Billy Graham - September 2005 magazine
by Canon Desmond V Treanor

No one has preached to more live audiences than Billy Graham, who in June this year took part in what might well be his last evangelistic campaign. It is said that 210 million people in 185 countries have heard him, but he is now 86, is frail and is suffering with Parkinson’s.

William Franklin Graham was born and brought up on a farm near Charlotte , North Carolina .  Both is parents were descended from Scottish pioneers of Presbyterian persuasion, and at 16 Billy was converted at a revival meeting.  He studied at Bob Jones College and the Florida Bible Institute before being ordained as a Baptist minister.  Thereafter he attended Wheaton College in Illinois and in 1943 he married Ruth Bell, the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary surgeon in China , who was a year ahead of him at the college. After graduating he served briefly as pastor of a congregation in Western Springs in the same State. 

They then moved to the outskirts of Chicago and he soon gained the reputation of being a powerful preacher and was invited to take over a popular Sunday evening radio programme, ‘Songs in the Night’.

When Torrey Johnson founded Youth for Christ in 1945, Billy was appointed as its full time evangelist. In 1946 he visited England and Europe briefly and returned the following year to hold campaigns in 21 British cities.

In 1949 he became the vice-president of Youth for Christ International and held an eight-week series of tent meetings in Los Angeles .

In the years that followed he preached at numerous crusades throughout the United States , earning the respect of Presidents and people alike. In 1954 he held a three-month crusade at the Harringay area and before long he was the ‘talk of the town’. Countless ministers and clergy of the Church of England owe their conversion to those evangelistic campaigns.  No one could fail to be impressed by Billy as he stood, Bible in hand proclaiming the Gospel in a patently honest, engaging and down-to-earth manner.

The following year he was back again, visiting Scotland , the old Wembley area and Cambridge University .  He also preached before the Queen at Windsor Castle . Subsequently he visited many other areas in this country and some of his campaigns have been relayed by satellite to numerous centres in this country, including Leicester .

Billy Graham’s global mission took him to Australia , New Zealand , Africa, Japan and India , Singapore , Brazil and the Far East . His first visit to a Communist country was in 1966 when he went first to Yugoslavia , then to Hungary , Poland , East Germany and Czechoslovakia .  He made mistakes, as all men do, and was severely criticised for his readiness to share the platform with men who did not hold his own fundamentalist views and for not preaching a social gospel.  But he was always ready to learn from his mistakes and to apologise for them.

Billy Graham has always used modern communications and, in addition to his countless campaigns, has written newspaper columns, produced films and published several books.

Although many evangelists, such as Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, were surrounded by scandal in the late 1980s Billy Graham’s truly unique record and reputation has remained totally untarnished.

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Jackie Pullinger MBE - July/August 2005 magazine
by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Praying in a village church one day Jackie Pullinger had a vision of a desperate woman holding out her arms and asking, ‘what can you give us?’ Convinced that God was calling her to do something to help the needy people of China, Jackie Pullinger offered her services to many different Missionary Societies, but to no avail.  She had studied at the Royal School of Music yet time after time she was told that she was too young (only 22) and, in any case, she had the wrong qualifications.  Nevertheless, following the advice of her Vicar, in 1966 she put together all the money she had and bought a ticket for Hong Kong!

 And so begins the inspiring story of her caring, charismatic work, among the drug addicts and destitute of the Walled City of Kowloon. Some of her experiences of selfless service are related in her book Chasing the Dragon, which is to be found in St. Wilfrid’s church lending library.

    One name in Chinese for this dreadful slum near the old Kai Tak airport was Hak Nam, which means ‘darkness’. Clearly it was a good description of this extraordinarily squalid and depressing area of no more than 6 acres which was a ‘No go’ area for uniformed Police although it was inhabited by tens of thousands and included a great many criminals, drug addicts, gangsters and prostitutes. The ‘main street’ was little more than a small dark tunnel about 120 centimetres wide and had an open sewer running down the middle. The sky above was blacked out by illegal overhead cables, pipes and the rubbish that got caught up in them, when it was tossed out of the buildings with no regard for anyone passing below. When Miss Poon, as they called her, began to teach at the only primary school in the district she soon discovered that sanitation was virtually non-existent. All the men in the area had to share just one crude public toilet.  There was a similar, single hole over an open sewer for women.

