#carthusian martyrs of london

[anastpaul]

Saint of the Day – 8 June – Blessed John Davy O.Cart. (c1490-1535) Deacon, Martyr

Saint of the Day – 8 June – Blessed John Davy O.Cart. (c1490-1535) Deacon of the Carthusian Order, Martyr, Born in York in c1490 and died by being chained to a wall in the Tower prison, London and starved, until his death on 8 June 1535. Also known as – John Davies. Additional Memorial – 4 May as one of the Carthusian Martyrs of London. Blessed John was Beatified on 20 December 1886 by Pope Leo…

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINTS OF THE DAY (May 4)

The Carthusian Martyrs of London were the monks of the London Charterhouse, the monastery of the Carthusian Order in the city of London who were put to death by the English state.

The method of execution was hanging, disembowelling while still alive, and quartering. Others were imprisoned and left to starve to death.

These 18 Carthusian monks were put to death in England under King Henry VIII between 1535-1540 for maintaining their allegiance to the Pope.

The Carthusians, founded by St. Bruno in 1054, are the strictest and most austere monastic order in the western Church.

They live an austere hermitic life, their ‘monastery’ actually being a number of hermitages built next to each other.

When Henry VIII issued his “Act of Supremacy” declaring that all who refused to take an oath recognizing him as head of the Church of England committed an act of high treason, these 18 Carthusians refused and were sentenced to death.

The first to die were the Carthusian prior of London, John Houghton, and two of his brothers, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, who were hanged, drawn and quartered, on 4 May 1535.

The prior is said to have declared his fidelity to the Catholic Church and forgiven his executioners before dying.

The Carthusians were the first martyrs to die under the reign of Henry VIII.

Two more were killed on June 19 of that year. By 4 August 1540, all 18 had been tortured and killed for refusing to place their allegiance to the king before their allegiance to the Pope.

They were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 29 December 1886.

John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, and Augustine Webster were canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970.

[hieromonkcharbel]

Good Jesu: what will you do with my heart?’

I have always loved the writings of the Carthusians and have found them to be be both beautiful and challenging. But recently I came across a homily given on the occasion of a jubilee celebration of a priest's ordination. The homily focuses on the love and commitment of Carthusians martyred under the reign of Henry VIII, in particular St. John Houghton. It speaks not only of the beauty of the priesthood and the sacraments but also what God can accomplish in hearts open to His love and grace. It speaks of the grace that is both needed and offered when we are faced with the difficult challenges and choices of life, no matter what our particular vocation may be. The following is a rather lengthy excerpt from the homily (one that I found deeply encouraging) and I hope you enjoy it:

“The story of the Carthusian martyrs is not as well known as it should be. No doubt this is because, in the great tale of the early English Reformation, the figures of Sts John Fisher and Thomas More tower over all others, for many and obvious good reasons. And yet nobody becomes a martyr without some extraordinary qualities—tenacity, faith, holiness—that make it possible to face all the consequences of simply doing the right thing when it is required. And yet how difficult that simple thing can be, even in small matters.

The monks of the London Charterhouse (who provided most of today’s saints) were renowned for their holiness of life in the early sixteenth century. It had become fashionable to grumble about monks at that time, but nobody grumbled about them. Thomas More, who could be rather scathing about monks who were no holier than they should be, actually lived with the London Carthusians for several years, and contemplated joining them. Carthusian monks, following a somewhat different and stricter form of the Benedictine life, have as their proud boast that they have never needed reform. Theirs is, and always has been, a very silent and recollected life: The London community in the sixteenth century was led by Prior John Houghton, a relatively young man, already with a reputation for sanctity. You will understand, then, why Henry VIII was particularly keen to get him and his community on side. Being widely respected, they would lend authority to the King’s claims to the headship of the Church in England.

When presented with the King’s demands that the London Carthusians recognize his claim to the headship of the Church in England, the community took three days to pray about it, on the last of which they celebrated a Mass of the Holy Spirit. During Mass, at the elevation, the whole community actually had an experience together that they unanimously identified as the Holy Spirit breathing in the chapel, and which gave them courage for what was to come—courage they would sorely need.

John Houghton, together with two other priors from the North, went to speak to Thomas Cromwell, the King’s strong arm man in religious matters. We can be sure that with his lawyer’s training, St John tried everything to make it possible to take the oath of allegiance to the King, without, however, compromising principle. Nothing availed, however, and all three were arrested, the charge being that —and I quote — ‘John Houghton says that he cannot take the King, our Sovereign Lord to be Supreme Head of the Church of England afore the apostles of Christ’s Church’, which rather makes it sound as if the apostles had also usurped what was the King’s rightful position.

