Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today is the feast of St Ninian, a late-fourth-century and early-fifth-century saint who worked among the Picts of the area now known as southwestern Scotland.

On this day, I would simply like to refer you to this short video incorporating a historical site associated with Ninian, “Kilninian” on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. This church is currently owned and run by Mull Monastery, an Eastern Orthodox monastic institution with presence on Mull and the Isle of Iona. Hiermonk Seraphim (Aldea), a priest-monk of Romanian heritage, and the founder of this monastery that houses separate communities of male and female monastics on both islands, here reads an account of St Ninian’s life from a Synaxarion, an Orthodox collection of hagiographical accounts.

The clip begins with a view of St Ninian’s holy well, located just behind the church, and continues with the reading inside Kilninian, concluding with the singing of the appropriate Kontakion. Please notice the extraordinary beauty of the cross-shaped Iconostasis (the icon-covered wall separating the altar from the body of the church), which has been covered with tremendously poignant icons written by a remarkably skillful living Romanian iconographer.

I have visited this church and seen the iconostasis. It really is breathtaking in its beauty and communicative power. It serves as a collection of windows through which the worshiper glimpses the real persons depicted: Christ, his Mother, St John the Baptist, and other saints. This is a rare place in a special country—a place where Celtic saints like Ninian continue to bear witness to Christ, having done so for sixteen centuries.

Happy feast day!

—Justin