St Wilfrid's Church, Kibworth in
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"Christians
of the Month" - part 4
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Last updated 26 November 2006
Charles
de Foucauld - 1st December
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
On
1st December the Church remembers a Roman Catholic priest who was
shot in the North African desert on that day in 1916 by one of the Tuaregs,
amongst whom he had been living as a monk for seven years.
Charles
de Foucauld was born into a noble and wealthy French family on 15th
September 1858. His parents died when he was only five, and he and his sister
were brought up in the home of his devout grandparents. He idled at the Lycée,
lost his faith as a teenager, and just scraped into the Ecole de Saint-Cyr
where he developed a taste for gambling and girls. In 1880 the young Viscount
was posted with his cavalry regiment to
Algeria
to suppress an insurrection, and he proved to be a brave soldier. The
following year he was given leave to explore
Morocco
, which was then virtually unknown to Europeans.
With a Jewish guide, he travelled far and wide in this Moslem country
disguised as a rabbi. His experiences affected him deeply and he returned to
Paris
in 1886 a changed man. Leaving the army, he produced a book about his travels,
went to confession and resolved to dedicate the rest of his life totally to
God.
In
1888 he made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land
and visited various religious communities. In January 1896, having spent six
years in a Trappist monastery, he was dispensed from his preliminary vows
since he regarded traditional monasticism as ‘too secure’ and too removed
from ‘the naked following of the naked Christ’.
Moving to
Nazareth
he attached himself to a convent of Poor Clares and became their sacristan. He
looked after their chapel, did odd jobs for the community and lived an
austere, solitary life of prayer and study in a gardener’s hut.
In
1901 he returned to
France
where he was ordained priest on 9th June. The desert had always
fascinated him and he was to spend the rest of his life in
Algeria
. Having learnt the Tuareg language, he collected and translated the poems of
the Berber people among whom he lived, and he compiled a French/Tuareg
dictionary. But the main structure of his life was as before. He lived alone
in conditions of extreme simplicity, rose very early, spent long hours in
prayer and ate frugally. He was now also able to say Mass daily and to
minister to the French troops who were stationed in the
Sahara
.
The
Tuaregs respected Charles de Foucauld because he respected their Islamic
culture. ‘I am a monk not a
missionary’ he wrote, ‘made for silence not for speech’.
He believed that ‘by His Presence, Jesus will sanctify this vast
country’.
After
a fanatic had killed him, the local chief swore that he would hunt down the
assassin and he wrote to Charles’ sister in
France
saying, ‘All is dark to me. I
wept, and I shed many tears, and I am in great mourning … may God have mercy
on him, and may we all meet in Paradise.’
Richard
Hooker
- 3rd November
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
Together with Archbishops Thomas Cranmer and Matthew
Parker, Richard Hooker is generally regarded as the founder of distinctively
Anglican theology, the Via media
between Roman dogma and Protestant fundamentalism.
His
major work, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, written in beautiful sixteenth
century English, has been described as ‘the first great original prose work in
our language’. It has also been said that ‘he rescued theological
controversy from the gutter and invested it with solemn dignity, richness and
grandeur’.
Richard
Hooker was born near
Exeter
in 1553 and educated at the Grammar School before going up to
Corpus Christi
College
,
Oxford
where he was chosen as a Fellow in 1577 and became a Reader in Hebrew in the
university. In 1582 he was ordained and, on being married, he resigned from his
college position and obtained a country living before becoming Master of the
Temple
in
London
. In 1592 Hooker became a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral and Rector of the parish
of Boscombe in Wiltshire and, in 1595, also Rector of Bishopsbourne in
Kent
. He always advocated a middle way between the positions of the Roman Catholic
Church and the Puritans and argued that reason and tradition are both important
when interpreting Holy Scripture.
Hooker
asserted the continuity of the Church of England with the historic Catholic
Church. ‘To reform ourselves is not to sever ourselves from the church we were
of before’, he wrote. ‘In the
church we were and we are so still’. He
describes ‘the rites, customs and orders of ecclesiastical government’
derided as being ‘Popish’ as ‘those whereby for so many ages together we
have been guided in the service of the one true God’.
However he argued that such customs, even when of apostolic origin,
‘have the nature of things changeable’.
As
Hooker maintained, in the Eucharist Christ is really present, but His presence
is not restricted to the consecrated bread and wine. Rather ‘the real presence
of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not… to be sought in the
sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament’ and that real presence
is thus to be carried out into the world at large.
Hooker’s
emphases on inclusiveness, reason and tolerance have had a great influence on
the development of Anglicanism as has his belief that Christians should
concentrate more on what unites than on what divides them.
A
large seated statue in the cathedral close at Exeter depicts him as a venerable
old man but he was, in fact, only 47 when he died on All Souls day 1600
‘meditating’, he said, on ‘the number and nature of Angels’.
The Church of England remembers him each year on 3rd November.
Sadhu
Sundar Singh - 19th June
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
All
male Sikhs are called Singh, which means Lion. Sundar, was the youngest child
of a distinguished and wealthy land-owner in the
Punjab
whose mother, who was honoured as a bhakta or saint, believed that there is
good in all religions and encouraged Sundar to seek the truth wherever it
could be found. He was sent to an American Presbyterian school in
Ludhiana
, and he felt as though his world had collapsed when his mother died. He
became a ‘difficult teenager’. However, a couple of years later he was
converted after reading Christ’s words, “Come unto me and I will give you
rest.”