 Here against all the odds she opened a Youth Club, a room where they could play table tennis and she could tell youngsters the wonderful news of Jesus’ love for them. Gradually by her loving, powerful and persistent witness, she led many to give their lives to Christ. As she befriended the boys, shared her simple accommodation with them, fed them, helped them in many different practical ways, tended to them when they were in pain, helped them to find jobs, sat with them when they were arrested and taken to court, and visited them in prison and hospital she gained their trust. She led them in Bible study and prayer and over and over again miracles occurred and lives were totally transformed. She opened a series of homes in which numerous gang members broke free of the grip of heroin and opium addiction and their hopelessness gave way to well-being and peace.

 In order to establish an official body through which to operate Jackie and some friends decided to form the Society of St. Stephen - SOS for short - and a Roman Catholic, a former nun, was brought in to help with the work. Various former ‘Stephens boys’ themselves began to play an active part in the work and as her ‘family’ grew God constantly answered their prayers and provided the funds which were needed at every stage.

 Eventually the Walled City was demolished. But the gangs and the drug abuse continue and Jackie Pullinger and the St. Stephen’s society now help the people not only of Hong Kong but also of the Philippines and Thailand.

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James Hudson Taylor (1832 - 1905) - June 2005 magazine
by Canon Desmond V Treanor

June this year marks the centenary of the death of one of the best-known of all the nineteenth century missionaries.  Born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, the son of a well-known local Methodist preacher, James Hudson Taylor was converted at the age of fifteen, studied medicine and theology and went to China in 1854 under the auspices of the China Evangelization Society. For several years he worked in a hospital in the Shanghai-Ningpo coastal area and during that time he married Maria Dyer, the daughter of another missionary, who shared his vision for winning souls for Christ. She bore him six children, but three of them died before she herself expired in July 1870.

Hudson Taylor found that contrary to his principles, because the financial policies of the CEM which had run into debt to the tune of £1,000, he was living on borrowed money.  So he resigned and carried on with his work independently. To encourage his faith he had two Biblical words written on scrolls in his sitting room: Ebenezer (Hitherto the Lord has helped us) and Jehovah-Jireh (The Lord will provide).

Returning to England , he resumed his medical studies at the London Hospital while also spending five years translating the New Testament into the Ningpo dialect.

In 1865 he returned to China with 16 other missionaries and founded the China Inland Mission which was different from any other that had gone before. For one thing, it was the first truly inter-denominational missionary society, and it was not organised from London but from the mission-field. It was also a ‘faith’ mission which made no appeal for funds.  

In 1866 two mission stations were established and by 1872 the number had risen to thirteen.  In 1884 that total had reached seventy, with approximately ninety missionaries and about one hundred Chinese helpers.

Frequently Hudson Taylor prayed that the Lord would send more workers and among the more dramatic responses to his appeal was that of ‘The Cambridge Seven’, whose offer to serve in China caused a considerable stir in Britain and America . In 1890 an appeal for 1,000 workers resulted in no less than 1,153 responses, most of whom were women whose approach to Chinese women was invaluable in breaking down barriers.

The increased number of workers meant, of course, a greater financial burden upon the Mission , but while they often ran short they were never without funds. ‘God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies’ Hudson Taylor asserted and news of the mission’s success began to spread far and wide. When he visited America , Sweden and Australia to speak about the work of the CIM he received many gifts of money and numerous responses to serve in China .

Until 1902 Hudson Taylor retained direct control over the Mission from his position in China , though it entailed periodic trips to London for consultations. This whole idea was quite novel and contrary to tradition, but it allowed organisational details to be managed by a ‘Council of Christian Friends’, thus taking pressure off the Director whose health was beginning to fail.

