On Friday 4 May, a small
group of local ministers from our ecumenical group, the South Leicester
Christian Partnership, gathered in St Guthlac’s for early morning prayer. It is
our custom to move around some of the churches in the partnership and to meet
once a month on the first Friday at 8 am. On this occasion, we met on the
‘lesser festival’ when we remember the English Saints and Martyrs of the
Reformation era. We prayed together the Collect for the Day: ‘Merciful God,
who, when your Church on earth was torn apart by the ravages of sin, raised up
men and women in this land who witnessed to their faith with courage and
constancy: give to your Church that peace which is your will, and grant that
those who have been divided on earth may be reconciled in heaven, and share
together in the vision of your glory…’
In ecumenical terms, the rival services on 4 May could become a somewhat uncomfortable experience, because since 2010 both Catholic and Protestant victims of
the Reformation era have been remembered in separate services of the
Catholic and Anglican Churches. In the Catholic case, those who are remembered are the 40 martyrs canonised under Paul VI in 1973 (previously celebrated on October 25), together with the 85 beatified Martyrs of
the Reformation and the other martyrs of the 16th and 17th century canonised by
John Paul II in 1987. Yet the Catholic church was doing no more than finally
‘catching up’ with what had been official policy of the Church England since an
order of Convocation in 1571. This required that Foxe’s Book of Martyrs – the supreme work of Protestant martyrology in
England – be chained beside the Great Bible in
cathedrals, select churches, and even several bishops’ and guild halls.
Selected readings from the text were proclaimed from the pulpit as if it were
Scripture. And the martyrs, of course, were all Protestants, chiefly at the
hands of the Catholic queen, ‘Bloody Mary’ Tudor.
In his 1987
homily at the time of the beatification, John Paul II mentioned the prayer at the previous service in 1973 ‘that the blood of those martyrs
would be a source of healing for the divisions between Christians. Today we may
fittingly give thanks for the progress made in the intervening years towards
fuller communion between Anglicans and Catholics. We rejoice in the deeper
understanding, broader collaboration and common witness that have taken place
through the power of God.’ And we should all say amen to that.
The
reading for Morning Prayer on 4 May was from Luke ch 4, where Jesus announces
his mission in the synagogue, but is confronted by unbelievers who, in the end,
threaten to kill him: ‘They got up, drove him out of the
town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so
that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them
and went on his way’ (Luke 4:30).
Just
two days earlier, on 2 May, Benedict XVI had delivered an address on Stephen,
the first Christian martyr, who is too often forgotten about by many of us
because he is commemorated on 26 December. ‘We may ask ourselves’, the
Pope reflected, ‘where did this first Christian martyr find the strength to
face his persecutors and in the end to attain to the gift of himself? The
answer is simple: from his relationship with God, from his communion with
Christ, from meditation on the history of salvation, from seeing God’s action,
which in Jesus Christ reached its summit. Our prayer, too, should be nourished
by listening to God’s Word, in communion with Jesus and his Church.’
Our ecumenical
prayer sessions are about Bible reading, formal prayer, open prayer and
meditation. On this occasion we concentrated on the cost of martyrdom and the
difficulty of forgiveness and reconciliation. Our final prayer was the one found on a piece of paper in the coat of a dead
girl at Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1945. ‘O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good
will, but also those of ill will. But, do not remember all of the suffering
they have inflicted upon us; instead remember the fruits we have borne because
of this suffering – our fellowship, our loyalty to one another, our humility,
our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown from this
trouble. When our persecutors come to be judged by you, let all of these fruits
that we have borne be their forgiveness.’ O that we could forgive others for
offences, which compared with those meted out at Ravensbrück, seem petty and trivial. Amen.