In any event, he was condemned, of course—Cromwell had had to threaten the jury with treason charges themselves in order to achieve it, and the three priors together with a Bridgettine priest and a secular priest were all dragged to execution together. St Thomas More, by now in the Tower of London, watched them from the window of his cell setting off, and commented to his daughter who was visiting that they looked just like bridegrooms going to their wedding, a comparison that St John Fisher was also to use on the morning of his own death.

King Henry was insistent that the priests should be executed in their religious habits, to teach other religious a lesson, one presumes. This meant that after St John was cut down from the gallows, still alive, to be butchered, the thick hairshirt he wore under his heavy habit had to be cut through by the executioner, who had to stab down hard with the knife. And then, finally, as the executioner drew out St John’s still beating heart before his face, he spoke his last words: ‘Good Jesu’ he said, ‘what will you do with my heart?’

‘Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?’ These are words that can speak to us at any stage, indeed in any moment in life, because we are daily confronted with choices between good and evil, or even simply between good and better. These words place the element of choice firmly in the Lord’s loving providence, praying for his grace to help us make the right decision.

When it comes to lifetime choices, however, St John Houghton’s words become more eloquent. There are any number of ways one can give ones life for the Lord—martyrdom is only one, albeit just about the best. One can also give ones living life for Him, by living in the married state, by working in any number of vocations in the world, and, of course, by spending ones life in consecrated religious life and/or the Priesthood. I think that the key element that identifies when a job becomes a vocation is when there is an element of self-giving to it—or in other words, when there is at least an element of martyrdom.

I have always been very struck by the story of Blessed Noel Pinot, a martyr of the French Revolution, who, having been arrested when about to celebrate Mass, ascended the scaffold to the guillotine dressed in the same Mass vestments, reciting to himself the same words we said today ‘Introibo ad altare Dei’. The mother of St John Bosco said to him on his ordination day; ‘remember, son, that beginning to say Mass means beginning to suffer’. These words come home to me and strike at my conscience, but I increasingly think that I can never really be worthy of my priesthood until I pour myself more entirely into it. There is nothing worth having that does not carry its price label, and the price label for following the Lord is imitating him in all things or, as He said Himself, taking up our cross daily. The question is not what do I want (the answer to that is straightforward: I’ll have an easy life, please, involving some nice dinners in agreeable company) but what does He want. In fact, ‘Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?’ Because whereas my little wants are rather petty and contemptible, his are wonderful beyond comprehension. And very often beyond my comprehension, anyway.

Thanks be to God that the priesthood of God’s Church does not belong to me but to Christ, that I do not exercise it, but he exercises it through me. Thanks be to God that the sacraments we offer do not depend on our worthiness but on His.

What a wonder it is that the Lord loves us at all! And yet he does, and is happy with the feeble struggle and great labour we make of bearing his sweet and gentle yoke, he rejoices as a parent does when guiding the first steps of a child or when speaking his first words. Caused by grace, these shallow twitches in our lives towards doing the Lord’s will and setting aside our own desires are no matters of mere jubilees and quarter centuries, they are the stuff of eternity leaking into time. These things are signs of the Kingdom of God, where, in eternity, eye has not seen nor ear heard what good things God prepares for those who love him. Which is why we pray with St John Houghton: ‘Good Jesu: what will you do with my heart?’”

[silvestromedia]

SAINTS OCTOBER 25 "There is only one tragedy in this life, not to have been a saint."- Leon Bloy

STS. CRISPIN AND CRISPINIAN,MARTYRS

STS. CHRYSANTHUS AND DARIA, MARTYRS ON THE VIA SALARIA NUOVA

St. John Houghton, Roman Catholic Carthusian Monk and Protomartyr of the English Reformation. He refused to swear to the Oath of Supremacy, the first man to make this refusal. Dragged through the streets, he was executed at Tyburn with four companions by being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Parts of his remains were put on display in assorted spots throughout London.

St. John Roberts, Roman Catholic Benedictine Priest and English Martyr. With Blessed Thomas Somers, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn.

St. Ambrose Edward Barlow, Roman Catholic Benedictine Priest and English Martyr. he was taken from Lancaster Castle, drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, hanged, dismembered, quartered, and boiled in oil. His head was afterwards exposed on a pike.

St. Daria, Roman Catholic Martyr. She was stoned and then buried alive. Feastday: October 25

St. Minias of Florence, Roman Catholic Martyred soldier of Florence, Italy, sometimes called Miniato. He was martyred for making converts in the reign of Emperor Trajanus Decius. An abbey near Florence bears his name.

