St. Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and the English Martyrs

Merry Christmas!

As I remind this blog's readers every year: It's Still Christmas!! Liturgically and prayerfully, we are still celebrating the Birth of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary. Throughout the season, which lasts until the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord, we continue to recall this great mystery and what it means in our lives as Pope Benedict XVI said in 2009:

God’s sign is his humility. God’s sign is that he makes himself small; he becomes a child; he lets us touch him and he asks for our love. How we would prefer a different sign, an imposing, irresistible sign of God’s power and greatness! But his sign summons us to faith and love, and thus it gives us hope: this is what God is like. He has power, he is Goodness itself. He invites us to become like him. Yes indeed, we become like God if we allow ourselves to be shaped by this sign; if we ourselves learn humility and hence true greatness; if we renounce violence and use only the weapons of truth and love.

At the same time we recall that mystery, we honor those who proclaimed it by word and deed: martyrs and confessors, evangelists and saints. December 26 is the feast of St. Stephen the Deacon, the protomartyr; and December 28 is the feast of the Holy Innocents, who suffered because of King Herod's fear of Jesus, of a baby born in Bethlehem. There are connections between these feasts and the Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation and they intersect in Rome at the Venerable English College.

The first connection is with St. Stephen, as described in Francis Aidan Cardinal Gasquet's history of the Venerable. He highlights how the students at the Venerabile commemorated the feast of St. Stephen, the proto-martyr of all Christian martyrs:

On St. Stephen's Day was inaugurated a long-continued practice of one of the students preaching before the Pope and Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on that feast. The ceremonial to be observed on these occasions is noted down in the volume of addresses and sermons before referred to. A carriage was sent from the Vatican to bring the preacher from the College: he was to remain in the sacristy vested in his surplice until the Master of Ceremonies came to fetch him after the singing of the Gospel. He was then, on entering the Chapel, to bow profoundly to the Cardinal celebrating the Mass, and then to proceed to the papal throne, where first kneeling on both knees he was to ascend and kiss the Pope's foot, to salute His Holiness with a bow, and returning to the bottom step, was again to genuflect on both knees, and having received the blessing, was to ask permission to publish the usual Indulgences. In his sermon he was not to turn directly to the Pope, but to look rather to the Cardinals; neither was he to raise his voice too loudly, and to beware of being carried away by his eloquence or of making use of too many gestures. After the sermon was finished, he was directed to return to the steps of the throne and remain kneeling whilst the Confiteor was being sung, after which he was to rise and publish the Indulgence, again kneeling whilst the Holy Father pronounced the blessing. At the end he was to follow the Master of Ceremonies to the sacristy. The occasion must have been a trying ordeal for the student even although, as was evidently the case, the Latin discourse had been composed for him. The feast suggested references to the possible martyrdom of the selected orator, when his turn came to go forth from Rome for the English Mission.

Two of these preachers did suffer martyrdom in England: Blessed John Cornelius and St. David Lewis.

(Image: Stoning of Saint Stephen, altarpiece of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, by Jacopo & Domenico Tintoretto)

The second connection, between the feast of the Holy Innocents and the English Martyrs comes through St. Philip Neri, who would greet the seminarians and the ordained men of the Venerable by quoting the first line of an ancient hymn of Prudentius:

Salvete, flores martyrum,
quos lucis ipso in limine
Christi insecutor sustulit
ceu turbo nascentes rosas.

Vos prima Christi victima,
grex immolatorum tener,
aram sub ipsam simplices
palma et coronis luditis.

Iesu, tibi sit gloria,
qui natus es de Virgine,
cum Patre et almo Spiritu,
in sempiterna saecula. Amen.

Father Edward Caswall, Oratorian, translated this hymn for Lauds as

Flowers of martyrdom, all hail! 

Smitten by the tyrant foe 

On life’s threshold – as the gale 

Strews the roses ere they blow.

First to bleed for Christ, sweet lambs! 

What a simple death ye died! 

Sporting with your wreath and palms 

At the very altar-side!

Honor, glory, virtue, merit, 

Be to Thee, O Virgin’s Son, 

With the Father, and the Spirit 

While eternal ages run. – Amen.

