Augustine sent to England
Gregory commissions the English mission
Gregory calls Augustine — not the great Augustine of Hippo, who has been dead for a hundred and fifty years, but another Augustine, the prior of Gregory's own monastery on the Caelian Hill — and sends him to England with forty monks.
The journey north is terrifying. The monks pass through Frankish territory and hear stories about the ferocity of the English — their paganism, their warlike character, the sheer remoteness of the island at the edge of the world. Somewhere in Gaul, Augustine turns the party around and goes back to Rome to report that the mission is impossible.
Gregory writes him a letter. Go back. Complete the mission. The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.
They go back.
Gregory has prepared carefully. He has written letters to the Frankish bishops asking for interpreters, to the Frankish king asking for support, and he has been corresponding with Bertha, the Christian queen of Kent — a Frankish princess who married the pagan King Ethelbert — asking her to prepare her husband's mind for the mission.
The preparation was thorough. When Augustine and his forty monks land on the Isle of Thanet in 597 AD, Ethelbert comes to meet them in the open air — afraid to meet them indoors, where their spells would be more powerful — and listens. He does not immediately convert.
But he does not kill them either. He gives them a house in Canterbury and permission to preach.
“Do not allow the difficulty of the journey or the tongues of evil-speaking men to deter you, but with all earnestness and zeal perform what by God's direction you have begun.”
— Gregory I, Letter to Augustine of Canterbury, 596 AD
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns!”
Augustine turned back once. Gregory sent him again.
This is the structure of most significant work: the initial setting out, the encounter with the difficulty, the temptation to turn back, the voice that says go again, and then the actual journey.
Augustine's retreat to Rome was not a failure. It was the moment between the idea and the commitment — the moment when the person discovers whether the call is real or merely interesting.
Gregory's letter is the right response to that moment: go back. The difficulty is not evidence that the mission is wrong. It is evidence that the mission is real.
What have you turned back from that may need a second attempt?