Christmas Every Day

1649

Charles I (1600-49) of the Stuart dynasty was the last man to be canonised by the Church of England. There had been other English kings known as saints before him (e.g., St Edmund, St Edward the Martyr and St Edward the Confessor) but he may have been the most incompetent ruler to be given that honour.

Coming to the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland in 1625, Charles inherited a history of bad relations between the crown, the English Parliament, and the Scottish church. A more flexible or far-sighted monarch might have saved himself from catastrophe but Charles was stubborn, short-sighted and untrustworthy. He tried to impose episcopacy on the Calvinist Scots; his religious leanings in England and his marriage to a French princess made many fear he was sponsoring a return to Catholicism; and his refusal to consult Parliament for over a decade led directly to the English Civil War.

Defeated in war, he was put on trial by his Parliamentarian captors, accused of treason. “[W]icked designs, wars, and evil practices of him, the said Charles Stuart, have been, and are carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to himself and his family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the people of this nation.” He was found guilty and condemned to death. Charles behaved bravely on the block, though he broke with conventional piety by refusing to pardon his executioner. (The painting above is of his arch-enemy Cromwell peering into the royal coffin.)

For his personal religious faith, which was unquestionably deep, and his defence of the Church of England, Charles was regard as a martyr and canonized by Convocation on the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

St Francis de Sales

FRANCIS was born of noble and pious parents, near Annecy, 1566, and studied with brilliant success at Paris and Padua. On his return from Italy he gave up the grand career which his father had marked out for him in the service of the state, and became a priest. When the Duke of Savoy had resolved to restore the Church in the Chablais, Francis offered himself for the work, and set out on foot with his Bible and breviary and one companion, his cousin Louis of Sales. It was a work of toil, privation, and danger. Every door and every heart was closed against him. He was rejected with insult and threatened with death. But nothing could daunt or resist him, and ere long the Church burst forth into a second spring. It is stated that he converted 72,000 Calvinists. He was then compelled by the Pope to become Coadjutor Bishop of Geneva, and succeeded to the see in 1602.

At times the exceeding gentleness with which he received heretics and sinners almost scandalized his friends, and one of them said to him, “Francis of Sales will go to Paradise, of course; but I am not so sure of the Bishop of Geneva: I am almost afraid his gentleness will play him a shrewd turn.” “Ah,” said the Saint, “I would rather account to God for too great gentleness than for too great severity. Is not God all love? God the Father is the Father of mercy; God the Son is a Lamb; God the Holy Ghost is a Dove—that is, gentleness itself. And are you wiser than God?” In union with St. Jane Frances of Chantal he founded at Annecy the Order of the Visitation, which soon spread over Europe. Though poor, he refused provisions and dignities, and even the great see of Paris. He died at Avignon, 1622.

Butler’s Book of Saints

In 1923, Pope Pius XI proclaimed him a patron of writers and journalists, because he made extensive use of broadsheets and books both in spiritual direction and in his efforts to convert the Calvinists of the region. St. Francis developed a sign language in order to teach a deaf man about God. Because of this, he is the patron saint of the deaf.

‘Tis prophecied in the Revelation, that the Whore of Babylon shall be destroyed with fire and sword and what do you know, but this is the time of her ruin, and that we are the men that must help to pull her down?’
John Rogers, 1657

‘A thing that never was heard of, that so few men should dare and do so much mischief.’
Samuel Pepys, 1661

On this day in 1661 Thomas Venner was executed in London for treason, suffering the usual punishment of traitors: being hanged, drawn and quartered. He had led a rebellion against the English government in the name of the Fifth Monarchy, violently rampaging through London before being cornered in a tavern and his men shot to pieces.

The English Civil War of the 1640s had pitted defenders of the Stuart monarchy against supporters of a Puritan-dominated Parliament. The chaos engendered allowed a number of extravagant fringe movements to develop: “Ranters”, amoral pantheists who found virtue in blasphemy; “Levellers” who wanted an end to social distinctions; and agrarian socialist “Diggers”. Among the most radical were the believers in the Fifth Monarchy, an idea taken from the Book of Daniel where King Nebuchadnezzar dreamt of a final kingdom that would last forever. They were millennialists, confident that the End Times were near and they hoped to set up an English theocracy before witnessing the conversion of the Jews and Moslems and the return of Christ. Some Fifth Monarchy Men were hoping to accomplish their goals peacefully but others such as Thomas Venner, a London cooper, were prepared to use force to overturn the government. In 1661, hoping to prevent the re-establishment of the Anglican Church and the Stuart monarchy he led an uprising of a few hundred men under the slogan “King Jesus and the heads upon the Gates”. For a few days they controlled parts of London before being trapped and overcome by regular army troops. Wounded 19 times, Venner was placed quickly on trial and executed with other of his surviving men.