His
father immediately disowned him, and threw him out with nothing but the
clothes he was wearing at the time. He
went for refuge to the home of some missionaries, but on his way he became
violently ill. His family had
poisoned him! Even after he
recovered they continued to make repeated attempts to get him to renounce his
decision. But on his sixteenth
birthday, 3rd September 1905, he was baptised in the Anglican
church in
Lahore
. A month later, after wandering in the Simla hills seeking God’s will for
his future, he adopted the saffron robe of an Indian sadhu, or holy man, and
set out barefoot to make Christ known to all whom he encountered.
Sundar
longed to take the Gospel to
Tibet
, which was virtually a closed country, and after eighteen months during which
he had learned some of the hard realities of his calling he was able to make
his first trip in the company of a young interpreter. In village after village
they were rejected as soon as they began to talk about Jesus; but one Lama did
permit them to speak freely to the monks at one of the monasteries at which
they called, and from 1908 to 1929 Sundar returned to Tibet each year to
preach the Gospel in spite of being beaten, imprisoned and left to die on
several occasions.
Once
he was seized by a group of monks and thrown down a well, where he was left to
die among the putrefying remains of previous victims. On the third night he
was rescued (by a group of secret disciples of Jesus, the Sanyasi mission),
even though the only key to the lock was kept by the Grand Lama himself. This
was but one of the many miraculous escapes he experienced.
St. Wilfrid - 12th October
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
|
|
Part patron of Ripon
Cathedral and of over forty churches in England (of which the parish church of
Kibworth is one) Wilfrid also founded several monasteries, including one at Oundle where
he died in AD 709, his seventy-sixth year, after an amazingly active life on, what is now
his Feast day, the 12th October.The son of a Northumbrian
chief, Wilfrid was born in AD 634 and educated at the monastery of Lindisfarne. But he had
heard about Christians who had different customs and while in his teens he journeyed to
Canterbury to learn more about them. It was there that he first experienced the Roman Rite
and an approach to the religious life which was very different from his Celtic background.
He liked what he found and while still only nineteen he began a journey to Rome which was
to last for several years for he stopped on the way at Lyons for three years and there
received the Roman tonsure. On the first part of his journey he was accompanied by the
young Bendic Biscop who in later years was to have a great influence upon English
ecclesiastical art and architecture.
|
When
Wilfrid returned to England he was made Abbot of Ripon. Promptly he introduced the
Benedictine Rule and, in 664 at the Synod of Whitby, it was he who was mainly responsible
for the victory of the pro-Roman party in the controversy over the dating of Easter.
Shortly after this he was consecrated as Bishop of York (but chose to go to France for the
ceremony as he wished to avoid the Celtic bishops whom he regarded as
schismatical). As a
result he was decidedly unpopular with many powerful people who still followed the Celtic
path and when he returned from the continent (where he had spent many months in missionary
work) he found that St. Chad had been installed in York in his place! So he went back to
his monastery at Ripon. But when the Archbishop, Theodore of Canterbury, decided to divide
the huge diocese of York into three without even consulting Wilfrid he set off for Rome
once more to appeal against the decision. The Pope confirmed Wilfrid in his office as
Bishop of York but also supported his Archbishop in the proposed division of the See. So
back to England came Wilfrid but, falling foul of the King he was duly imprisoned and had
to seek refuge in Sussex. There for five years he engaged energetically in evangelising
the South Saxons until, once again, he was reconciled with all the 'powers that be' and
duly re-installed at York. There for a further five years he laboured religiously but,
having fallen foul of another king (Aldfrith) he was forced to flee once more. This time
he made for the Midlands where the King of Mercia asked him to administer the vacant see
of Lichfield.
Once again, in 703, it was decreed by a Synod under the new Archbishop that he
should vacate his see of York (from which of course he had been absent for several years)
and once again he took his case to Rome where, yet again, the Pope completely vindicated
his claims. However, Wilfrid decided that the time had come for compromise and agreed to
retire from York to his monastery at Ripon and to spend the final days of his life as
Bishop of Hexham.
Though the Ven. Bede, who knew
him well, did not always give him a very good write up, it is clear that Wilfrid was an
able, devout and very courageous Christian. He was the very first Englishman to carry a
lawsuit to the Roman Courts and was himself a great defender of Papal authority as well as
being a tireless missionary. He succeeded in bringing this country into much closer
contact with the continent and, even more significantly, he replaced the existing usages
in the north by the Roman liturgy, and Celtic by Benedictine monasticism. A ceaseless
traveller, he was certainly not everyone's "cup of tea" but, in spite of all the
ups and downs of his ministry he was generally regarded - even by his own contemporaries -
as a saint.
William Tyndale
- 6th October
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
‘The Father of the
English Bible’, as he is often known, was born c.1494 in Gloucestershire and
educated at both Oxford and Cambridge. He then returned to his home county and
became tutor to the family of Sir John Walsh of Old Sodbury where a great many
eminent men were entertained. With some of these guests he was able to discuss
‘Luther, Erasmus and divers controversies and questions upon Scripture’.
He preached in Bristol and its neighbourhood and was appalled by the ignorance
of the local clergy to one of whom he said, ‘if God spare my life, ere many
years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth a plough to know more of the
Scriptures than thou dost’. This became his life’s work.
Fearing the Lollards, who had the
Wyclif Bible (an inaccurate translation of the Latin Vulgate), the Bishops had
banned ‘the English Bible’. But Tyndale determined to make a new
translation, working directly from the original Hebrew and Greek. To this end
he turned to the Bishop of London for support but failed to obtain it, though
Humphrey Monmouth and other London merchants gave him their financial backing
and enabled him to move to Hamburg, which was a far safer environment for
someone with his aims. He visited Luther at Wittenberg and began printing a
translation of the New Testament at Cologne in 1524.