St. Fructus, A hermit whose brother and sister were slain by Muslims in Spain. He and his brother, Valentine, and sister, Engratia, lived in Sepulvida, Spain. When Valentine and Engratia were slain, Fructus became a hermit. All three are patrons of Segovia. Oct 25

St. Marnock. Irish bishop, a disciple of St. Columba. He resided on Jona, Scotland, and is also called Marnan, Marnanus, or Marnoc. He died at Annandale and is revered on the Scottish border. His name was given to Kilmarnock, Scotland.

St. Tabitha, Widow of Joppa, who was mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (9:36-42) as one who "was completely occupied with good deeds and almsgiving." She fell ill and died and was raised from the dead by St. Peter.

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for the English Martyrs

Acts 7:55-60; Ps 30; Matt 10:17-20

“Good Jesus, what will you do with my heart?” These were the last words – the final prayer – of Saint John Houghton, a Carthusian monk who lived a totally enclosed life of contemplative prayer, Prior of the London Charterhouse who was gruesomely executed at Tyburn with three others on this day in 1535. St John Houghton, who is depicted in the windows in our Resurrection chapel, was the first of the 284 canonised and beatified Martyrs of the English Reformation whom we honour on this feast day.

It is most fitting that the English Martyrs should be commemorated in stained glass in the Resurrection Chapel because their lives and especially their deaths, by which they so perfectly followed Christ the innocent Victim, were suffused with faith and hope in the Risen Lord. For with all their hearts they loved Christ, they loved the Truth of the Gospel, and they loved the Church. And so, even when they were “dragged before governors and kings”, as the Gospel predicts, they remained steadfast to the fullness of the Catholic Faith.

So the night before St John Houghton and his companions were arrested, in their monastery in London (not far from Smithfield where, very briefly, the last Dominican priory of the Reformation period is to be found), St John Houghton celebrated a Mass of the Holy Spirit. Because, as today’s readings remind us, it is the Holy Spirit, the personal Love of God, that inflames the martyrs with holy zeal for truth, with a burning charity that enables them to give their hearts, their all to God. For the heroic fortitude of the martyrs is a gift from God, infused by the Holy Spirit, which strengthens them to follow Christ to the end, so that they can give their lives, indeed, literally give their hearts to the Lord who first loved us and who daily gives us his Sacred Heart.

For in the Holy Mass, in the Eucharist, Christ is giving us his Sacred Heart. Hence for all the English Martyrs, it was the Mass that mattered, and they died for the Eucharist, this beautiful Sacrament of unity and our bond of charity as Catholics. Through the Eucharist, we are united to the Heart of Jesus, a Heart that was pierced and broken and wounded for us. So what will our good Jesus do with our hearts? Through the Mass Christ heals us, redeems us, and sanctifies us, and here, in his wounded Heart, wounded souls shall find a shelter and refuge and the holiness that makes us whole.

Hence, it is fitting that today the Bishops of England and Wales have asked us to observe a Day of Prayer for the Survivors of Abuse. When this date was chosen, the Fifth Tuesday of Easter, it probably wasn’t immediately apparent that it should fall on this feast day this year. But God in his Providence has allowed this, and there is a fittingness to this. In the first place the Bishops explained that this day should not take place in the penitential season of Lent but rather in Eastertide. Because in praying for survivors we see that they, though wounded and even in a certain sense left for dead like the martyrs, nevertheless, like the martyrs their stories are suffused with Easter hope and the new life that comes from the Risen Christ. And secondly, we gather for the Eucharist because here one is united to Christ’s Sacred Heart, and draws strength from the Sacrifice of Christ who is the innocent Victim of our sins; from the Mass, the Holy Spirit is poured into our hearts, giving the survivors of abuse the gifts of courage and magnanimity and charity that enables them to endure something like a living martyrdom. Hence, we pray today for the survivors of abuse, united as we are to them in this Sacrament of unity and thus bound to them by a holy communion of love in the Church.

Often, they too, wounded and broken-hearted, must have asked: “Good Jesus, what will you do with my heart?” And the Lord replies, as he says to all of us who have been victims of sin and of the injustices of this world, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11:28) Therefore, with the English Martyrs, let us offer our hearts, our loves, our hopes, our fears, and our sorrows to the Lord. For, having survived the tribulations and betrayals of this life, the Holy Spirit will lift us up, and give us a share in that divine glory which St Stephen beheld. Yes, we shall see the Risen Lord in heaven, and rest secure in his healing love.

[andwiththyspirit]

If Henry VIII is saved (an open question perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.