The Fifth Monarchy movement abandoned its violent wing and continued to press for reform and hope in the Second Coming well into the 18th century.

St Hilary’s Day

St Hilary of Poitiers (300-368) was a Gaulish bishop who was one of the most prominent defenders of Trinitarianism in the western empire. A convert from paganism, he turned his considerable learning against the Arian heresy which denied the divinity of Christ. The 325 Council of Nicaea had condemned this view of the Godhead but Arianism was protected by emperors and many churchmen in the middle of the fourth century — for these men the notion that Christ was a powerful but inferior creation was the best way to cling to monotheism. Like many who defended the Trinity in this era, Hilary was persecuted and sent into exile. In time, his writings won him recall to Poitiers and he spent the rest of his life battling the Arian heretics.  He said: “For one to attempt to speak of God in terms more precise than he himself has used — to undertake such a thing is to embark upon the boundless, to dare the incomprehensible. He fixed the names of His nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought over and above this is beyond the meaning of words, beyond the limits of perception, beyond the embrace of understanding.” Hilary is the patron saint of those who suffer from snake-bite.

347

Birth of a Trinitarian emperor.

In the fourth century Christianity had, at last, become a legally-tolerated religion, able to own property, preach openly and overtly influence Roman society. Though the royal family of Constantine had accepted Christianity, the majority of the empire was still pagan and, moreover, the faith was harshly divided theologically. On one hand were the Arians who asserted absolute monotheism and who denied full divinity to Christ; on the other were the Trinitarians who saw a single God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Council of Nicaea in 325 had decided emphatically for the Trinitarian position but the emperors after Constantine were largely Arian.

Theodosius, born in Spain in 347, became a general and fought his way to the imperial throne of the eastern empire in 379 and ruler of the whole empire by 393, the last emperor to rule an undivided Roman realm. His reign was largely spent battling Germanic invaders and usurping generals but his career had great consequences for Christianity.

In 380 he decreed that the Trinitarian position was to be the true form of religion; he expelled Arian bishops and acted strongly against paganism. He disbanded the Vestal Virgins, banned animal sacrifice, halted the Olympic Games, ended state subsidies to pagan cults and closed polytheistic temples, decreeing that “no one is to go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise his eyes to statues created by the labor of man”.

A riot in Thessalonica in 390 resulted in the murder of some of Theodosius’s troops; in retaliation he ordered a massacre of the civilian population. This outraged Christian leaders and the bishop of Milan, Ambrose, demanded that Theodosius do penance for the crime and excommunicated him until he did so. (see the Van Eyck painting above) The submission of the emperor to the bishop was often cited for the next thousand years as a symbol of the relationship between church and state.

The death of Theodosius in 395 was a disaster for the Roman imperium and civilization. Rule was split between two of his incompetent sons and within a generation the western empire had fallen to the barbarians.

The fifth day of Christmas is St Thomas Becket’s Day

1170 The murder of Archbishop Becket.

The twelfth century saw the rise of powerful monarchies in western Europe whose kings were intent on increasing their revenues and scope of jurisdictions. This often brought them into conflict with the papacy, their national churches and the feudal nobility. In England, Henry II (1133-89) sought to repair the damage done by twenty years of anarchy and civil war. He asserted royal power to judge cases hitherto reserved to the local lords; he took back royal lands lost during the chaos; he centralized tax powers; and he intended to reduce the independence of the English church. To the latter end he named his friend Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury.

Becket was not a priest, though like most educated men of his time he took minor religious orders. He had studied canon law, been employed as a diplomat, and served Henry as Lord Chancellor. When Theobald of Bec died in 1162, Henry engineered the election of Becket who to the dismay of the king, took his new priestly vows seriously: he entered on a life of asceticism and defence of the liberties of the English church. In 1164 Henry attempted to introduce the Constitutions of Clarendon, 16 statements limiting the independence of the church, including an end to the abuses of “benefit of clergy” by which priests could not be tried by secular courts. Becket refused to agree and to avoid royal intimidation fled to the Continent. Pope Alexander III brokered a return to England for the Archbishop but Becket soon began opposing the royal will again, this time by excommunicating those clergy who had sided with the king.