When he died on 1^st June 1905, Hudson Taylor was buried with other members of his family at Chingkiang. By this time the number of missionaries in the CIM had reached 828.

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Ida S. Scudder - May 2005 magazine
by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital , India , known far and wide today as CMC, owes its foundation to an American missionary, Ida S. Scudder.

Ida’s grandfather was one of the first medical missionaries to serve in India , and her father followed in his footsteps.  One day in 1890 when she was visiting them in Tamil Nadu, South India, the desperate need for women doctors was brought home to her when three men – a Brahmin, another Hindu and a Muslim – each came separately to beg her to help their teenage wives who were in labour. However, since she had no medical knowledge she naturally turned to her father, the mission doctor.  But the Brahmin explained, ‘It is better that my wife should die than that another man should look on her face’.  Each of the others took the same view; and all three women did die.

Next day Ida Scudder discovered what had happened and was devastated. There and then she resolved to become a doctor.  Returning to America she trained at Cornell University and became one of the very first women to graduate from the Medical College .  Shortly afterwards she returned to India and in 1900 opened a one-bed clinic in Vellore in the area where her father was working. But he died soon after she arrived, and within weeks she was faced with a steady stream of patients with all sorts of ailments.

In 1902 she founded a two ward hospital for women, with thirty beds, and working with the assistance of just one native nurse, Salomi, she treated 12,359 patients in the first year, performing 21 major and 428 minor operations. After a couple of years the hospital expanded to 42 beds, and she was joined by another doctor and a second nurse.  She also gathered round her 11 India women whom she trained as nurses; she also initiated a Community Health outreach programme which brought medical care to the poorest people in the surrounding villages and which has grown year on year.

Vellore now has some 1,700 beds, employs over 4,300 people, treats huge numbers of patients and has a world-wide reputation for excellence. For many years she herself led a Bible study group every Tuesday. Now 10 Bible study classes are held each day and the resident Chaplaincy team visits many hundreds of patients.

In the visionary words of Ida Scudder, “We thank God for the way He has led us in the past and look forward to an even greater future.”

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E.B. Pusey - 4th September
by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Edward, the first son of the Hon. Philip Bouverie, was born in 1800, the grandson of a Viscount. His father had taken the name of Pusey on inheriting the estate of that name in the Vale of White Horse. After Eton he went up to Christ Church, Oxford where he graduated with a First in Classics and was elected a Fellow of Oriel in 1823. He then spent two years at Gottingen, Bonn and Berlin studying theology and ‘toiled terribly’ with Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac for 15 or 16 hours each day. By the time he returned to Oriel he had become one of the most distinguished Semitic scholars in England and, at the tender age of 28, he was ordained and appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church. In the same year he married and took up residence in the ‘Tom Quad’, and there his children were brought up and he lived for the rest of his life.

In 1834 he published a Tract on the ‘Uses of Fasting’. While its clear recognition of the personal relation of the individual soul to God appealed to the Evangelicals, it proved to be his ‘entrance ticket’ to the new High Church movement in the university which came to be called ‘the Oxford Movement’. Within a very short time, such was his ability, background and position he was accepted as one of the leaders of the movement.

In 1839 his wife died. She had been, said Newman, ‘the one object on earth in which his thoughts have been centred’ and he never ceased to miss her nor to pass her grave without a prayer. From then onwards he retired from public life as far as possible, but allowed nothing to impede his work for God. He firmly believed that Anglicanism was ‘the old faith’ and strived for reunion both with the Methodists and the Eastern Orthodox Church.  But many fellow-members of the Church of England suspected him of ‘Romish tendencies’.

When Newman resigned (and became a Roman Catholic) the sole leadership of the Oxford Movement passed to Pusey (John Keble having returned to parish life). He was involved in the foundation of the first Sisterhoods in the Anglican Church and from the way of life which he would have chosen for himself - retirement, study, prayer and private ministry to souls - he was constantly recalled to the duty of publicly championing the truth of the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist which was being denied by many liberals.