Archbishop Rowan William's sermon of May 4, 2010 at the Charterhouse, London, to commemorate the 475th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of St John Houghton and his companions.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110611184757/http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/843/archbishop-of-canterburys-sermon-to-commemorate-carthusian-martyrs

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Stat crux dum volvitur orbis: 'The cross stands while the world turns' — The motto of the Carthusian Order, familiar to many people in this Chapel this evening, and a phrase which has many levels of meaning, many levels which, as we reflect on the meanings of martyrdom, we may begin to penetrate more deeply.

The cross stands while the world turns.  So long as the world turns the cross is there.  In the words of Pascal "Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world, we must not sleep during that time."  As long as the world is there, there is suffering, there is injustice, there is butchery.  The horrors inflicted on John Houghton and the martyrs of this house are horrors that human sin makes possible in every age, past, present and to come.  And faced with that awareness that Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world, it is a very strong spirit that is not at some level alarmed, even cowed.

In one of the great historical novels of the twentieth century, Hilda Prescott's 'The Man on a Donkey' we follow the events around the Pilgrimage of Grace, events around the time, of course, of the martyrdoms we commemorate today.  And towards the end of that extraordinary novel, we watch and listen to Robert Aske, the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, in his last anguished moments, hanging in chains from the Keep of the Castle in York:  "God did not now nor would in any furthest future prevail.  Once he had come and died.  If he came again, again he would die, and again and so forever, by his own will, rendered powerless against the free and evil wills of men.  Then Aske met the full assault of darkness without reprieve of hoped for light, for God ultimately vanquished was no God at all.  But yet, though God was not God, as the head of the dung worm turns, so his spirit turned blindly, gropingly, hopelessly loyal, towards that good, that holy, that merciful — which though not God, though vanquished — was still the last dear love of a vanquished and tortured man."

The cross stands while the world turns.  If Christ came again so would his cross.  Because that evil, that passionate commitment as it so often seems, to destroy and undermine the good, is written into the experience of fallen humanity.  There is no shortcut, there is no happy ending, in any ordinary sense.  The dying martyr in that passage can only turn to what he does not know;  and what he does not know is very distant from, and very different from, the God who is a God of happy endings and solutions.  But the cross that stands while the world turns is the cross of God: and so we are taken to a second level, where we realise what it is that is being transacted in the cross of Christ, and what it is that is transacted in every moment of reckless, generous, terrible suffering for the sake of God's truth. Aske turns to what is still 'the last dear love of a vanquished and tortured man'.  In darkness and in torture, men and women throughout the centuries have turned to the crucified Christ; they have addressed the crucified Christ with the last calling of their lips and the last movement of their hearts, as did John Houghton.  They know that whatever else may disappear, there is something on which they may call — and it is Christ crucified.

The God who has, it seems, been vanquished, is yet a God who cannot be abolished.  In many ages and many places, authorities even more appalling than Henry VIII have believed that they could abolish God and the cross of God; and they have had to discover that while they may vanquish, they cannot destroy.  That which is the last hope, the last longing of the condemned and tortured, remains.  The cross stands while the world turns. And whatever human power and human injustice can achieve and effect, the hanged God, the failed God, remains a sign forever.

The cross stands while the world turns: the sign of our terrible human failure, the sign that God is not to be abolished, that justice cannot be extinguished forever; that the voice of the poor and the lost and the tormented cannot finally be silenced — not by any power that the universe can show, because it is rooted in what does not change.  The cross stands and the world turns.  The world changes, the world comes and goes — powers rise and fall, fashions come and go — sometimes the Christian faith looks attractive and fashionable in the world, and sometimes it looks stupid and marginal.  And always it is what it is because the cross stands.

The Christian who knows his or her business is the Christian who has the freedom to return again and again into that silent unchanging presence — the hanged God, whose love, whose generosity, springs out of depths we can never imagine.  It is the sounding of those depths that is the heart of the contemplative life — that life lived in such an exemplary way by the Carthusians then and now, lived by so many others in our world over the centuries, lived, we hope and pray, for many centuries and millennia to come.

We treasure with perhaps a particular intensity the martyrdom of the contemplative, because the contemplative who knows how to enter into the silence and stillness of things is, above all, the one who knows how to resist to resist fashion and power, to stand in God while the world turns. In that discovery of stillness lies all our hope of reconciliation, the reconciliation of which John Houghton spoke in this place, this place where we are met to worship, before the community gave its answer to the King's agents.  A reconciliation of which he spoke (as do so many martyrs) on the scaffold, a reconciliation which is not vanquished, defeated, or rendered meaningless by any level of suffering or death. If Henry VIII is saved (an open question perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.  If any persecutor is saved it is at the prayers of their victim. If humanity is saved, it is by the grace of the cross of Jesus Christ and all those martyrs who have followed in his path.