When news of Becket’s actions reached Henry in Normandy, the furious monarch is said to have uttered a provocative complaint. Most historians have claimed that Henry said “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” but others have attributed to Henry the less pithy plea “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?” Taking this as a command, four of his knights crossed the Channel to Canterbury where they murdered Becket inside the cathedral.

This outrage caused an international reaction. The pope quickly canonized Becket; Henry II submitted to a whipping by the monks of Canterbury; and the site of Thomas’s tomb became one of Christendom’s great pilgrimage attractions, as we can see in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

St Thomas Becket is patron saint of London, the English secular clergy, those who hunt with hawks and hounds and those who have lost their horses.

St Teresa of Àvila

The Catholic Church has a history of suspicion of mystics, for how can one tell whether visions are authentic or delusions or engendered by evil forces? Is it the Holy Spirit or is it heartburn? St Teresa and her spiritual director, St John of the Cross, were two sixteenth-century Spanish mystics who were at first repressed by the Church and then hailed as holy figures and canonized.

Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada (1515-82) was born into a wealthy family with some Jewish ancestors and a record of investigations by the Spanish Inquisition which never took conversions at face value. She entered a Carmelite nunnery and for years did nothing to distinguish herself as a spiritual powerhouse but in time two things put her on the path to greatness. The first was a series of visions and mystical contact with the divine and the second was a growing disgust with the moral laxity she found in the convent, a feeling which led her to call for reform. Both brought her trouble from Church authorities.

Some of her colleagues suggested that her visions were demonic and she was advised to keep silent about them but Teresa became convinced that her spiritual encounters were for the good and could not be suppressed. One of her most famous visions was immortalized in stone by the sculptor Bernini (see above).

I saw an angel very near me, towards my left side, in bodily form . . . This angel appeared rather small than large, and very beautiful. His face was so shining that he seemed to be one of those highest angels called seraphs, who look as if all on fire with divine love. He had in his hands a long golden dart; at the end of the point methought there was a little fire. And I felt him thrust it several times through my heart in such a way that it passed through my very bowels. And when he drew it out, methought it pulled them out with it and left me wholly on fire with a great love of God.

She recorded her mystical experiences in book form and eventually the Church recognized their authenticity but her attempts to restore humility and simplicity to the lives of nuns was met with open hostility by her superiors and the Inquisition. She struggled on and saw her Order of the Discalced Carmelites accepted and thriving.

Teresa had a wonderful way with words. She once complained to God that if this was how he treated his friends it was no wonder he had so few of them. She also said that there were more tears shed over prayers answered than prayers denied. When she was criticized for enjoying a good meal she commented, “There is a time for partridge and a time for penance.”

Teresa is the patron saint of Spain, of those suffering from illness, especially headaches, nuns and laceworkers.

October 4 is the feat of St Francis of Assisi, the namesake of the current pope. Chamber’s Book of Days has this to say about him:

The memory of no saint is held in affection so mingled with reverence by the Roman Catholic Church as St. Francis, ‘the gentle and the holy.’ He was born in 1182, in the romantic town of Assisi, in Umbria. His father was a merchant, and a hard money-making man. Francis he took into partnership, but he wasted his money in gay living, splendid dress, and banqueting, and made the streets of Assisi ring at night with song and frolic. When about twenty-five, he was seized with a violent illness, and when he rose from his bed, nature looked dreary, and his soul was filled with loathing for his past life and habits. He resolved to he religious, and of course religious after the fashion of his generation. He determined never to refuse alms to a poor person. He met a troop of beggars, and exchanged his dress for the rags of the filthiest. He mortified himself with such severity, that Assisi thought he had gone distracted. His father had been distressed by his luxury, but now he thought he should be ruined by his alms-giving. To bring him, as he thought, to his senses, he beat him unmercifully, put him in fetters, and locked him up. Finding him, however, incorrigible, he carried him before the bishop; and there and then he renounced all his rights of ownership and inheritance, and stripped off’ his clothes in token of his rejection of the world, and his perpetual choice of poverty.

