Boisol had a prophetic spirit, and a loving one, and lived in the 600s. Boisol lived in a time and place susceptible to plagues and to pestilential outbreaks that would kill many in a short period of time, and, in 664, he foretold that he would die of the next outbreak (which transpired 3 years after his prophecy). When indeed Boisol fell ill with the disease that would lead to his death, he was visited by a later-to-be-canonized man named Cuthbert. The two of them spent Boisol’s last week together as friends, as brothers.

Cuthbert asked the elder Boisol if there was something that the two of them could read and discuss together during those final seven days. Boisol suggested the Gospel of John, but stipulated that they focus their discussions on “the sincerity of faith working through love, and not the treating of profound questions.” And so they did.

This vignette from the end of Boisol’s life is simple, beautiful, and moving. That one person traveled to be with someone whom others might fear to be contagious. That Cuthbert didn’t simply come in, have a prayer over Boisol, and leave, but made his home with his friend for that week–this is pastoral care. That Cuthbert and Boisol wanted to have a focus for their discussions beyond Boisol’s sickness and impending death, and more substantive than endless small talk and badinage, is affecting. That they selected a text that was sacred to them both to read and discuss together is itself admirable, but what is most poignant is the restriction laid down by the dying Boisol–that they focus on faith finding expression through love, leaving aside things like “what does it mean that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God?” or “how did Jesus feed 5000 people?” but, rather, focusing on matters like “the compassion to heal and to feed hungry people” and “look how Jesus called his followers to be his friends rather than slaves“…!

Imagine what would happen if all sacred texts–the Hebrew Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Christian Testament, the Tao Te Ching, among so many others–were read for the select purpose of discerning and discussing ways to love with sincerity, and other doctrines, teachings, and putatively profound questions were set aside?

And, really: wouldn’t those profound questions end up being answered in this process anyway?!