In the winter of 1872 Pusey became severely ill and, while his mental powers remained unimpaired, his bodily health declined. When he was young he had often worked all night as well as all day. Even when he reached 70, he was still making appointments for 7 a.m. and not stopping work until midnight. Until declining strength made it impossible, he used to celebrate the Holy Communion every day, generally at 4 a.m., and to the end he maintained these early morning celebrations on Sundays and Saints days. On 4^th September 1882, with the words ‘my Lord and my God’ on his lips he died and was buried beside his wife and two elder daughters in the nave of Christ Church Cathedral.  The list of his published works fills an appendix of 50 pages in the fourth volume of his Life and it was he who founded the Oxford Library of the Holy Catholic Church anterior to the division of East and West. Pusey House, Oxford is a lasting memorial to this great scholar and preserves his large library.

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J.M. Neale - 6th August
by Canon Desmond V Treanor

The only son of an evangelical clergyman, John Mason Neale was born in the shadow of St. Paul’s. But his father died when he was only five and his mother moved to Chiswick where he was brought up, being educated at Sherborne before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge as a scholar. Very soon he developed a passion for Byzantine art and the liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Church and he became an antiquarian, a theologian, historian and poet. He won the Seatonian prize poem on eleven occasions and was a marvellous linguist with no less than twenty two languages at his command. But today he is best remembered for his many hymns, which were chiefly translations from Greek or Latin. Some of them appear in every standard hymn book.

Neale was ordained priest in May 1842 and the day after became Vicar of Crawley, Sussex. But almost immediately his health failed and he resigned the living. He was fortunate in having private means and was able to marry the following year and to spend a number of winters in Madeira. He then accepted the Wardenship of Sackville College, East Grinstead, a small 17th century alms house, where he spent the rest of his life when not travelling abroad. While his wife devoted herself to bringing up their four children he applied himself to study and produced innumerable children’s books, poems, travel guides and a monumental 5 vol. ‘History of the Holy Eastern Church’ as well as his hymns.

Neale rebuilt the chapel of the college and introduced a cross, candles and flowers at the altar together with various High Church rituals. When people in the neighbourhood got wind of these ‘iniquities’ (and the fact that he read this Bible in the Latin Vulgate version - be it said, only for his private devotions) they were scandalized. Not only was he condemned by various Bishops but several riots took place in the district, including one at the funeral of a Sister from the Convent of St. Margaret’s, East Grinstead which he had founded. The Sisters spent their lives ministering to the poor and nursing the sick but, like Neale, they were products of the Tractarian movement and were bitterly opposed by the local Evangelicals.

The Cambridge Camden Society of antiquarians of which Neale was a founder member addressed itself to the dilapidated condition of many English churches and was very influential in the great restoration and re-building campaigns which took place in Victorian England.  But there is no doubt that Hymns A. and M. owed much to Neale’s inspiration, and it is by his hymns (and such carols as ‘Good King Wenceslas’) that he is best remembered today.

A gentle, sensitive, semi-invalid, Neale wore himself out by his immense labours and died aged 48 on 6^th August, 1866. Ironically, the highest ranking clergy at his funeral were representatives of the Orthodox rather than of the Anglican Church.

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St. John Chrysostom - 13th September

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

The only son of a general in the Imperial army, who died when John was very young, he was born in c. 347 and brought up by his widowed mother, Anthousa, in Antioch which was one of the great centres of learning in the Eastern Empire.

He received an excellent education in oratory and law and became a monk in his middle twenties. After four years obeying a very strict rule and living in a damp cave, for his health’s sake, he was forced to abandon his solitary way of life and return to the city. The Bishop, Flavian, ordained him deacon, and in 386 priest, and made him special assistant with responsibility for preaching and distributing alms to the poor.

It is said that he was one of the greatest of all Christian expositors having produced commentaries on quite a few Biblical books and his brilliant preaching gained him the title of ’Chrysostomos’ which means, literally, ‘golden mouthed’. Many passages in his homilies and other writings are as relevant today as they were when first penned.