However, when the work was only half done, he was discovered and fled
to Worms with the unfinished sheets. Two editions were printed there, of 3,000
copies each, one in octavo and the other (with marginal notes) in quarto. But
the English Bishops were alerted and the Archbishop of Canterbury (William
Warham) bought up as many copies as he could in order to destroy them. Tyndale
responded by issuing further translations!
In 1525 Cardinal Wolsey tried to
secure Tyndale’s arrest at Worms, but he took refuge in Marburg and began to
publish a number of treatises. One was on the doctrine of Justification by
Faith, another a defence against the charges of lawlessness which were being
brought against the Reformers. A third denounced Henry Viii’s divorce. He
also entered into a bitter controversy with Sir Thomas More, who accused him
of being guilty of many ‘grave errors’; and all the time he continued to
work on revisions of his New Testament translations.
Tyndale wrote in plain, clear
English which was very different from the stilted latinized prose of the
academics of his day. It is said that some 90% of his precise language passed
into the King James Bible of 1611 (the so-called Authorized Version) and
approximately 75% into the Revised Standard Version. He moved to Antwerp
where, in 1534, he was joined by John Rogers (whom he had been instrumental in
converting) and together they worked on a translation of the Old Testament.
But Tyndale only managed to complete the first five books and Jonah before he
was betrayed, arrested and tried for heresy. Having been condemned to death,
he was strangled and burnt at the stake on 6th October 1636.
‘Lord, open the eyes of the king
of England’ were his last reported words.
Henry
Martin - 19th October
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
On
19th October the Church Calendar bids us remember ‘Henry Martyn,
Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in
India
and
Persia
, 1812’, but he is not exactly a household name.
Born
in
Truro
in
Cornwall
on 18th February, 1781, Henry’s father was a tin mine agent at
Gwenap. Having attended the grammar school, the boy entered
St. John’s
College
,
Cambridge
at the age of sixteen and was elected to a fellowship in 1802. He had
distinguished himself by becoming senior wrangler and had intended to go to
the bar until he happened to hear the celebrated Evangelical Charles Simeon,
the Vicar of Holy Trinity, speaking about the work of William Carey in
India
.
There
and then he resolved to become a missionary.
On 22nd October, 1803 he was ordained deacon and then priest
at Ely and served as Simeon’s curate before offering himself to the
newly-founded Church Missionary Society. But
a disaster in
Cornwall
deprived him and his unmarried sister of the provision their father had made
for them so he found it necessary to obtain a salary sufficient to support
them both.
Accordingly,
he obtained a chaplaincy to the British East India Company and sailed for
Calcutta
in July 1805.
It
was assumed that he would minister to the expatriate community, and he did
indeed teach and preach in mission schools, but he also set about learning the
local languages and visited Hindu temples, proclaiming the Gospel there and
also to the beggars in the streets. He
was able to translate the New Testament into Urdu and later into both Persian
and Arabic. He then translated the
Psalms into Persian and the Prayer Book into Urdu.
Ordered
by the doctors to take a sea voyage for his health’s sake, he obtained leave
to go to
Persia
(modern
Iran
) and after an exhausting journey from the coast he reached
Shiraz
and was soon in discussion with scholars from many different backgrounds. “Sufi
Muslim, Jew and Jewish Muslim, even Armenian, were all anxious to test their
powers of argument with the first English priest who had visited them”.
His
attempt to present a copy of his Farsi translation of the New Testament to the
Shah failed, so he journeyed on from place to place guided by a thoughtless
Tartar guide. Finally, though a plague was raging at Tokat in
Armenia
he was so exhausted that he was compelled to stop there.
Still only 31, he died there suffering from tuberculosis on 16th
October, 1812.
His
Journals and Letters were published
by Samuel Wilberforce in 1837.
John Wyclif - 31st December
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
In
1348 when John Wyclif, who had been born at Hipwell in the North Riding of
Yorkshire, was a young student at Oxford bubonic plague swept through the
country and carried off over one third of the population. The Hundred Years
war between England and France was well underway and the Pope had left Rome to
settle in Avignon where, under the influence of the French, he had demanded
the suppression of one of the military orders, the Templars.
Not
surprisingly, anti-papal feeling was strong in England and it was fuelled by
the writings of Wyclif, who became a prominent Oxford scholar and was also in
the service of John of Gaunt acting as an envoy to the curia on a number of
occasions.
Spending
most of his life at the university Wyclif was at various times a Fellow of
Merton, Master of Balliol, Warden of Canterbury Hall (later incorporated into
Christ Church) and a long-time resident of the Queen’s College. But that did
not stop him from acquiring the benefice income from Fillingham and other
parishes, including Lutterworth. He lived in none of them, except the latter,
where he spent his last years and where he died as a result of a stroke on 31st
December 1384.
In
truth Wyclif was a don (who gained his Doctorate in Theology in 1372) not a
parish priest, far more interested in ideas than in people.
But he merits the title of morning star of the Reformation for many of
those ideas were to resurface centuries later and to change the face of the
Church in England.
In
a series of books and pamphlets he argued that, since each individual is
responsible to God alone (as against the old feudal idea), there is no need
for an hierarchy and no distinction between priest and layman. He believed
that all authority, be it ecclesiastical or secular, is derived from God and
is forfeited when its possessor falls into mortal sin.
So he attacked the friars and the worldliness of the mediaeval church
in general, and brought down upon himself the wrath of the Pope who demanded
in a series of five bulls that he should be tried for heresy.
He
was duly summoned to appear at St. Paul’s (and later at Lambeth) before the
Bishop of London but escaped sentence due to his royal patron.
Emboldened by this favourable outcome, Wyclif went on to deny the
priestly power of absolution, to reject penances and indulgences and (in 1380)
the doctrine of transubstantiation. This
was altogether ‘too much’ and the powers that be at Oxford condemned his
heretical beliefs and forced him to resign. So he retired to his living at
Lutterworth.