Robert Aske hangs in chains still, but (as Hilda Prescott Prescott's novel portrays it) a discovery has been made as he falls from level to level of despair and desire 'For now, yet with no greater fissure between then and now, and as a man's eyes are aware where no star was of the first star of night, now he was aware of One, vanquished God, Saviour who could as little save others as himself.  But now, beside him and beyond, was nothing — and he was silence and light.'

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

[hzaidan]

07 works, Today, August 4th, is Brother William Horne’s day, his story thru art #216 Bl. William Horne was a Carthusian lay brother and martyr. A member of the London Charterhouse of the Carthusians, he was arrested for opposing the religious policies of King Henry VIII (r.

[emvidal]

The crypt of Tyburn Convent houses the Martyr’s Chapel, a stunning collection of precious relics of the brave men and women – lay faithful, priests, and religious, who preserved the Faith in England under the reign of terror. Among the quotes inscribed upon the crypt walls are words spoken by Carthusian Prior John Houghton. “I am bound in conscience, and am ready and willing to suffer every kind of torture rather than deny a doctrine of the Church,” he declared from the scaffold of Tyburn Hill, London, on May 4, 1535.

[septembersung]

The first martyrs were Carthusian monks, who died in May 1534. John Houghton, the prior of the London Charterhouse, had celebrated a Mass to the Holy Spirit with other Carthusians, seeking enlightenment after Henry VIII asked them to acknowledge that he alone was supreme head of the English church. An eyewitness wrote this account of the Mass: "Suddenly there came from heaven—all of us heard and wondered—a pleasant sound like the voice of a gentle breeze, charming our outward ears as with a sweet breath, and then gently striking them with a softly whispered murmur." Interpreting this as a sign from God, Houghton and his companions told the king they could not obey him. They were condemned to death and hanged on May 4. Houghton’s arm was nailed to the gate of the London Charterhouse. Tyburn’s shrine includes a portrait of Houghton by the Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran depicting him holding his heart. The story goes that Houghton cried, "Good Jesus, what will you do with my heart?" as the hangman ripped it out. He and the other monks are also commemorated on a pane of stained glass at St. Etheldreda’s Church.

Witnessing Houghton depart for the gallows was perhaps the most famous of all the martyrs, St. Thomas More, who was nearing the end of a fourteen-month imprisonment when he saw the Carthusians taken to Tyburn from the tower. More said to his daughter, "See how the blessed fathers go to their deaths as cheerfully as bridegrooms to a marriage." Within months More, too, would die for his faith.

[anastpaul]

Nostra Signora d Montesenario / Our Lady of the Servites OSM, Monte Senario, Florence, Italy (1240), St Juliana Falconieri OSM and the Saints for 19 June

Nostra Signora d Montesenario / Our Lady of Monte Senario, Florence, Italy – Ordo Servorum Beatae Mariae Virginis (OSM) (1240) – 19 June:HERE:https://anastpaul.com/2021/06/19/nostra-signora-d-montesenario-our-lady-of-monte-senario-florence-italy-1240-and-memorials-of-the-saints-19-june/ St Juliana Falconieri OSM (1270 – 1341) Virgin and Foundress of the Religious Sisters of the Order of…

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINTS OF THE DAY (May 4)

These 18 Carthusian monks were put to death in England under King Henry VIII between 1535-1540 for maintaining their allegiance to the Pope.

The Carthusians, founded by St. Bruno in 1054, are the strictest and most austere monastic order in the western Church. 

They live an austere hermitic life -- their ‘monastery’ actually being a number of hermitages built next to each other.

When Henry VIII issued his “Act of Supremacy” declaring that all who refused to take an oath recognizing him as head of the Church of England committed an act of high treason, these 18 Carthusians refused and were sentenced to death.

The first to die were the Carthusian prior of London, John Houghton, and two of his brothers, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, who were hanged, drawn and quartered, on 4 May 1535.

The prior is said to have declared his fidelity to the Catholic Church and forgiven his executioners before dying. 

The Carthusians were the first martyrs to die under the reign of Henry VIII.

Two more were killed on June 19 of that year and by 4 August 1540, all 18 had been tortured and killed for refusing to place their allegiance to the king before their allegiance to the Pope.

They were beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII.

John Houghton, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.

Source: Catholic News Agency

------------

Source: The Tudor Society

[hieromonkcharbel]

Also remembered today:

Blessed William Horne

Carthusian lay brother of the Charterhouse in London, England.

Martyred for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as head of the Church.