Much against his will, he was appointed Patriarch (i.e. Archbishop) of Constantinople in 398 but continued to live an extremely austere life, cutting the expenditure of his household to the bare minimum in order to have more money to give to the poor.

This was not the kind of priest the court or the corrupt clergy of the city wanted, especially as he soon showed himself to be a whole—hearted reformer. The clergy were censured and the morals and extravagance of the women of the court roundly condemned. He was not only outspoken, he was so extremely tactless. Not surprisingly, the Empress, Eudoxia, did everything she could to stir up opposition to the new Patriarch and, thanks to the jealousy of various bishops who trumped up a series of false charges against him, she was able to persuade the emperor to send him into exile.

After John left the capital he was taken to a very dangerous region of Armenia and his pastoral letters reveal just how much he suffered. Meanwhile the people of Constantinople gave him their unreserved support and there were serious riots in the streets during which the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia was burnt down.

The Pope, Innocent 1, made representations on his behalf and did his best to get the emperor to recall him. But his wife’s opposition carried greater weight and John was forced to journey further and further into exile. Finally, at the age of 60 having reached Comona in Pontus he died on 14th September 407 of exhaustion and starvation, exclaiming ‘glory be to God for everything’.

All his life John walked close to God and today he is remembered as a saint. The Eastern Church celebrates him as one of its Three Great Hierarchs and Teachers of the Faith; the Roman Catholic Church as one of the Four Greek Doctors (along with Athanasius, Basil and Gregory Nazianzus).

Less than thirty years after his death his remains were brought back to Constantinople and the Emperor assisted the Bishop to inter them with due pomp and solemnity.

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John Keble - 14th July

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

The eldest son of a country parson, John Keble was born at Fairford, Glos. in 1792 and educated at home until elected Scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford at the age of 14.  Five years later he graduated with a double First (in Classics and Mathematics) and was elected as Fellow and tutor of Oriel.  The same year he won both the English and Latin essay prizes and soon became accepted as one of the ablest men of his time.

Ordained in 1815, Keble helped his ailing father for many years and served several small Cotswold villages while retaining his Fellowship, but when the old man died in 1836 he resigned from various posts he held in Oxford and accepted the living of Hursley, Hants. where he remained for the next thirty years until his own death.

He was a shy and unassuming man and, apparently, very popular with children.  Considering his great gifts, he was amazingly unambitious and never sought any ecclesiastical preferment.  At some point (possibly when he resigned his Fellowship) he married one of his sisters-in-law, but little is known of her life as a parson’s wife.

For ten years Keble was Professor of Poetry at Oxford (and delivered his critical lectures on Greek and Roman literature in Latin!) and it was during this period that his fame spread far beyond the confines of the university for on 14^th July 1833 he preached before the Judges of Assize, in St. Mary’s, a sermon on ‘National Apostasy’ which led his friend, Newman, to assert that Keble was ‘the true and primary’ author of the Oxford (Tractarian ie. High Church) Movement.

Along with Newman and Pusey, he was joint editor of the ‘Library of the Fathers’ for which he translated the works of St. Irenaeus, and revised some of the volumes of St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom.  And all the while he was contributing to learned journals and penning poems.  A phenomenally popular collection of these was published as early as 1827 under the tile of ‘The Christian Year’.  No less than 95 editions appeared during his lifetime, with a further 14 thereafter.

Dean Church has said that ‘to the last he kept a kind of youthful freshness …  He was the most refined and courteous of gentlemen, and in the midst of the fierce party battles of his day he was always a considerate and courteous opponent.’  He was also said to be a sound spiritual guide to whom many very eminent men turned as a confessor and director.  Appropriately, the best-known of all his hymns – ‘New every morning’ – ends with the prayer:     “… help us this and every day, 
                                                           To live more nearly as we pray.”

The great college which bears his name was founded in Oxford the year he died (1866) as a memorial to him, but it has been suggested that its buildings, including the fine chapel, by William Butterfield, are more of a memorial to the architectural and artistic taste of the Tractarians than to the unambitious man for whom it is named.