Francis, thus relieved from all entanglement, pursued his way with. a simple energy which nothing could withstand. The fervour of his devotion diffused itself like an epidemic, and crowds parted with their possessions, and followed him into poverty and beggary. He went to Rome, and offered himself and his comrades to the service of the pope Innocent III, in 1210, incorporated the order, which grew into the mighty and wide-spread fraternity of Franciscans, Grey Friars, or Minor Friars. The first name they had from their founder, the second from their gray clothing, and the third from their humility. Their habit was a loose garment, of a gray color reaching to the ankles, with a cowl of the same, and a cloak over it when they went abroad. They girded themselves with cords, and went barefooted.

The austerities related of Francis are very much of a piece with those told of other saints. He scarcely allowed his body what was necessary to sustain life. If any part of his rough habit seemed too soft, he darned it with packthread, and was wont to say to his brethren, that the devils easily tempted those who wore soft garments. His bed was usually the ground, or he slept sitting, and for his bolster he had a piece of wood or stone. Unless when sick, he rarely ate any food that was cooked with fire, and when he did, he sprinkled it with ashes. Yet it is said, that with indiscreet or excessive austerity he was always displeased. When a brother, by long fasting, was unable to sleep, Francis brought him some bread, and persuaded him to eat by eating with him. In treating with women, he kept so strict a watch over his eyes, that he hardly knew any woman by sight. He used to say:

‘To converse with women, and not be hurt by it, is as difficult as to take fire into one’s bosom and not be burned. He that thinks himself secure, is undone; the devil finding somewhat to take hold on, though it be but a hair, raises a dreadful war.’

He was endowed, say his biographers, with an extraordinary gift of tears; his eyes were as fountains which flowed continuously, and by much weeping he almost lost his sight. In his ecstatic raptures, he often poured forth his soul in verse, and Francis in among the oldest vernacular poets of Italy. His sympathy with nature was very keen. He spoke of birds and beasts with all the tenderness due to children, and Dean Milman says the only malediction he can find which proceeded from his lips, was against a fierce swine which had killed a lamb. He had an especial fondness for lambs and larks, as emblems of the Redeemer and the Cherubim. When his surgeon was about to cauterize him for an issue, he said: ‘Fire, my brother, be thou discreet and gentle to me.’ In one of his hymns, he speaks of his brother the Sun, his sister the Moon, his brother the Wind, his sister the Water. When dying, he said:

‘Welcome, Sister Death.’ While in prayer it is said that he often floated in the air. Leo, his secretary and confessor, testified that he had seen him, when absorbed in devotion, raised above the ground so high that he could only touch his feet, which he held, and watered with his tears; and that some-times he saw him raised much higher!

In his ardor for the conversion of souls, he set out to preach to the Mohammedans. A Christian army was encamped before Damietta, in Egypt. He passed beyond its lines and was seized and carried before the sultan, and at once broke forth in exposition of the mysteries of faith. The sultan is reported to have listened with attention, probably with the Mohammedan reverence for the insane. Francis offered to enter a great fire with the priests of Islam, and to test the truth of their creeds by the result. The offer was declined. ‘I will then enter alone,’ said Francis. If I should be burned, you will impute it to my sins; should I come forth alive, you will embrace the gospel.’ This also the sultan refused, but with every mark of honour convoyed the bold apostle to the camp at Damietta.

The crowning glory of the life of Francis is reputed to have occurred in the solitude of Mount Alverno, whither he had retired to hold a solemn fast in honour of the archangel Michael. One morning, when he was praying, he saw in vision a seraph with six wings, and in the midst of the wings the crucified Saviour. As the vision disappeared, and left on his mind an unutterable sense of delight and awe, he found on his hands and feet black excrescences like nails, and in his side a wound, from which blood frequently oozed, and stained his garment. These marks, in his humility, he hid with jealous care, but they became known, and by their means were wrought many miracles. Pope Alexander IV publicly declared that, with his own eyes, he had seen the stigmata.

1941

The German-Soviet conquest of Poland in the fall of 1939 was meant not just to occupy the country but to eradicate it. “All Poles,” said Hitler, “will disappear from the world.” Both the Nazi occupation forces and the Red Army immediately set about to destroy the Polish human infrastructure, murdering the officer class, the intellectuals and professionals or interning them in concentration camps. Clergy were a particular target: thousands of priests, monks, nuns, and seminarians were murdered. To the camp at Auschwitz in 1941 was sent Maximilian Maria Kolbe, a Franciscan friar.