As the Catholic Culture website notes, the connection between St. Philip Neri and the Venerable continues:

He had a particular love and concern for the seminarians of the Venerable English College in Rome. He was aware that the majority of these students, once ordained priests, would return to England and ultimately shed their blood as martyrs for Christ and his Church. To this day, the seminarians of the English College sing first vespers on the Solemnity of Saint Philip Neri at the Chiesa Nuova in honor of the Roman priest who blessed their forebears on their way to martyrdom.

(Image: Guido Reni, Massacre of the Innocents)

(Image at top: Botticelli, Nativity of Our Lord)

At the Name of Jesus

Yesterday in the Ordinary Form and today in the Extraordinary Form, the Church honors the Name of Jesus. It makes such good sense that we honor His Name during the Christmas season. He was given the name Jesus when conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:31); He was given in the name Jesus when He was circumcised (Luke 2:21).

The Introit for Mass yesterday and today is taken from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians:" at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

This Feast had been suppressed after the Second Vatican Council but was restored in 2002. It is common in Catholic piety to devote the month of January to the Holy Name. The Fish Eaters website notes that we should be ready to pray in reparation when this Name, the only name by which we may be saved (Acts 4:8-12) is taken in vain, used as swear word, or otherwise disrespected:

the Catholic in the room will (or at least should) make reparation by crossing himself and praying "Sit nomen Dómini benedíctum!" ("Blessed be the Name of the Lord!"), to which another Catholic who might be in the room replies, "Ex hoc nunc, et usque in sæculum!" ("from this time forth for evermore!") or "per ómnia saecula saeculórum" ("unto ages of ages").

St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote a prayer to the Holy Name commonly used as a hymn for the Feast:

Jesus, the very thought of Thee With sweetness fills the breast! Yet sweeter far Thy face to see And in Thy presence rest.

No voice can sing, no heart can frame, Nor can the memory find, A sweeter sound than Jesus' name, The Savior of mankind.

O hope of every contrite heart! 0 joy of all the meek! To those who fall, how kind Thou art! How good to those who seek!

But what to those who find? Ah! this Nor tongue nor pen can show The love of Jesus, what it is, None but His loved ones know.

Jesus! our only hope be Thou, As Thou our prize shalt be; In Thee be all our glory now, And through eternity. Amen.

In the fifteenth century, St. Bernardine of Siena promoted devotion to the Holy Name, using the initials IHS as an image for veneration. Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus spread to England in the fifteenth century and was at its height in popular devotion before the English Reformation, with a fraternity and parish guilds, chapels dedicated to the Name, the practice of special votive Masses, specific prayers, and use of the IHS initials. Since it was a devotion based so firmly on the Holy Bible, some aspects of devotion survived the English Reformation, and the feast of the Holy Name was included in The Book of Common Prayer. 

The imagery of the IHS initials, however, was too Catholic for many in the Church of England and was associated with High Church Anglo-Catholicism as practiced by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes and Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, so the cult of devotion to the Holy Name was suppressed, according to this article. The IHS symbol became a mark of recusant Catholicism, especially since the Society of Jesus used the initials as an emblem. Since Englishmen who studied for the priesthood on the Continent and returned as Jesuit missionaries to the Catholics of England were singled out from Elizabeth's reign to the Popish Plot as traitorous spies and instigators of rebellion, it could not be an acceptable sign in England.

Divinum Mysterium/Corde natus ex parentis

Today is, of course, the second day of the Christmas Season (second day of the Octave of Christmas), which lasts until Epiphany, which season lasts until Candlemas on February 2, so that we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord for 40 days! John Mason Neale translated Prudentius's Corde Natus, and Henry W. Baker added to his translation in 1851 and 1861 respectively:

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

At His Word the worlds were framèd; He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun, evermore and evermore!

He is found in human fashion, death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below, evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bare the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!

This is He whom seers in old time chanted of with one accord;
Whom the voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the long expected,
Let creation praise its Lord, evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing, evermore and evermore!

Righteous judge of souls departed, righteous King of them that live,
On the Father’s throne exalted none in might with Thee may strive;
Who at last in vengeance coming
Sinners from Thy face shalt drive, evermore and evermore!

Thee let old men, thee let young men, thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons, virgins, little maidens, with glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart its music bring, evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!