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St. Swithin - 15th July

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Meteorological records may not support it, but everyone knows the myth of what happens on St. Swithin's day determines the pattern of the weather one may expect thereafter:

"St. Swithin's day, if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithin's day, if it be fair,
For forty days 'twill rain na mair."
But why? And who was this saint?

Unfortunately, little is known of his life. In all probability it began about AD 805 and, having been ordained in Winchester, he became the trusted adviser of Egbert, King of Wessex, and tutor to his son, Ethelwold. It was he who appointed his mentor to be Bishop of Winchester in AD 852.

It is said that he was too humble to ride and always went on foot. The only miracle recorded of him during his life testifies to his kindness. One day a woman crossed a bridge (which he had built) over the Itchen on her way to market, but being jostled by workmen, she dropped her basket and broke her precious eggs. Now what had she to sell? The Bishop, seeing her misfortune, promptly mended the eggs and sent her on her way rejoicing!

When he died the good man was buried outside his cathedral, as he had asked (so that passers-by might tread on his grave), but in AD 971 his body was re-interred in a specially-constructed shrine inside the church; and it rained so heavily and for so long that the belief sprang up that whatever the weather might be on his day (July 15th) it would continue to be for a considerable time ('forty days') thereafter.

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St. Helen - 18th August 

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Patron saint of the church in Saddington, Helen was born in AD 255 in Bithynia, Asia Minor. In due course she married the Emperor Constantinius Chlorus and, in 274, they had a son whom they named Constantine.

For political reasons her husband rejected her in 292 but, when her son was proclaimed Emperor in 306 (by the Roman army at York), Helen was again raised to a position of great honour. It was still illegal to belong to the Christian Church, but she made no secret of her own enthusiastic membership and by 312 toleration of the Faith had become official.

Towards the end of her life in 330 she made a lengthy pilgrimage to the Holy Land where she is reputed to have spent large sums of money in bringing aid to the poor.

In art Helen's emblem is the Cross because she is always credited with having found the Cross on which our Saviour suffered, buried close to Calvary, as well as in founding basilicas at Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives.

The Eastern Church still celebrates her memory in May. In the West she used to be remembered especially on August 18th.

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St. Hildergard - 17th September

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Known even in her own day as the 'Sibyl of the Rhine', Hildergard was one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. Today she is remembered especially on 17th September.

Born exactly 900 years ago, in 1098, she was educated by a recluse named Jutta at Diessenberg and, in due course, entered the neighbouring Benedictine convent. Although she lived to be eighty her health was always poor and she was of a rather excitable temperament. From a very early age she had extraordinary spiritual experiences and was credited with foreseeing the future. Certain traits in her writings have led to comparisons with Dante and William Blake.

In 1147 she moved the community of which she was now Abbess to Rupertsberg, near Bingen, and there built a large convent from which she continued to promulgate her highly coloured 'oracles' and 'revelations'.

She corresponded with many important people and wrote, at length, to four popes, two emperors, King Henry II of England and such eminent contemporaries as St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Of the many books which she wrote on science and theology the longest and most studied is entitled 'Scivias'. It is an apocalyptic work full, amongst other things, of denunciations of wickedness and warnings of wrath to come, all written in allegorical and symbolic terms.

Her writings included expository works on the Gospels and on the Rule of St. Benedict, a book on the human body and its ailments and various books of poems, hymns and lives of local saints. She even invented a sort of early 'esperanto', being a mixture of German and Latin with an idiosyncratic alphabet.

In spite of all this activity, she made time to travel widely in Germany and deliver the fruits of her twenty-six visions to groups of clergy. Miracles, already reported during her life, multiplied at her tomb after her death but she was not canonised until the 15th century. Today, she is probably best known for the remarkable music which she wrote to be sung by her sisters. She called them 'symphoniae harmoniae celestium revelationum', a title intended to indicate her divine inspiration as well as the idea that music is the highest form of human activity. 'Heavenly' is certainly my own reaction to the CD 'Canticles of Ecstasy' by Sequentia, but then I happen to like this sort of music.