Died: hanged, drawn and quartered on 4 August 1540 in Tyburn, London, England

Beatified: 29 December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII

[silvestromedia]

SAINTS SEPTEMBER 20 "There is only one tragedy in this life, not to have been a saint."- Leon Bloy

Bl. Thomas Johnson, 1537 A.D. English Carthusian Martyr. A priest and member of the London Charterhouse, he was arrested with fellow monks for opposing the claim by King Henry VIII of spiritual supremacy over the English Church. Imprisoned at Newgate, Thomas was starved to death.

St. Fausta and Evilasius, Martyrs at Cyzicum, in Pontus. Fausta, a girl of thirteen, was tortured by her judge, Evilasius. Her courage converted him, and he died with her. Sept. 20

St. Eustace, Roman Catholic Martyr with Theophistes, Agapitus, and Theophistus. Eustace was a Roman military officer called Placida, When he refused to take part in the pagan ceremony and they were roasted to death. Sept. 20

St. John Charles Cornay, Martyr of Vietnam. He was born in Loudon, Poitiers, France. and joined the Paris Society of Foreign Missions. Sent to Vietnam he worked there until his arrest after being denounced as a Christian by a bandit. He was kept in a cage for months and subjected to hideous cruelties before being beheaded. Feastday Sept 20

St. Eusebia, Roman Catholic Benedictine abbess and Martyrs, slain with her community by the Muslim Saracens at Saint-Cyr, France. Forty nuns died with Eusebia. Feastday Sept. 20

St. Lawrence Imbert, Bishop and martyr of Korea. Lawrence was born in France and was a member of the Paris Society of Missions. He was tortured to death with Sts. Peter Maubant, James Chastan, and companions. Sept. 20

STS. ANDREW KIM TAEGO˘N, PAUL CHÔNG HASANG AND COMPANIONS, KOREAN MARTYRS Martyrs of Korea, The men and women who were slain because they refused to deny Christ in the nation of Korea. At least 8,000 adherents to the faith were killed during this period.

St. Agapitus I, Pope from 535-536 and apologist, the son of a priest named Gordianus slain during the reign of Pope Symmachus. He was elected pope on May 13, 535, and was already of an advanced age as he started healing the rifts in the Church by regulating affairs. Sept. 20

[3jesusname-blog]

SAINT OF THE DAY WEDNESDAY, 25 OCTOBER 2017 FORTY MARTYRS OF ENGLAND & WALES _(1535 - 1680)_ These forty men and women of England and Wales, martyred between 1535 and 1679, were canonised in Rome by Pope Paul VI on 25th October 1970. Each has their feast day but they are remembered as a group on 25th October. When King Henry VIII, after his break with Rome, proclaimed himself supreme head of the Church in England and Wales, Catholics felt that he had usurped a supremacy in spiritual matters that belonged only to the Pope. While they wished to remain loyal subjects of the Crown as the legitimately constituted authority, they refused for reasons of conscience to recognise the “spiritual supremacy” of the King. When the Act of Supremacy was passed in 1534, it quickly led many having to face a serious dilemma and even death rather than act against their conscience and deny their Catholic faith. *FOUR DISTINCT WAVES OF PERSECUTION AGAINST CATHOLICS* The first followed the passing of the First Act of Supremacy (November 1534) when Henry VIII broke with Rome and suppressed the monasteries. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Henry’s former chancellor, Sir Thomas More, were executed in 1535 along with a number of religious. The second wave came after 1570 when Pope Pius V, believing that Queen Elizabeth I as the daughter of Anne Boleyn was illegitimate and had no right to the throne of England, issued a papal bull Regnans in excelsis excommunicating her and absolving all her subjects from allegiance to her and her laws. The numbers of Jesuits coming in from the continent were seen as a real threat to the Queen and the realm. In 1581 an Act was passed that made it treason to withdraw English subjects from allegiance to the Queen or her Church and in 1585 the entrance of Jesuits into the country was prohibited by law. A number of Jesuits, secular priests and lay men and women were executed at this time. The third wave of persecution followed the failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605. This was a somewhat unwise attempt by some to kill James I in a single attack by blowing up the House of Parliament during the ceremony of the State opening. The final wave came in 1678 following the so-called “Popish Plot” created by the infamous Titus Oates. Oates had been twice expelled from Jesuit colleges on the continent and was refused admission as a novice. He spread the rumour that the Jesuits in collusion with the Pope were plotting to overthrow King Charles II and make England a Catholic country again. The very rumour of a plot was enough to stir a new persecution of Catholics. *THE FORTY MARTYRS INCLUDE:* *St. John Houghton, St. Robert Lawrence and St. Augustine Webster*, the first martyrs (1535), all priors of different Charter houses (houses of the Carthusian Order, including the one in London) who, by virtue of the Carthusian vow of silence, refused to speak in their own defense; *St. Cuthbert Mayne*, a Devonian, who was the first martyr not to be a member of a religious order. He was ordained priest at the then newly established English College at Douai in Northern France and was put to death at Launceston in 1577; *St. Edmund Campion*, the famous Jesuit missionary and theologian who published secretly from Stonor Park, the ancient Catholic country house near Henley-on-Thames, who died in 1581 on the same day as *St. Ralph Sherwin*, the first martyr to have been trained at the English College in Rome; *St. Richard Gwyn*, the first of the Welsh martyrs, a schoolteacher from Llanidloes in Mid-Wales who died at Wrexham in 1584; *St. Margaret Clitherow*, the wife of a butcher with a shop in the famous Shambles in York, who allowed her house to be used as a Mass centre, who was sentenced to be crushed to death under a large stone at the Ouse Bridge Tollbooth in the city; *St. Swithun Wells*, a teacher from Brambridge in the county of Hampshire who owned a London house at Grays Inn Fields which was also a secret Mass centre (1591); *St. Philip Howard*, eldest son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk (himself executed for treason in 1572) who led a dissolute existence and left behind an unhappy wife in Arundel Castle until he was converted by the preaching of St. Edmund Campion, and died in the Tower in 1595; *St. Nicholas Owen*, Jesuit lay brother and master carpenter, who constructed many priests’ hiding-holes in houses throughout the country, some of them so cunningly concealed they were not discovered until centuries later (1606). Under James I and Charles I the purge died down, but did not entirely cease. *St. John Southworth*, missionary in London, was put to death under Cromwell and is venerated in Westminster Cathedral, and the final martyrs died in the aftermath of the Titus Oates plot in 1679. [ *St. John Fisher* & *St. Thomas More* are not included in this list for they had been canonised in 1935]. _Taken from Sacred Heart Parish, Waterloo._ PRAYER To you, Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, we commend our prayers and our needs in these difficult times. As you laid down your lives for Christ and His Church, we ask that we may emulate your sacrifice in our daily lives, living as true and humble disciples of Christ. May His Gospel so penetrate our minds and hearts that we may become what He urges us to be: salt of the earth and light of the world, making Him present through holy lives to the men and women of our time. Sustain us with your loving presence, be our companions on our earthly journey. Defend us in moments of trial, console us in sorrows and remind us of that joy which Christ implants into the souls of His devoted servants. Intercede that we may truly be servants of mercy and reconciliation. Watch over us and guide us in our Christian lives so one day we may merit to be with you in the Kingdom of our Heavenly Father. _Amen._ _All you Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us._ _That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!_

