I'll start 2017 bright and early with Annie Mitchell on the Son Rise Morning Show, discussing the English Reformation connection to the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which is observed on January 2 on the Extraordinary Form and on January 3 on the Ordinary Form calendars. It will be live on air a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern time/6:45 a.m. Central time--so listen here!
Richard Whitford was a friend of St. Thomas More and a priest of the famed Briggitine House of Syon Abbey. Both Whitford and Richard Reynolds opposed Henry VIII’s Supremacy: Reynolds was one of the protomartyrs of the English Reformation on May 4, 1535, but Whitford was granted a pension and protection by Charles Blount, Baron Mountjoy when Syon Abbey was suppressed in 1539 and survived on a pension in Mountjoy’s household until he died in 1542.
Whitford translated The Imitation of Christ and wrote many devotional works. One of the most popular was the Jesus Psalter, a series of 15 petitions to Jesus, praying for mercy, wisdom, fear of the Lord, and other graces. It emphasizes, with the words of Acts 4:12, that “There is no other Name under heaven given to men whereby we may be saved” and was very popular during the Recusant era. Whitford was continuing a tradition of other English spiritual writers to pray with the name of Jesus. Richard Rolle, the fourteenth century hermit, wrote “If you think on the name Jesus continually and hold it stably, it purges your sin and kindles your heart” and Walter Hilton, author of The Scale of Perfection, also encouraged meditation on the Name of Jesus, which is “full of comfort and delight.”
Then my first post of the new year at the National Catholic Register will be online January 3 and the Son Rise Morning Show will repeat my interview during the national EWTN hour that morning! (From 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. Eastern/5:00 to 6:00 a.m. Central).
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Image Credit: IHS monogram, Montmorency, France
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