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St. Laurence - 10th August 

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

The foundation stone of a great monastery, near Madrid, which was also to serve as a summer palace, was laid by Philip II in 1563. Within four years the first monks had taken up residence and begun to care for El Escorial with its very splendid mausoleum in which the ‘Catholic Kings’ and other members of the Royal family of Spain were buried thereafter. The saint in whose honour it was dedicated was Laurence (Lawrence or Lorenzo), a fellow-countryman who had been martyred in Rome in 258 AD. In the reign of the Emperor Valerian the Church suffered two periods of persecution. His second edict ordered a carefully graduated scale of punishments for those who professed the Christian faith which included senators, Roman knights, members of the Imperial household (of which there were many), matrons and, of course, bishops, priests and deacons. The Pope himself, the saintly Sixtus II, was beheaded as he sat in his chair flanked by four deacons who died with him. The details are preserved in a letter of the great Bishop Cyprian who was himself martyred a few months later. Laurence, who was the chief of the seven deacons of Rome, was arrested a day or so later and given a few hours in which to produce the reputed treasure of the Church. When he duly re-appeared with a crowd of poor, crippled and decrepit individuals and declared that '‘these are the treasures of the Church" officialdom was not amused! So he too was put to death. According to legend he was roasted on a gridiron.

Scholars believe that the details of the saint’s death as later related by St. Ambrose, Leo the Great, the poet Prudentius and others portray ‘the typical figure of a martyr’ rather than the young archdeacon himself (who was probably beheaded as were so many at that time) but it is undoubtedly true that from the beginning Laurence has been venerated as one of the most famous martyrs of Rome.

Constantine built a chapel on the Via Tiburtina over the catacomb in which Laurence was buried. Later, in the sixth century this was enlarged by Pelagius II into a basilica and to this day his name appears in the Canon of the Mass and in the Litanies of the Roman Catholic Church. The seaway separating America and Canada was named after him as was the cathedral in Genoa. Donatello sculpted him (in the Medici mausoleum in Florence) and he appears in the glass of Chartres and of many English churches, some two hundred of which are dedicated to him. His feast day is 10^th August.

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St. Jerome - 30th September

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Saphronius Eusebius Hieronymous (better known as Jerome) was born in Stridon, a village near Aquilea along the border of Italy and Dalmatia about AD 342. His parents were Christians but he himself was not converted and baptised until the age of nineteen when he was a student in Rome. The change in the manner of his life was most marked and, each Sunday afternoon, he made a habit of visiting the tombs of the martyrs. After a brief visit to Gaul he returned to his birthplace and joined a group of friends in living the ascetic life. But ere long the members of the little community went their separate ways.

For his part, Jerome packed up his library and took himself off to Antioch where the whole course of his life was changed by a remarkable vision which he had during an illness. As a result of his dream he went into the Syrian desert to become an hermit. He managed to take all his books with him and to learn Hebrew from a Christian Jew whom he encountered! As it turned out, the solitary life did not really suit him so, after two and a half years, he moved on to Constantinople for further studies. There he was persuaded by Paulinus to be ordained to the priesthood in AD 379. But, above all else he was a scholar and, returning to Rome in AD 382, he became private secretary to Pope Damasus who urged him to undertake a revision of the Latin New Testament. Gladly he agreed and also began a series of studies of the Greek version of the Old Testament in comparison with the original Hebrew texts.

When the Pope died people spoke of Jerome as a possible successor. But Siricius was elected to fill the office and Jerome moved on, first to Antioch and then to Bethlehem where he ruled a newly-founded monastery until his death in AD 420.

His studies continued and he wrote a great many letters and biblical commentaries.

Undoubtedly his great achievement was the translation of the whole Bible into Latin. His ^‘editio vulgate^’, the Vulgate, which was based on the Hebrew original of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament took Jerome fifteen years and was the most widely used Bible in the West for very many centuries. The first printed version - the Gutenberg Bible - appeared in 1456.

