Given at the Mass of Acolytate at Allen Hall Seminary on the Feast of the Blessed Martyrs of Douai College, 29th October 2022
‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’ (Eph 5:2).
My brothers, Thomas, Francisco and Sean, you are called to be faithful to Christ and to live the sacrifice of the Mass in your daily lives, offering them as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. The sacrifice of the martyrs will inspire you to face the difficulties and challenges of preaching and living in the gospel. As you witness to being servants of God, always rejoice in him and deepen your understanding of the gift which you have received in Christ. You are called to live through him, in him and with him.
The blessed martyrs of Douai lived and died for their Catholic faith and the Mass. Their lives are the foundations on which Allen Hall is built. Each of the 158 names on the Martyrs' Roll invites a study of their lives: one a day and you would know them in less than a year. As St John Southworth has his own feast, I will not talk further about him today; he is the friend you know well.
Having grown up in the Diocese of Nottingham, the names of St Ralph Sherwin who was born near Ashbourne in Derbyshire and the three martyrs of Derby, Blessed Nicholas Garlick, Robert Ludlam, and Richard Sympson, have a particular resonance. Fr Henry Garnet SJ recounts that the priests spent their last night in the same cell as a woman condemned to death for murder. During the night, they reconciled her to the Catholic faith, and she was hanged with them the next day. Always spreading the gospel and going beyond themselves!
A poem of an anonymous writer, quoted by Bishop Richard Challoner, speaks of their execution in Derby.
When Garlick did the ladder kiss,
And Sympson after hie,
Methought that there St Andrew was
Desirous for to die.
When Ludlam lookèd smilingly,
And joyful did remain,
It seemed St Stephen was standing by,
For to be stoned again.
And what if Sympson seemed to yield,
For doubt and dread to die;
He rose again, and won the field
And died most constantly.
His watching, fasting, shirt of hair;
His speech, his death, and all,
Do record give, do witness bear,
He wailed his former fall.
It seems that Richard Sympson, who had been arrested earlier than the others, enjoyed a period of stay before his execution. Some suggested that he waived about the true faith and hence the delay; others that there were no executions for ten months in 1587 for various reasons. The final two stanzas speak of this hesitancy and how his faith was restored and strengthened from the example of Garlick and Ludlam whom he met in the prison. The lesson, we might ponder, is how we need to strengthen the faith of our brothers, pray for one another and look out for one another in order to stay faithful and true to the vocation to which we are called. The reading from the Letter to the Ephesians on Thursday told us that we face a spiritual battle on a daily basis and must grow strong in the Lord with the strength of his power by wearing God’s armour.
In the Martyrs’ Roll, one also finds the names of Blessed Francis and Anthony Page. They are depicted in a stained-glass window in the Church of Our Lady and St Thomas of Canterbury in Harrow on the Hill. In one scene the priest climbs a ladder into a hiding hole. Both were born in Harrow into a Protestant family and later reconciled to the Catholic faith. Blessed Anthony ministered and was martyred in York; Blessed Francis later entered the Society of Jesus and was martyred at Tyburn.
The Bellamy family at Uxenden Manor House in Harrow provided a safe house for these martyrs. It was also there that St Robert Southwell was betrayed and arrested. We remember Bellamy family members who died in prison, those who left their properties and went abroad, and those who were martyred. Today Uxenden Hall has passed, though we know it was in the vicinity of the modern Preston Road station on the Metropolitan Line. Another North London property associated with the martyrs was White Webbs on Enfield Chase, which is associated with Anne Vaux and Eleanor Brooksby, now the site of a golf course. In remembering the martyr priests, we remember the recusant families on whom they depended and who provided the homes for the celebration of Mass. The properties die, the names of the martyrs and their protectors lives on.
As you receive this ministry, we pray that you may be faithful in the service of the altar and bringing the bread of life to others. You will help them grow in faith and love and build up the Church. You are called today, on this feast, to make your life worthy of your service at the table of the Lord and his Church.
This is a worthy calling which demands sacrifice and, above all, reverence and love for the Eucharist, for the Mass and for the Church for which the Martyrs died. Deepen your love of the Eucharist by adoration which transforms you so that you may transform the world. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote in Sacramentum Caritatis:
‘In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; Eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the Eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration. Receiving the Eucharist means adoring him whom we receive. Only in this way do we become one with him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the beauty of the heavenly liturgy. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself. Indeed, "only in adoration can a profound and genuine reception mature. And it is precisely this personal encounter with the Lord that then strengthens the social mission contained in the Eucharist, which seeks to break down not only the walls that separate the Lord and ourselves, but also and especially the walls that separate us from one another.”’ (SC 66)
May Christ and the prayers of the Blessed Martyrs strengthen you in your calling.
Bishop John Sherrington