From ENS-I promise you that the planning committee did not examine the lectionary before they chose this theme of Transforming Loss into New Possibilities. ButTheodore of Tarsus is a most appropriate witness to that kind of hope and faithfulness. He was born in Tarsus, what is today southeastern Turkey, in 602, and educated there and in Athens. He was a speaker of Greek and Latin, and a highly educated monk – a layman. Strife in the form of Muslim conquests drove him into exile in Rome. He was living there in 668 when Pope Vitalian started looking for a new Archbishop of Canterbury.
Five others had served in that post since Gregory sent Augustine to care for Anglo-Saxon Christians in 595. The last Archbishop, Deusdedit, died in 664, in the same year as the Synod of Whitby, and neighboring kings selected Wighard to travel to Rome and seek consecration as his successor.
Wighard and his party made it to Rome, but died there of plague, and Pope Vitalian began to seek a replacement. He asked Hadrian, abbot of a monastery in Naples, twice, who resisted. Vitalian offered to let him off the hook, but only if he would find a substitute.
Eventually he settled on Theodore the refugee. Theodore was ordained subdeacon immediately, but had to wait four months for his hair to grow out enough for a suitable, western tonsure. He was consecrated at the age of 66, on 26 March 668, and was sent off to England, together with Hadrian and a translator. Hadrian was something of a custodian, told by Vitalian to guard against eastern innovations that might be introduced by this Greek! It took them a year before they finally landed in England, having been detained in part by a French bishop who suspected them of political intrigue.
More here
http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2013/09/19/presiding-bishops-opening-eucharist-sermon/
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