The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.
Year: C(I). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: Saint Kenelm (-821)
Birmingham
Saint Kenelm was the son of Kenwulf, who was King of Mercia from 796 to 821. There is a strong local tradition that identifies a particularly steep and narrow valley in the Clent Hills as the place where Kenelm was murdered. The site is marked by a medieval Church dedicated to him. A two-line Anglo-Saxon verse, which probably represents the folk-memory of the event, can be translated:
On the Clent Hills · Kenelm is there
in the cow valley · born to be king
under a hawthorn tree · a headless corpse lies he.
An eleventh-century Life of St Kenelm in Latin contains many fanciful legends but reflects the belief that the Prince was killed as the result of dynastic quarrels within the Mercian royal family; in fact his uncle Kelwulf succeeded to the throne. In an age when politics were conducted according to the maxim: “Kill or be killed”, it is probable that Kenelm’s reputation for holiness came from his refusal to adopt such methods to obtain power. He was remembered by the people of the West Midlands as a faithful follower of Christ in particularly difficult circumstances. Kenelm was buried with his father in the crypt of St Pancras’ Abbey at Winchcombe (Gloucestershire), which became a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. In the nineteenth century, Cardinal Newman was eager to encourage devotion to English saints; he would walk on pilgrimage from the Oratorian house at Rednal to St Kenelm’s Church on the Clent Hills.
Other saints: Blessed John Sugar, Priest, and Robert Grissold, Martyrs
Birmingham
Blessed John Sugar was born at Wombourne near Wolverhampton about 1558 and studied at St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, becoming a clergyman of the Established Church at Cannock in Staffordshire. He later became a Catholic, studied at the English College, Douai, and was ordained a priest on 21 April 1601. His ministry was in Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire, where he travelled on foot and especially looked after the “poorer and meaner sort of Catholics”. Blessed Robert Grissold lived at Rowington in Warwickshire; he was the son of a weaver and is described as a “husbandman”; he had a special reverence for Catholic priests. He and John Sugar were arrested on the highway on 8 July 1603 after a raid on the Grissold house; Robert was given the chance of escaping by his first cousin, Clement Grissold, who was with the search party and had probably led it to the house, but he refused to leave the priest. Both were offered their freedom if they would conform. They were executed at Warwick on 16 July 1604. Sugar said on the scaffold “Be ye all merry, for we have not occasion of sorrow but of joy: for although I shall have a sharp dinner, yet I trust in Jesus Christ that I shall have a most sweet supper”. They were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987.
Other saints: Blessed Inácio de Azevedo (1528-1570)
Brazil
He was born at Oporto in Portugal in 1528 and entered the Society of Jesus at Coibra, 28 December, 1548, and became successively rector of the Jesuit college at Lisbon, provincial of Portugal, and rector at Broja. In 1565 St Francis Borgia gave him the task of visiting and inspecting the Jesuit missions in the Portuguese colony of Brazil. He spent two years on this work, from 1566 to 1568, and went to Rome to make his final report.
He asked to be sent back as a missionary to Brazil. With thirty-nine companions he started on his voyage on 5 June 1570, but on 15 July their ship was captured by French Huguenot corsairs and Azevedo and his companions were seized and martyred. They were beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1854, and in 1999 forty concrete crosses were placed on the sea bed at the site of their martyrdom.
Other saints: Bl Thérèse of Saint Augustine and Companions
17 Jul (where celebrated)
These Discalced Carmelite nuns lived in a quiet town of Compiègne, France, offering intercessory prayer for those who asked for help at the Monastery of the Incarnation. In 1789, their community numbered 20, with their prioress Thérèse of St Augustine. In the same year, in the midst of the French Revolution, the French National Assembly declared all religious vows null and void, assuming that most religious men and women were held in religious life against their will. The Assembly believed their act would ‘liberate’ religious who would gratefully leave to enter the workforce. In August 1790, a government official visited the monastery of Compiègne and was surprised that each member of the community refused the “ridiculous freedom” that was being offered. The nuns were given a two-year ultimatum after which they would have to leave religious life.
Under the leadership of Mother Thérèse the community prepared for the ordeal to come, appealing to God for help and offering themselves as an instrument for the peace between France and their Church. They resolved to follow Jesus in his crucifixion and resurrection. Following their expulsion from the monastery, the community split into groups of four, living in separate houses, adopting secular dress and continuing their simple and prayerful life.
Soon after, sixteen of the sisters were arrested for living religious life in violation of the constitution. They were taken to Paris, where they were all found guilty of being religious fanatics and supporters of the King, with their sentence being death on the 17th July. On the night before their execution, the sisters renewed their desire for reconciliation between church and state. The sisters arrived at the guillotine singing the Veni Creator Spiritus. Thérèse of St Augustine asked to be the last to die, so that she could encourage her sisters in their commitment, in the midst of the pointless violence. By the end of the same month the terror of the French Revolution had come to an end.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Cyril of Alexandria (370 - 444)
Cyril was born in 370 . He entered a monastery, became a priest and in 412 succeeded his uncle as Bishop of Alexandria. Alexandria was the largest city in the ancient world. Rather like Los Angeles, it was a sprawling mixture of races and creeds; and it was a byword for the violence of its sectarian politics, whether of Greeks against Jews or of orthodox Christians against heretics.
In 428, Nestorius, the new Patriarch of Constantinople (and hence one of the most important bishops in the world) made statements that could be interpreted as denying the divinity of Christ. The dual nature – human and divine – has always been hard for us to accept or understand, and if it seems easy it is only because we have not thought about it properly. Those who dislike problems have had two responses: to deny the human nature of Christ or to deny his divinity: and either leads to disaster, since both deny the Incarnation and hence the divinisation of human nature.
Cyril fought strongly against the teachings of Nestorius and took the lead at the Council of Ephesus, plunging into the turbulent politics of the time and defending the Catholic faith through to its ultimate victory.
Cyril wrote many works to explain and defend the Catholic faith. He died in 444.
Liturgical colour: white
White is the colour of heaven. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate feasts of the Lord; Christmas and Easter, the great seasons of the Lord; and the saints. Not that you will always see white in church, because if something more splendid, such as gold, is available, that can and should be used instead. We are, after all, celebrating.
In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.
| Mid-morning reading (Terce) | Romans 5:10-11 © |
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When we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, we were still enemies; now that we have been reconciled, surely we may count on being saved by the life of his Son? Not merely because we have been reconciled but because we are filled with joyful trust in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have already gained our reconciliation.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 © |
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Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep. Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 © |
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The love of Christ overwhelms us when we reflect that if one man has died for all, then all men should be dead. The reason he died for all was so that living men should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised to life for them.
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