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for Christ the King (EF)

Col 1:12-20; John 18:33-37

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the canonisation in 1970 of the forty martyrs of England and Wales by Pope St Paul VI, in St Peter’s Basilica. Today, we recall the heroic sacrifice and brave witness to the truth of forty of our countrymen, from the Prior of the London Charterhouse, St John Houghton, executed at Tyburn in 1535, to the Welsh Jesuit St David Lewis, executed in 1679. Over the course almost 150 years, hundreds of faithful Catholics from every walk of life in English society were executed by the State, martyred for their refusal to allow the State to interfere with the fundamental rights of the Church.

For as Pope Pius XI said in 1925 when he instituted today’s annual feast of Christ the King: “[The Church] has a natural and inalienable right to perfect freedom and immunity from the power of the state; and that in fulfilling the task committed to her by God of teaching, ruling, and guiding to eternal bliss those who belong to the kingdom of Christ, she cannot be subject to any external power.” (Quas primas, 31) The Church and her bishops may, of course, prudently choose to co-operate with the State, but only if this does not hinder the mission and raison d’être of the Church, which is to lead souls to Christ through the preaching of the Gospel in its fullness, and through the faithful administration of the Sacraments of salvation.

For, beautiful and valuable and precious though our life and our friendships in this present lifetime are, today’s feast, and the deaths of the martyrs remind us of an often forgotten truth in our secularised world. We live, ultimately, not for this life and its joys and pleasures, but rather, all of this present life, whether it be long or short, is a preparation for the life of the world to come; this life on earth is that short time given to us in God’s providence during which we learn to forsake sin and, by the grace of Christ, we hope to increase in charity, so that we can become true citizens of God’s heavenly Kingdom. So, on the wall of his cell in the Tower of London St Philip Howard scratched these words: “Quanto plus afflictionis pro Christo in hoc saeculo, tanto plus gloriae in futuro”; ‘The more suffering for Christ in this life, the more glory in heaven’. Fittingly then, in 2020, on this feast day of Christ the King, do we recall the witness of these faithful servants of Jesus Christ who would deny their worldly earthly kings rather to forsake Christ the true and universal King. Hence St Thomas More famously said that he died “the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”

