No man is an island

John Donne, Priest & Poet

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 because, as a youth, he was 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 pries, 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 - addressed mainly to his wife - 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.

Meditation xvii

No man is an island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.