, and eventually discovered his Christian faith
in the Church of England. After much heart-searching, he
accepted ordination and later the post of Dean of St Paul's
Cathedral. Much of his cynicism dissolved and he became a
strong advocate for the discerning of Christian vocation,
and in particular affirming his own vocation as a priest,
loving and loved by the crucified Christ. The people of
London flocked to his sermons. He died on this day in the
year 1631. His love-poetry and religious poems took on a
renewed life in the twentieth century and his place both as
a patristic scholar and as a moral theologian are confirmed
by his prolific writings and the publication of his sermons.