His
greatest achievement must be his initiation of the first complete translation
of the Bible from Latin into English (in part, at least, his own work but
completed by others in 1388). He also inspired a group of scholars and priests
at Oxford to become poor preachers’ going about Leicestershire and the
Midlands proclaiming the Gospel as the friars had done originally. These
Lollards as they were also known (from the Dutch word ‘lollen’, ‘to
murmur’) took his ideas to ordinary folk in a way he had been unable to do
himself. But in the Council of
Constance (1415) the movement was suppressed and Wyclif himself was again
condemned as an heretic. His body was unceremoniously disinterred, burned and
thrown in the River Swift.
Elizabeth Fry
- 12th October
by Canon
Desmond V Treanor
Betsy, as
she was known as a child, was born at Earlham Hall in Norfolk in 1780, one of
seven daughters of a Quaker banker, Joseph Gurney. At the age of twenty she
married a London merchant, Joseph Fry, and though very well off they lived
very simply as strict Quakers. In 1811 she was admitted as a minister in the
Society of Friends and became a noted preacher and social reformer.
The
Frys had eleven children and lived in a large house close to the Bank of England
and the Guildhall but in 1816 she felt moved to visit the three hundred female
prisoners in Newgate Prison; and it is because of her outstanding service to
prisoners and to the poor in general that she is remembered in the Anglican
calendar on 12th October, the day she died in 1845.
She
was deeply shocked by the conditions in which she found the women ‘reduced to
the level of wild beasts’ and used her money and position in society to
improve their lot. She organised a school for the children who were living in
squalor with their mothers in Newgate. She
hated capital punishment and frequently sat with women awaiting execution and
prayed for them.
Gradually
Elizabeth Fry, who appears on the back of the current £5 note, became a
household name and was called to give evidence to a Select Committee of the
House of Commons. She insisted that
there should be separate women’s prisons, with their own staff, and with
employment for the inmates.
For twenty
five years she visited the convict ships carrying women prisoners to Australia
and was instrumental in arranging accommodation for them when they arrived.
But she did not confine her activities to prisoners in this country.
She
travelled the country inspecting lunatic asylums, setting up homes for
discharged prisoners, establishing a night shelter for destitute women and men
in London and, with the active support of her husband, she helped to improve
conditions for prisoners on the continent also.
She
was also a pioneer in the training of nurses and several of the ‘Fry
Sisters’ accompanied Florence Nightingale to Scutari.
Clearly,
she was a woman of great personal courage, an indefatigable worker and a
visionary who had the gift of touching the hearts of many others by her deep
personal faith. She is rightly remembered especially as a very important
figure in the history of Penal Reform.
She
believed fervently that “kindness will do more than cruelty” when it comes
to the reformation of individuals.
William Temple
- 6th November
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
The
Second son of Archbishop Frederick Temple, William was born in 1881 at the
Palace, Exeter, and himself became Primate of All England.
Today he is remembered especially as a leader in the ecumenical
movement and an initiator of educational reforms as well as being a great
champion of ‘the underdog’.
He
was educated at Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took and double
First and was President of the Union. In
1904 he was elected Fellow at Queens College and for the next six years he
lectured in Philosophy in the university before becoming Headmaster of Repton.
He wrote many weighty tomes, completing the longest of them the very night
before his marriage in 1916. By this time he had moved to St. James’,
Piccadilly where he delivered a course of sermons on St. John’s Gospel which
were to become the basis of his devotional commentary.
Both he and his wife Frances took a keen interest in the welfare of
working men and women and he was one of the clergy who started ‘The Life and
Liberty Movement’. One result of their efforts was the establishment of the
Church Assembly, the forerunner of the General Synod.
In
1919 Temple was made a Canon of Westminster and in January 1921 he was
consecrated Bishop of Manchester. Very
soon he became widely known, admired and liked.
People of all ages and from every walk of life found him friendly,
humorous and easy to follow. His
evangelistic sermons on the sands at the annual Blackpool Missions attracted
huge numbers, as did the university missions he conducted at Cambridge, Oxford
and Dublin.
Though
a deeply serious individual, he had a tremendous capacity for enjoyment.
He liked reading novels, thrillers and poetry; loved music,
architecture and mountains, and thoroughly enjoyed jokes and food!
In 1928 his brilliance was recognized by the Church at large by his
appointment as Archbishop of York, and there was virtually universal approval
when he moved on to Canterbury in 1942. As
he had done before the War at York he continued to write, to teach, to
broadcast and to speak at endless meetings; but, of course, his many overseas
engagements had to be curtailed. As
a preacher he was best when expounding the Bible and, though he was happy with
the simplest forms of worship, he also valued ceremonial and presided at
countless special services with great dignity.
His
views on social problems and economic policies were clearly and forcefully
expressed and his death, following a heart attack, in October 1944 occasioned
not only national but world-wide sorrow. He
is remembered in the Calendar of the Church of England on 6th
November, the day of his Baptism in Exeter Cathedral.
St. Hilda - 17th November
by Canon
Desmond V Treanor
Because her father had been murdered
and her mother had fled abroad, Hilda, who was born in Northumbria in AD 614, was brought
up at the court of her great uncle King Edwin. Under the influence of the Queen and her
chaplain, Bishop Paulinus, she became a Christian and was baptised with the King himself
in a little wooden church constructed for the purpose near the royal palace at York on
Easter eve 627.
In that violent age when no one
seemed to care a fig for his neighbour and when life had little value in the eyes of many,
Hilda was one of a handful of very privileged women who were outstanding in their piety.
But it was not until twenty years later when her sister, Hereswith, was professed as a nun
at Chelles, near Paris, that Hilda decided that she too would take the veil.
