Weekend Update 7/17/26
Our Kentish Connection
Metal detectorist’s find may unlock hidden history
Yep, that’s our Man in Folkestone, Dr. Andrew Richardson, hard at work, keeping us connected to the Patroness of our Building Program, St Eanswythe.
We’ve got two videos of Andrew’s great lectures on our Substack (Finding Eanswythe & Eanswythe Found), but in that BBC story, he’s talking about the links between the craftsmen in Kent, St Eanswythe’s kingdom, and the warriors buried at Sutton Hoo, which was located in the kingdom of East Anglia.
Warriors whose tactical gear looked like this.
But our Princess turned her back on the violence and the opulence of that whole way of life. She wanted to get as close as possible to The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so she became a monastic—in fact, she was the first female monastic in the British Isles.
Our Liturgical Connection
Of course, worship is the key to an intimate relationship with the Most Holy Trinity. And, back in seventh century England, worship was often organized as a vigil.
Basically, a vigil is an all-night worship service. In the Church’s earliest centuries, just about all worship services were vigils, because there was no such thing as the weekend. Folks didn’t get any regular time off from work, so, if they wanted to participate in worship, they just had to stay up all night and then show up at their job in the morning.
By the late fourth century, Sunday morning worship was the norm, but the original version, the vigil, never went away. In fact, that service was eventually regarded as uniquely powerful. Here’s how one Holy Father, Isaac the Syrian, describes that kind of worship:
“Choose for yourself a work willed with delight: constant night vigil, whereby all the Fathers divested themselves of the old man and were accounted worthy of the renewal of the intellect. During those hours, the soul experiences that immortal life and by means of that experience, she puts off the vesture of darkness and receives the gifts of the Spirit.”
St Isaac lived in the seventh century, at the very same time as our Kentish Princess. St Eanswythe would have participated in vigil services on a regular basis, and, in a few weeks, we’re going to follow her example and serve our own vigil.
Our Kingdom Connection
We’ll offer the Vigil on the Feast of St Eanswythe, which means it will begin on the evening of Sunday, August 30, and wrap up early on Monday morning, August 31.
And while it’s customary to speak of the Vigil as a single service, it’s actually a whole series of services that are offered sequentially: Small Compline, Great Vespers, Litia and Artoklasia, Orthros, and The Divine Liturgy.
Also, while the services are sometimes lengthened due to the music that is used or because of the number of people who are present, most Vigils don’t actually last the entire night; generally, the sequence of services runs about five to six hours.
If you’ve been reading Come See Something Beautiful for any length of time at all, you know this isn’t the first Vigil we’ve offered a vigil on St Eanswythe’s Feast Day. As a matter of fact, this will be the fourth time we’ve stayed up all night to pray with our Patroness, and, every single time we’ve done that, amazing things have happened.
So, what will happen this year?
Well, for starters, just like St Eanswythe, we also live in a culture that prioritizes violence
and opulence.
That means simply showing up for something as counter-cultural as an All Night Vigil is going to rattle the Principalities and Powers.
And once we set off those cosmic reverberations, who’s to say what else might shake loose?
But, hey—why don’t you plan on joining us for the Vigil, and we’ll all find out together?
If a quick trip to Cedar Park, Texas, isn’t within your budget, we’ve got all sorts of other ways you can connect with the work that we’re doing and the fun that goes along with it.
You can offer the Akathist for a New Temple with us each week (PDF/video).
You can restack this post, share it with everyone, or take out a Paid subscription.
You can pick up some Come See Something Beautiful clothing.
You can commission an image of a beloved pet for the Calming Room of our new temple.
You can make a direct donation to our Building Fund.
And to wrap this up with a good old boy vibe, we’ve got one of the original urban cowboys, Joe Walsh, to sing about what happens when we stay focused throughout the night—and we’re hoping you’ll be able to join in.