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While looking for something about Blessed Nicholas Postgate to go with Fr. Christie’s article, I came across this Restoration article that Fr. David wrote when he, like Fr. Brian, was newly assigned to MH England.
The house was only a few months old at the time, and only two staff were there—himself and Charlie Cavanaugh.
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Our dirty laundry had been piling up steadily for some time. The North Sea had clasped Robin Hood’s Bay in a misty embrace for many days, and there was no getting anything dry.
Except, perhaps, the local sense of humor. It was always most chipper. “Tomorrow will be sunny for sure,” our neighbors constantly assured us. Each time I heard that line I thought I noticed a mischievous twinkle in those gentle English eyes.
This day, however, a bright, triumphant sun had muscled its way through the clouds. A wind from the southwest was kicking up a fuss and determinedly nudging the moisture out to sea. The rolling knolls behind us glistened fresh and green. On the more distant hills, the yellow gorse shone merrily.
“Charlie,” I said, “I’m doing the laundry right now, before the weather changes again. Quick! Turn in your dirty socks and I’ll gather up the sheets.”
Charlie readily complied and I rushed downstairs to the laundry room. Although we had no washing machine at that early stage of Madonna House in England, someone had just given us a spin dryer.
What a marvelous invention! Every time I used it I blessed the donor and the inventor.
First I washed everything out by hand, then threw it in the dryer to spin out the soapy water. Then came a quick rinse in clear water, followed by another spin, and I was soon heading outside with our nearly dry laundry.
All it needed was a generous dose of sun and wind, and it would be perfectly dry and delightfully fresh.
As I dashed out the door I noted to my relief that the blue sky was undisturbed by even a hint of cloud. Climbing up on a chair (our clothesline is rather high up since it goes over the parking area to St. Bede’s chapel), I hung out our sheets and socks and the rest of our laundry to dry.
Suddenly a thought from out of nowhere collided with my head. It must have been riding the rowdy Yorkshire breeze and fallen off! “Sonny,” it said. “You’re not the first priest in these parts to hang out the sheets.”
I stopped, a little taken aback. Then I remembered Father Nicholas Postgate.
Known as “the priest of the moors,” he had spent his priestly life keeping the Catholic faith alive among the “recusants” of that part of Yorkshire. In those days (the 1600’s) it was a statutory offence to refuse (Latin, recusare) to attend the services of the Church of England.
Priests who dared to nurture the Faith in those difficult times were subject to the death penalty. Father Postgate himself died a martyr’s death in the city of York in 1679, at the age of 80 or 81.
Ordained in 1629 in France, he had served the Catholic gentry of the area for some thirty years. The last twenty years of his life, however, were spent roaming the moors, celebrating Mass in people’s homes and encouraging the poor in their faith.
He traveled about the moors on foot, in the guise of a gardener, and he is credited with introducing the daffodil to the region. That flower, with the look of perpetual surprise on its canary-yellow face, now dots the countryside in great numbers each spring.
A large patch of them was blooming brightly in our orchard when we arrived in April, surprised no doubt at this unexpected invasion from the New World.
Fr. Postgate’s home base during those last years was a tiny hermitage not far from the village of Ugthorpe. When he was about to celebrate Mass, he would spread out white linen sheets over the hedges to indicate where and when the Eucharist would be celebrated.
To this day he is remembered with great devotion by the local people, who love his courage, poverty, simplicity, and above all, his gentleness.
As I stood back to admire our sheets flapping gaily in the wind, I mused about the courage it had taken some 300 years earlier to do such a simple thing.
What the Church needed then and what it still needs today are simple gestures of faith. True, it takes faith—great faith—to confront the “powers that be,” whether these be governments or forces of despair at work in the heart of our cities.
But it also still takes faith to simply hang out the sheets over and over. It takes faith to confront the littleness of everyday life that remains the foundation of all evangelization.
That littleness includes daily mutual forgiveness; the monotony of serving one another in humble ways; the willingness to be hidden, unappreciated, taken for granted. All out of love for the other, and ultimately, for God.
“Nazareth” remains the school where we face, daily, the reality of our own personal poverty. How poor we all are when it comes to living out the richness of godly love in the flesh and blood reality of everyday life!
Knowing this, however, we can with Nicholas Postgate call upon the Lord himself to be our wisdom and our virtue and our holiness and our freedom (1 Cor 1:30).
Those who do so will leave in their wake a “trail of flowers” that speaks of the hope, joy and perpetual surprise that is the lot of all those who walk in their Master’s footsteps.
From Restoration, October 1985, before Nicholas Postgate was beatified