Much is known about her life because
Bede (who knew many people who had known her) wrote glowingly about her in his
Ecclesiastical history. As he says, "having lived most nobly in the secular habit for
thirty-three years, she now dedicated the remaining thirty-three to our Lord in the
monastic life." Bishop Aidan gave her some land at what is now South Shields and
there, with a few companions, she embarked upon this new phase of her life. But after only
one year the Bishop asked her to take charge of a monastery at Hartlepool whose Abbess had
left to become a solitary. Before very long s steady stream of people began to call
seeking her advice and spiritual direction. She was accessible to all and ready to serve
all, even telling people what to do when plagued by snakes, geese and the like.
In 657 she resolved to re-settle a
site that had been a Roman coastal fort and it was there on the headland of Whitby that
she founded a double community of monks and nuns. As Bede tells us, "She established
the same Rule of life as in the other monastery (Hartlepool), teaching them to observe
strictly the virtues of justice, devotion and chastity and other virtues too, but above
all these things to continue in peace and charity. After the example of the primitive
church, no one was rich, no one was in need, for they had all things in common and none
had any private property."
Among her monks were at least four
future bishops, and the herdsman Caedmon who was the first English religious poet. The
outstanding reputation of her community brought rival parties in the Northumbrian church
to the abbey for the Synod of Whitby in 664. At this conference Hilda sided with St.
Colman in his defence of the Celtic customary against St. Wilfrid who advocated acceptance
of the Roman. But the decision went against the Celts and it was agreed by all to accept
the Roman dating of Easter and much else. Whereupon Hilda loyally accepted the changes and
the Celtic practices which had been introduced from Iona retreated back to the North.
For the last six years of her life
she suffered from what was probably T.B. but she refused to be treated as an invalid and
continued to give her brothers and sisters of her community a wonderful personal example
of how to live life in praise and thanksgiving to God as much in sickness as in health.
At length, knowing that death was
near, she received the Holy Communion for the last time at cock-crow on November 17 (now
her feast day), 680, and surrounded by her community, she died joyfully.
Nicholas Ferrar
- 4th December
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
The son of a prominent city
merchant Nicholas was born in
London
on
22nd February 1592
. More
importantly, as far as he was concerned, he was baptised eight days later,
‘esteeming it a greater blessing to be received into the Catholic Church
than to come into the world’. A brilliant student, he entered Clare Hall,
Cambridge
when he was only
thirteen, graduated and in 1610 was elected to a Fellowship in medicine. But
within three years he had to leave
Cambridge
because of his
health. During the next five years he studied at
Padua
, the leading
medical school in
Europe
at the time, and also visited various other parts of the
Continent. He returned to take his father’s place in the Virginia Company
and in 1624 was elected to Parliament.
However he soon became
disillusioned with politics and settled down at Little Gidding in
Huntingdonshire, a dilapidated manor house and estate which had been purchased
by his mother. He was joined there by his brother and brother-in-law with
their families and they gave themselves to a life of prayer, to becoming as
self-sufficient as possible and to the serving others. An infirmary was
established, accommodation was provided permanently for four poor widows, and
the local children were taught.
On Trinity Sunday 1626
Nicholas Ferrar was ordained Deacon in Westminster Abbey and under his
leadership the thirty members observed a strict Rule. They embraced voluntary
poverty, fasted frequently, studied the Scriptures and offered daily worship
in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer in the abandoned church which
they lovingly restored. In addition, night watches were kept during which the
whole psalter was recited antiphonally. All day and night at least one member
of the community knelt in prayer before the altar. Within the house itself a
short service consisting of prayers, a hymn, psalms and a reading from the
Gospels was held at every hour of the day.
Many well known people, including Charles 1,
visited Little Gidding and bore testimony to the serenity and joy which was to
be found there. But the damp air of the
Fens
had always been
bad for his health and Nicholas died in 1637, aged 45.
His ‘congregation of saints’ incurred the displeasure of the Puritans
who accused its members of trying to re-introduce Roman practices into the
country and in 1646 the community was forcibly broken up by Cromwell’s army
and most of his manuscripts and the books which had been bound there were
destroyed.
Nicholas Ferrar died on
Advent Sunday and is remembered in the Calendar of the Church of England on 4th
December each year. A biography, written by his brother, was never published
but part of it survives in Cambridge University Library. One of T.S.Eliot’s Four
Quartets is called Little Gidding and
the memory of the experiment survived to inspire and influence later ventures
in communal living.
St. Nicholas
- 6th December
by Canon Desmond V Treanor
He was a bishop of Myra in S.W. Asia
Minor (southern Turkey) who, from the sixth century in the East and ninth (when his
hagiography was compiled) in the West, has been one of the most universally popular
saints.
Many of the legends which abound
reveal his concern for children and young people and tell how he fed the hungry, healed
the sick and cared for the oppressed.
Though scarcely anything is known for
certain about his life, tradition tells us that he went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
before being imprisoned for his faith. It was only after his release that he became a
bishop. In him all who were in need found a champion - like the three girls whom he saved
from a life of prostitution by giving them as a dowry bags of gold. His emblem today is
three gold balls, but sometimes he is represented as standing in a tub with three children
at his side. These he is credited with having raised to life after they had been murdered
and hidden in a brine tub. He is also believed to have saved from death three men who had
been unjustly condemned as well as a number of sailors whose vessels were in distress off
the Lycian coast.
Today he is the patron of
pawnbrokers, children and sailors, as also of some countries (including Russia),
provinces, dioceses, cities and churches. Apparently in England more churches have been
dedicated in his name than in that of any other saint, many of them being built on
headlands where they would act as landmarks for all approaching our shores from the sea.