The Church, therefore, must always point beyond this world, and call humanity to serve God’s kingdom, to repent of sin and prideful error, and so to be saved by Christ the King. Thus, commenting on today’s Gospel, Pope Pius XI said: “Before the Roman magistrate [Christ] declared that his kingdom was not of this world. The gospels present this kingdom as one which men prepare to enter by penance, and cannot actually enter except by faith and by baptism, which, though an external rite, signifies and produces an interior regeneration. This kingdom is opposed to none other than to that of Satan and to the power of darkness. It demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things, and a spirit of gentleness. They must hunger and thirst after justice, and more than this, they must deny themselves and carry the cross.” (Quas primas, 15)

The forty martyrs who we especially remember today exemplify the ultimate self-denial and carrying of the Cross that is demanded of us Christians. This group of English and Welsh Martyrs, just a small representation of the hundreds executed during the so-called Reformation, is composed of 13 diocesan priests (or secular clergy), 3 Benedictines, 3 Carthusians, 1 Brigittine, 2 Franciscans, 1 Augustinian, 10 Jesuits and 7 members of the laity, including 3 mothers. And all of them sacrificed everything for the sake of the Holy Mass and the Sacraments; for the unity of Christ’s Church in communion with the Pope; for the sake of the sacred Priesthood through whom we receive the Sacraments; and for the sake of Christ’s teaching on the sanctity of marriage and family life. Therefore, in our times and in our country, we honour these holy men and women, and we show ourselves to be their friends, if we love what they love. So, let us love the Mass and the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church; love the Holy Father and pray for him; love your clergy, pray for them and uphold them with care and help; love your husband, your wife, and as a family bear witness to the love and joy of the Gospel. For as Pope Francis says: “The triune God is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection.” (Amoris lætitia, 11) The Christian family, therefore, bears witness as a vestige of the Holy Trinity; the presence of the loving God at work among us, extending the reign of Christ one household at a time. Therefore, enthrone Christ in your homes, in your families, and in your own hearts.

What does this entail? Pope Pius XI said, Jesus Christ “must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls”. The forty martyrs, again, demonstrate the consequence of being given over to the reign of Christ: we would be willing to die for the truths of the Gospel; willing to give up sin and to behave and act in ways that please God; willing to work and suffer in order to uphold the Kingdom of God in our world, while labouring to defeat the lies and falsehoods of the Enemy. However, it is most noteworthy in the accounts of their lives and their final words that the forty martyrs of England and Wales did all this without rancour or bitterness or anger or hatred. Instead, they spoke with humour, serenity, and humility, always acting with charity. For this is the genuine sign that Christ is their King. Let it be so for each of us too, especially in these difficult and polarised times. Hence Pope Pius XI said: “in a spirit of holy joy [let us] give ample testimony of [our] obedience and subjection to Christ.” For, as Pope Francis says, “we all have to let the joy of faith slowly revive as a quiet yet firm trust, even amid the greatest distress.” (Evangelii gaudium, 6) It is a joy that flows from a childlike confidence and trust in God’s love, in the victory of the Risen Lord Jesus; a joy that springs from a firm faith in divine Providence.  

This is the joy of the martyr, of the subjects of Christ the King, for they know that, at the end, all of creation, all human history, all time and creatures shall fall “under the dominion of Christ. [And] in him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society.” (Quas primas, 18) Hence Pope Pius XI, reflecting on the set-backs and seeming defeats that the Church has endured, and on the crises caused by persecutions and martyrdoms, gave witness to his trust in God’s Providence and his Kingship. He said: “the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendour, and that men's faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before.” (Quas primas, 22)

My brothers and sisters, such is the time we live in: we witness the daily rise of anti-clericalism, the burning of churches and the destruction of Christian statues and images; doctrinal confusion and laxity, and the corruption of morals in every strata of society, and so on. And yet, with great confidence in the triumph of Gospel truth; with faith in the victory of the Lamb that was slain (as we recalled in today’s Officium); and with hope in the universal Kingship of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men and women, we can repeat in our time these words of St Robert Southwell, the Jesuit priest who was caught ministering in London. Shortly before his martyrdom at Tyburn he said: “It seems to me that I see the beginning of a religious life in England, of which we now sow in seeds of tears, that others hereafter may with joy carry in sheaves.”

May the joy of acknowledging Christ as King reign now in our hearts, and may God’s all powerful grace convert the hearts of our England and Wales, and all nations. As we prayed in today’s Collect, may “all the families of nations… be brought under the sweet yoke of [Christ’s] rule.” Amen!