Forty Benedictine monks, crowded together on a small vessel, watched as the island they sought to conquer – a fearsome place they deemed the abode of the dead – emerged from the mists of the northern sea. In that year of 597, England appeared before the missionaries, shrouded in fog.

The grim reputation of these people had reached as far as Rome, whence the religious men had set out by order of Pope St. Gregory the Great.

It was said that the island’s inhabitants ate their enemies’ hearts, spoke a sinister and incomprehensible language, and lived in the very place where the dead went, to suffer the torments of hell.

Yet the monks were obeying clear papal directives: they were to evangelize the Angles. Their method? To sing Church melodies – specifically, what would later become known as Gregorian chant.

Augustine, who led the mission and whom we invoke today as St. Augustine of Canterbury, knew how to stir the hardened hearts of the men he would encounter. His secret was the manifestation of beauty.

Upon landing in pagan territory, the sons of St. Benedict realized the situation was not quite as apocalyptic as expected, and they managed to secure an audience with the monarch, Ethelbert of Kent, a Jutish ruler.

The meeting was a grand affair. In a clearing within a nearly impenetrable forest, surrounded by his nobles, the sovereign awaited the religious men.

Ethelbert felt at home, surrounded by rugged oaks and his even more rugged warriors, with their light-coloured eyes and massive builds, descendants of sea rovers who, brandishing their axes with ravenous vigour in their giant arms, had made the Britannic island tremble for many decades.

The missionaries, for their part, also behaved as if they were at home in the monastery. They made their way to the king in a solemn, sung procession, preceded by a large silver cross and a painting of Christ.

Thus, before the astonished court, an army of forty monks came into view and advanced, chanting continuous and captivating Gregorian hymns in Latin.

All the subtleties of the chant, all its mysterious and eloquent fluctuations, all those unfamiliar words filled the souls of the listeners. The hearts of those people thrilled at such beauty.

The ground was prepared for the preaching, and St. Augustine spoke at length of the mystery of a God who, having become Man, allowed Himself to be sacrificed in a horrific death for the salvation of those who had gone astray: “Jesus Christ has opened, with His Blood, the gates of a new Kingdom for those who believe in Him,” he concluded.

Shortly thereafter, King Ethelbert was baptized, along with many of his officials, and on Christmas of that same year, ten thousand people would be born to grace.

Community life, Latin and Gregorian chant: this was enough to drain the ancient swamps of Anglo-Saxon paganism. And on that land, prepared by beauty, a spark of preaching was all it took to set it ablaze with faith.

For words can enter open hearts, but they cannot open them. Integrity of life and splendid Liturgy: these are the keys that throw open the doors of even the most hopelessly locked souls. St. Augustine of Canterbury knew this, and armed himself with beauty, Latin and prayer.