Of course, St. Nicholas' chief claim
to fame is the fact that for centuries, in some countries, children have been given gifts
in his name on his day (6th December). Santa Claus is a Dutch American corruption of his
name. Wouldn't you know it!
In 1087 Italian merchants stole the
saint's reputed relics from Myra and solemnly enshrined them at Bari, in Apulia, where
they are to this day.
St. Thérèse
- 3rd October 3rd
by
Canon Desmond V
Treanor
| Since the Middle Ages the title 'Doctor of the Church' has been conferred on
about thirty Western theologians of outstanding merit and acknowledged holiness. Last year
this illustrious company which includes Gregory the Great, Augustine and Jerome was joined
by Thérèse de Lisieux who died on 30th Sept. 1897. Her Feast is 3rd October. Thérèse
was the youngest child of Zelie and Louis Martin, both of whom had offered themselves as
'religious' but who, being told that this was not their true vocation, married and
resolved to dedicate any children they might have to God. They were blessed with nine, but
four of them died. The other five became nuns. |
 |
Marie Francoise Thérèse, as their last child was christened was born in
Alençon on 2nd January 1873 and was very much the 'treasure' of the family. Her mother
died when she was four and her father took the children (and his watch-making business) to
Lisieux in Normandy to be near his brother and his family. One after another her sisters,
who cared for her, entered the local Carmel and when she was fourteen she was bitterly
disappointed to be told that she was too young to follow them. But she was sure that she
too was called to be a contemplative and she persuaded her father to take her to see first
the Bishop of Bayeux and then the Pope himself. The journey to Rome (her one and only
experience of travel) was well worth-while for she was granted an audience with Leo XIII
as a result of which she was allowed to become a Carmelite at the tender age of fifteen.
The next nine years were as 'ordinary' as those of any other young nun
as she engaged in the daily round of prayer and work, but the severity of the very strict
Order she had joined were increased when she began to suffer with tuberculosis. Her
autobiography, written under obedience when she become seriously ill, was passed around
other Carmels after her death at the age of twenty four and had an immediate impact when
it was published. By 1925 her 'Story of a Soul' was known throughout the world and many
miracles and answers to prayer were attributed to her. In that year this obscure young nun
who had been completely unknown outside her enclosed convent was canonised.
Before her death she told her sister, Mother Agnes, "I feel my
mission is soon to begin, my mission to teach souls my little way." "What is
this 'little way'?" she was asked and she explained, "It is the way of spiritual
childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender... It means that we acknowledge our
nothingness; that we expect everything from the good Lord, as a child expects everything
from its father; it means to worry about nothing, seeking only to gather flowers, the
flowers of sacrifices, and to offer them to the good Lord for his pleasure. It also means
not to attribute to ourselves the virtues we practice, not to believe we are capable of
anything, but to acknowledge that it is the good Lord who has placed that treasure in the
hand of his little child that he may use it when he needs it, but it remains always God's
own treasure. Finally, it means that we must not be discouraged by our faults, for
children fall frequently."
Today Thérèse, 'The Little Flower', is one of the most popular of all
the saints and has been an inspiration to innumerable ordinary folk to whom she has
demonstrated that holiness is open to everyone by the faithful doing of small, ordinary
things in the spirit of the love of God.
St. Cecilia
- 22nd November
by Canon Desmond V
Treanor
| One of the most venerated martyrs of the early
Church, all that we know for certain is that Cecily or Cecilia was a young Christian girl
of a patrician, land-owning family in Rome.
Pope Gelasius gave her feast day a vigil in his Sacramentary (of c.AD 394)
and this was observed in Saxon England. A church in Rome had already been dedicated to
her.
According to legend, she and her young
bridegroom, Valerian, whom she converted along with his pagan brother, Tibertius, agreed
to live in perpetual virginity. But their marriage was all-too-brief for, refusing to
sacrifice to the Emperor, both the young men (and a friend named Maximus) were killed.
Cecilia herself was suffocated in her bath, and then beheaded, and the four young people
were all buried in the catacomb of St. Calistus.
In
the 9th century (still wrapped in a golden robe) her relics were solemnly removed by Pope
Paschal I and re-interred in the church which was built over her home in Trastevere in the
city of Rome. |
|
Here her body is said to have been found entire and uncorrupted when the
church was being repaired in 1599.
Cecilia has been much loved by English poets -
Chaucer, Dryden, Longfellow and Tennyson all honoured her and sang her story - as well as
by continental painters who generally represented her with a garland of roses and lilies
(for a bride) and, in post-reformation pictures, with an organ or organ pipes.
She is patron saint of Church music. Her feast is
celebrated on 22nd November.
A prayer used in
King’s College Chapel, Cambridge
O Holy and eternal God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, whom all the companies of heaven laud and adore: Graciously receive the offering
of worship we are about to make; and so bless us, as we magnify thee upon earth with music
and the voice of melody, that hereafter we may sing the new song in the heavenly city;
where thou reignest, almighty, all glorious, world without end. Amen.
St.
John of the Cross - 14th
December
by
Canon Desmond V
Treanor
S an Juan de La Cruz, as he is known in his native
country, was born to an impoverished noble family in Fontiveros, Castille on 24th June
1542. He was brought up by his widowed mother and sent to a charity school before working
as a nurse and becoming a Carmelite monk when he was twenty one. Having distinguished
himself at the University of Salamanca he was ordained priest in 1567.
His meeting with Teresa of Avila that year proved to be providential.
Though small of stature, he impressed her and she enlisted his aid in restoring the
austere life to her Carmelite convent in Avila and he himself went on to open no less than
fifteen such Discalced (i.e. barefoot) monasteries. If he had done nothing else he would
have been remembered as a co—founder of the Discalced Carmelites.
