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Good Morning. Today, the Church in Wales remembers Saint Germanus.

Hardly famous, Germanus was a 5th century Bishop in Gaul, northern France. The British clergy of those times invited him across the Channel to assist them in countering heretical Christian teaching.

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While here, he also found himself helping the Britons to ambush an army of invading Saxons and Picts. We don’t know where the battle took place.

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But we do know it happened just after Easter, and Germanus taught the British soldiers, many of whom were newly baptized, to use ‘Alleluia’ as their war cry.

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The Britons won the day, it became known as the Alleluia Victory.

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It’s unsurprising, I guess, that St Germanus, and his victory over the Saxons, is not remembered in the liturgical Calendar of the Church of England!

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Nowadays, when I think of tribalism, something like which football team we support tends to spring to mind first.

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But there’s still room enough for prejudice against those we might think of as different, ‘them’ and not ‘us’, whether for reasons of ethnicity, language, culture, religion or anything else.

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Thinking about overcoming such prejudice returns me to the Alleluia Victory. Not ‘Alleluia’ as the battle cry of one warring party over another, but Alleluia, in its real meaning of Praise the Lord, or Praise God – the God whom Christians believe makes every human being in his image: Alleluia is for everyone!

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Praise to you, our Lord and God, our Creator and our Redeemer. When difference threatens to separate us, may we find our unity in you. Amen