Jerome's reputation is merited not by his personal sanctity (for he was frequently coarse, malicious and petty) nor by his theological profundity (he engaged in several unseemly doctrinal controversies) but in his immense scholarship. The Catholic Church owes him an incalculable debt.

Ever since the thirteenth century Jerome has been depicted in art with a red hat, on the supposition that Damasus created him a cardinal. Often he is also represented with a lion at his feet. His feast day is 30th September.

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Ignatius Loyola - 31st July

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

Inigo Lopez de Recalde was born in the Castle of Loyola in 1491, one of the eleven children of a Basque nobleman. At thirteen he became a page at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and by the age of thirty was a seasoned soldier. At the Siege of Pamplona in 1521 he was badly wounded when a French cannon ball shattered his right leg and left him with a permanent limp.

During the long, painful months which followed as the leg was ‘re-built’ he studied books about the life of Christ and His saints. This led to his conversion and resolve to become a soldier of Christ.

After his recovery he spent a year in solitude at Manresa praying and preparing himself for this service. Here he wrote his ‘Spiritual Exercises’ which have been widely used ever since by Christians of many different traditions. At the Abbey of Monserrat he hung up his sword and exchanged clothes with a beggar, and then relying entirely on alms he set off first for Rome and then for Jerusalem.

Returning to Spain he became a student at Alcala and then at Salamanca (where he fell foul of the Inquisition because of his ‘novel ideas’. He was preaching about Jesus Christ !) And so to Paris where he continued his studies for the next seven years and formed a small band of like-minded men who called themselves ‘The Society of Jesus’ and took the usual monastic vows. Together the seven travelled to Rome and offered themselves to the Pope to be used in any way he might direct in the mission of the Church. Their society, which had a military style discipline and demanded total and unhesitating obedience (and a readiness for martydom) received official papal approval in 1540, and Ignatius was elected as its first General.

The remaining years of his life were spent in Rome organizing and directing the Society whose aim was to preach the Gospel to the pagan world and to educate the youth, and before he died in 1556 he had seen the expansion of the small band of founders (whom the Pope had ordained as priests) to well over one thousand; and they were at work in many parts of the world including Europe and the Far East.

Ignatius was canonized in 1622, his Feast day being 31st July.

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Lancelot Andrewes – 26th September

by Canon Desmond V Treanor

 Born in Barking in 1555, Lancelot Andrewes, who became one of the principal influences in the formation of a distinctive Anglican theology, was educated at Merchant Taylors’ and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. A brilliant scholar who mastered no less than fifteen languages, he was elected a Follow when he was just twenty one.

In 1580 he was ordained and in his early thirties was appointed as Master of his college, Vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate and a Prebendary of St. Paul’s. Soon his fame as an exceptional preacher spread far and wide and it is reported that his sermons brought over many recusants to the Protestant religion’.

Queen Elizabeth I, who was fascinated by his scholarly addresses, offered him first the Bishopric of Salisbury and then that of Ely. But at that time he felt it right to accept neither of them. Nevertheless, his rise in the Church was meteoric.

In 1601 he became Dean of Westminster and, four years later, Bishop of Chichester. At this time he was heavily engaged in translating a major part of what was to become in 1611 the so-called Authorised Version, the King James I Bible. Meanwhile he was moved to Ely in 1609, and after ten years in charge of that See to Winchester.

On 26th September 1626 he died in Southwark, and was buried there in the church which is now the Cathedral.

Lancelot Andrewes was a friend of the poet and hymnologist George Herbert and of Richard Hooker, one of the greatest theologians the English Church has ever produced. Like them, he held a high doctrine of the Eucharist and wanted the Church of England to express its worship in an ordered ceremonial. Above all, he was a man of prayer. It is said that, apart from public worship, he spent five hours a day in prayer and his Private Prayers (which he wrote in Latin and then translated into Greek) became, in their English translation, spiritual classics. The following is an example:-

    Blessing and honour, and thanksgiving and praise,

    more than we can utter,

    more than we can conceive,

    be unto thee, O holy and glorious Trinity,

    Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

    by all angels, all men, all creatures,

    for ever and ever.        Amen.

 

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