But he was also one of the greatest of Spanish
poets. |
|
His life was one of great turmoil and twice he was imprisoned by
members of his own order who resisted his austere reforms (first in Toledo and later in an
obscure monastery in Andalucia in Southern Spain). So it was in small, dark cells that
some of his most perceptive work, including his Spiritual Canticle (a commentary on the
biblical Song of Songs) was written.
It is for his writings tracing the pathways of the interior life that
John is best known. ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ (originally Part IV of a larger
work, ‘Ascent of Mt. Carmel’) is the most famous. It describes the ten steps by
which the soul gives up its attachments to all things, invoking the pattern of the
crucifixion of Christ, prior to the bestowal of its glory.
The thesis in all his books, which make constant and searching use of
the Bible, is that the soul must travel through darkness if it is to come to union with
God. The key distinction in The Dark Night is between ‘active’ and
‘passive’ nights. Both involve a process of purification, a removal of all
imperfections and impurities. Active’ refers to the individual’s own preparation
for contemplation and union while ‘passive’ covers that which God alone can do
for the individual through grace. The passive night of the spirit, in which the absence of
God is most grievously experienced, becomes nonetheless the threshold of union with Him.
It is the darkest part of the night which precedes the dawn.
The nights are not to be thought of sequentially, since aspects of them
may be experienced together.
John explains that divine grace acts upon the soul like fire upon a piece of wood.
First the fire dries the wood and drives out all moisture, and in the process the wood is
charred and made odorous and unsightly. Then the fire kindles the wood and transforms it
into fire. Thus the wood becomes the same substance as that which has been acting upon it.
So too, God strips away from individuals who humbly put themselves in
His hands everything which could keep them from union with Him (faculties, feelings and
affections) "leaving the understanding dark, the will dry, the memory empty, and the
affections in deep affliction."
The purpose is for the soul to be transformed into God so that God
Himself can become the life of the soul. John calls this "assimilation into God, a
total assimilation into the divine essence." He says, "love is like fire which
ever rises upward with the desire to be absorbed into the centre of its sphere."
Although John of the Cross was describing a ‘ladder’ of
spiritual progress from meditation to contemplation, ‘a loving attention to God
‘— as many others had done before him, because he was an extremely gifted poet
it is generally believed that his work reached ‘literary heights and penetrative
depths of unique dimensions’.
His mystical poems have been adjudged to be among ‘the supreme
lyrical creations of Spanish literature, haunting, passionate and with an exuberance of
imagery unequalled in his time.’
Explaining that every soul that seeks to be one with God must enter
into Christ’s own passion, in The Spiritual Canticle he says, "St. Paul exhorted
the Ephesians not to grow faint in tribulations, but to be very strong, and rooted in
charity, in order to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and height and
depth, and to know also the surpassing love of the knowledge of Christ, so as to be filled
with all the fullness of God. For the gate whereby we may enter into these riches of His
wisdom is the cross, which is narrow. Many desire the delights to which that gate leads,
but few are prepared to pass through it."
John died on 14th December 1591, was canonised in 1726 and proclaimed a
Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church exactly 200 years later.
St. Teresa of Avila
- 15th October
by
Canon Desmond V Treanor
In 151
5 within the walled city of Avila, on the high planes of Castile in central
Spain, Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda was born; and there she was buried
sixty-seven years later having become one of the best known and most loved
contemplative saints of the Church. Her father was of a wealthy Jewish family
of weavers in Toledo, but he had been converted to Christianity and had
married the daughter of a Castilian nobleman.
A romantic and impetuous child, when she was seven she and her
favourite brother Rodrigo ran away from home hoping that they might be killed
by Moors and so become Christian martyrs!
Fortunately they did not get far and Teresa was placed in the care of
Augustinian nuns from whom she received her education.
In
1536, against her father’s will, she entered a local Carmelite convent; but
it proved to be a great disappointment to her for it was a noisy, worldly
establishment where the nuns kept their own servants and entertained many
guests. However, in spite of
recurring illness, she persevered, remained faithful to her vows and, in 1562,
was able to realize her desire to found a small, simple community in which a
life strictly devoted to prayer and self-sacrifice was possible.
So, St. Joseph’s in Avila became the first of a series of seventeen
convents, which she founded in the next twenty years.
For
the rest of her life this attractive, humorous, practical woman worked and
prayed and wrote ceaselessly. The
Papal nuncio in Spain at the time described her as a restless gadfly’.
With the aid of a young friar, St. John of the Cross, she was
responsible for reforming the Carmelite Order and returning it to its original strict Rule (of
1209). Those who followed her path were described thereafter as
‘discalced’ (i.e. unshod) monks and nuns.
Although
she was a born leader and an exceptionally efficient
organizer she proved that the highest level of contemplation is not
incompatible with a busy practical life.
Her collected works (9 Vols. in Spanish) include numerous letters, a
‘Life’ (which she wrote in obedience to her confessor), the ‘Way of
Perfection’ the ‘Book of Foundations’ and the ‘Interior Castle’.
This was penned in a few months in 1577 and sets out her mature teaching on
prayer simply and systematically. It is now regarded as a classic exposition
of the stages of mystical prayer.
The
castle is a picture of the human soul in which there are a series of
mansions’, God Himself dwelling in the seventh and the way to reach Him
being through the gate of prayer. Each ‘dwelling place’ is described in
detail, and progress through the first three can be made by one’s own
efforts, assisted by the grace of God. But the final four are entered only
through ‘passive’ or ‘supernatural’ prayer which is God’s gift to
the faithful. She is said to have been the first writer to describe the entire
life of prayer from meditation to ‘union’ with God.
