Westminster Youth Ministry pilgrims had a powerful start to the Jubilee weekend. They gathered in the Venerable English College with Bishop Nicholas Hudson on the morning of Saturday 2nd August to celebrate a Mass of the English Martyrs. Bishop Nicholas reminded them how, at the moment of death, the College’s Protomartyr, St Ralph Sherwin, imitated the first martyr, St Stephen, in calling on Jesus to be his witness and strength: “Jesus, Jesus, be to me a Jesus,” cried Sherwin as he embraced the hangman’s noose.
It was Jesus’s promise, “the one who endures to the end will be saved,” Bishop Nicholas suggested, which sustained the forty-four priests of the College who made the supreme sacrifice of giving their lives in order that Catholics might continue to be fed with the Body and Blood of Christ. Standing beneath the ‘Martyrs’ Picture’, Bishop Nicholas showed them how the blood of Christ which flows from the hands and side of Jesus falls on England and Wales; and, where it falls, fire springs up.
For “I came to bring fire to the earth!” are the words of Jesus emblazoned across the painting. They call each one of us who contemplates it to ask how we might also play a part in His mission. If young people wish to know whether they are in the right place to know what part they are called to play, Bishop Nicholas suggested, they should seek to be generous; choose to be radically generous and you will find where the Lord is calling you share in His mission.
Sustained by that heavenly food for which the Martyrs had gone to their death, the Westminster Youth Ministry pilgrims set off on the long hike – four hours - to Tor Vergata to join Pope Leo in a vigil of prayer. There they joined some one million others to hear the Holy Father respond to young people’s questions and then to lead the huge crowd in silent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Thoughts of the morning’s celebration must have resonated within them as the lights went down on the huge field and Marco Frissina’s achingly beautiful ‘Anima Christi’ invited them to hide in Christ’s wounds and be inebriated by his blood.
The choice of the Martyrs to risk all for Christ must have found a powerful echo for them in the words of two young pilgrims who addressed the Pope:
- the one who asked, “Holy Father, where do we find the courage to choose?” “The courage to choose comes from love,” responded Pope Leo, “from (the) love which God shows in Christ.”
- and the question of another young pilgrim as he told the Holy Father, “the value of silence, as in this Vigil, fascinates us, even if at times it instils fear. Holy Father, I would like to ask you: how can we truly encounter the Risen Lord in our lives and be sure of His presence even in the midst of trials and uncertainties?”
To this Pope Leo replied by urging all present: “Be united with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Adore Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, the source of eternal life … ask Him at every step: stay with us, Lord, stay with us, because without you we cannot do the good we desire. Each time we adore Christ in the Eucharist, our hearts will be united in Him.”
For each of us who had celebrated our English Martyrs in the Venerabile chapel at the start of the day, Pope Leo’s words surely magnified the sense of gratitude and wonder at the way our Martyrs’ extraordinary generosity and courage had enabled adoration of Christ to remain at the heart of English Catholic life; and so allowed Him to stay with us – and us with Him.