Kolbe was born in 1894 when most of Poland was still part of the Russian empire. He joined the Franciscans at an early age and received an excellent education in Rome where he earned doctorates in both philosophy and theology. He became a priest in 1919 and returned to the newly-independent Polish Republic where he founded a monastery and operated a religious publishing house. In the 1930s he was sent on mission to Asia where he succeeded in opening a monastery in Nagasaki, Japan.

Kolbe was arrested briefly after the German invasion. He refused to be granted protected status which his German ancestry could have won him but instead operated a hospital and refuge in his monastery, sheltering many, including over a thousand Jews. He continued his printing operation whose anti-German publications resulted in his arrest by the Gestapo and his internment in Auschwitz.

At the end of July three prisoners from Kolbe’s block escaped and, as was the custom, ten other prisoners were selected to be executed in reprisal. One of those whose names were called out was Sergeant Franciszek Gajowniczek who cried out, “My wife! My children!” On hearing this, Kolbe stepped forward and told the SS captain: “I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.” He was granted his wish and with nine other condemned was sent to an underground cell where they were to be starved to death. According to the German guards, Kolbe’s behaviour was inspiring, leading his fellow prisoners in hymns and prayers and preserving their dignity until one by one they died, leaving only him alive. At this point the Germans decided they needed the cell and finished Kolbe off with a lethal injection.

Gajowniczek survived Auschwitz and another concentration camp, living out the war behind wire until the Red Army drove the Germans from Poland. He never ceased speaking of the man who had exchanged his own life for his. Soon miraculous healings were attributed to Kolbe’s heavenly intercession. In 1982 John Paul II, the first Polish pope, declared Kolbe a saint.  He is considered to be the patron of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, and the pro-life movement.

Since we last featured St Elizabeth Romanova, let’s continue an examination of the Twelve Modern Martyrs featured above the West Door of Westminster Abbey. These biographies are taken from the Abbey’s website.

At Sangara mission station in Papua New Guinea there stands a row of graves: two of Australian women, Mavis Parkinson and May Hayman, and a third of Lucian Tapiedi.

Tapiedi was born in 1921/2, in the village of Taupota, on the north coast of Papua. His father was a sorcerer, who died when his sons were still young. He was taught at mission schools and then, in 1939, he entered St Aidan’s teacher training college. Here Tapiedi became known as a diligent and cheerful presence, fond of physical recreation but also musical. In 1941 he became part of the staff at Sangara as a teacher and evangelist.

In December 1941 Japanese forces attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbour. In the same month they invaded Malaya. British forces capitulated in Singapore in February 1942. The missionaries who lived in New Guinea watched events anxiously, and feared the worst. In January 1942 the Anglican bishop, Philip Strong, had broadcast an appeal to them to stay at their work, come what may. Many of the missionaries themselves wished this, and had already resisted calls to turn to safety.

On 21st July 1942 the Japanese invaded the island near the mission station at Gona. Three of the residents, Parkinson, Hayman and James Benson, fled inland and there encountered other Australians in hiding. But they were soon caught. The soldiers murdered Hayman and Parkinson at Popondetta.

In Northern Papua, meanwhile, a second group of missionaries struggled to evade capture. Among them was Lucian Tapiedi, who was determined not to abandon the missionaries with whom he worked. In a few days this group swelled to ten people. They came to a village inhabited by the Orokaiva people, and found themselves escorted away by men of that tribe. One of the Orokaiva, a man named Hivijapa, killed Tapiedi near a stream by Kurumbo village. The remainder of the group perished soon after; six of them beheaded by the Japanese on Buna beach.

333 Christians lost their lives in New Guinea during the invasion and occupation of the island by the Japanese forces. The greatest number of those who died – 198 – were Roman Catholics. But there were also Methodists, Salvationists, Lutherans, Anglicans, members of the Evangelical Church of Manus, and Seventh Day Adventists among the dead.

Now a shrine marks the place where Lucian Tapiedi died. His killer later converted to Christianity. He took the name Hivijapa Lucian, and built a church dedicated to the memory of his victim at Embi.