Urging
her readers to strive to make progress in self-knowledge she says, “by
gazing at God’s grandeur, we get in touch with our own lowliness; by looking
at His purity, we shall see our own filth; by pondering His humility, we shall
see how far we are from being humble.”
Teresa
died of exhaustion on her way home from one of her arduous journeys on 4th
October 1582. But her feast is observed on 15th October because the
day after she died the new Gregorian calendar was adopted in Spain, and eleven
days were omitted from
that year.
One
of her most frequently quoted teachings reminds us that
“Christ
has no body now on earth but yours;
No
hands but yours;
No
feet but yours;
Yours
are the eyes through which His love looks out on the world:
Yours
are the feet with which He goes about doing good:
Yours
are the hands with which He blesses now.”
In
Avila a contemporary portrait of the saint is displayed along with an
espadrille, which belonged to her, her rosary and the crucifix from her cell.
There is also an unforgettable baroque statue of her at prayer (and a far
finer sculpture of her by Bernini in Rome).
Teresa was canonized
in 1622 and (along with Catherine of Sienna) was one of
the first two women
to be declared a Doctor (i.e. a teacher) of the Church, in 1970.
St.
Martin of Tours - 11th November
by
Canon Desmond V Treanor
Born
in c. 316 in Pannonia, Hungary, Martin followed his father into the Roman army
and served in a number of different places including Amiens.
The story of how he cut his cavalryman’s cloak in half to clothe a
freezing beggar there is celebrated in numerous stained glass windows and
statues. The depictions in glass may be seen in such cathedrals as Chartres,
Tours and York Minster as well as in Leicester, of course, which is dedicated
to Martin. Statues commemorating the event are also widespread.
Westminster Abbey is but one example in England.
Martin
decided to leave the Imperial Guard and to serve Christ instead.
So he was baptised and became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers.
After a visit to his homeland and a period spent as a hermit on a small
island in the Gulf of Genoa he returned to Poitiers and established the first
monastery in Gaul at Ligugé.
His
simple, ascetic lifestyle was coupled with active and fearless missionary
activity and he became well-known for the courageous way in which he
challenged pagans and destroyed their shrines.
Inspired by his example, when their bishop died in 372, the people of
Tours demanded that he should accept the office.
He did, but refused to live in his cathedral city.
Instead he chose a cave by the Loire at Marmoutier where he continued
to follow a severe monastic rule as well as looking after his diocese.
Martin
charged the rulers of his day with corruption and cruelty and after his death
at the end of the 4th Century he was remembered far and wide for
his many healing miracles, exorcisms, visions and championship of the poor.
In an age which was exceedingly harsh a contemporary, Ambrose of Milan,
wrote that Martin ‘raised
the banners of pity’.
His
holy life and evangelistic work was faithfully documented by Sulpicious
Severus, a lawyer who became his friend and follower, and pilgrimage to his
shrine at Tours became very popular in medieval times.
There
are many churches dedicated in his honour in France, Germany, the Low
Countries and England, including the old Roman church in Canterbury, which
Augustine and his monks first used for worship when they came to these shores.
Right opposite the huge cathedral at Compostela, Spain, at the end of
one of the most famous of all the great medieval pilgrimage routes, is an
exquisite example built by the Benedictines as their monastery chapel.
Martin,
who died in 397, is patron saint of France and is commemorated on 11th
November.
Charles
Simeon - 13th November
by
Canon Desmond V Treanor
Having
been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth’ in 1759, the son
of a wealthy Reading business man, Charles went from Eton to King’s
College, Cambridge at the age of twenty. His knowledge of Latin was
described as being ‘adequate’; but his Greek was weak and although he
became a Fellow of his college in due course, and lived in rooms there for
the rest of his life, he was frequently scorned by his seniors for his lack
of scholarship.
Yet
Macaulay, whose undergraduate days coincided with those of Simeon’s
ascendancy, wrote ‘If you knew what his authority and influence were, and
how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you
would allow that his real sway over the Church was far greater than that of
any primate.
Simeon
was converted as he prepared himself carefully to make his first communion
at Kings and ‘from that hour peace flowed in rich abundance into my
soul...’ The practical effects of his conversion immediately became
visible. Having been a conspicuous dandy who spent a great deal on his dress
and on drink, now he ‘practised the most rigid economy’, and began a
life of devotional seclusion.
He
was ordained in Ely Cathedral on Trinity Sunday 1782, being four months
under the canonical age, and that autumn (while still a deacon) was
appointed as curate-in-charge of Holy Trinity, a few hundred yards from his
rooms at Kings. There he remained for the rest of his life, preaching
powerfully, filling the 900 seats with ever-increasing numbers of
undergraduates and always proclaiming the Gospel of free Redemption through
the Blood of Christ. His avowed aim was ‘to humble the sinner, to exalt
the Saviour and to promote holiness
Ever
after his conversion he had a lively admiration for the Book of Common
Prayer and a pious devotion to the Holy Communion. Indeed he always put
‘the Bible first, the Prayer book next, and all other books and doings in
subordination to both’.
Simeon
was a notable Evangelical of whom many biographies have been penned and was
one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society. When he died, on 13th
November 1836, he left over 2,500 sermon outlines, which were published in
twenty-one volumes and sent to the King, the Archbishops, every Cambridge
College and chief library in England and in the United States. He also left
his considerable fortune to Trustees who were charged to acquire patronage,
to be used to appoint ‘suitable’ clergy to a number of evangelical
livings and, having served as Vicar of two of them, naturally I have always
had more than a passing interest in and admiration for Charles Simeon.
When
he died more than eight hundred members of the university processed at his
funeral. He was buried in King’s College chapel, in a vault simply marked ‘C.S.,1836’.
Last updated on Sunday, 26 November 2006 by Webmaster
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