The Lord is the king of martyrs: come, let us adore him.
Year: C(I). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: Red.
Bl. Robert Anderton (1560 - 1586) and William Marsden (-1586)
Robert Anderton (c. 1560- 1586) was born in either Lancashire or the Isle of Wight or, according to some, the Isle of Man. He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1578. Shortly after he went abroad and converted to Roman Catholicism. He entered the English College at Rheims in 1580 and there met William Marsden, a Lancashireman. The two were ordained priest together.
After ordination they set sail for England, but were caught in a storm. They prayed that they would be allowed to die on land rather than at sea. Driven ashore on the Isle of Wight by the storm, they were immediately arrested by the authorities. In court at Winchester, they pleaded that they had not violated the law by landing in England, since their landing had been involuntary. They defended their faith and the Pope and acknowledged that they had come to exercise their ministry and reconcile people to God and the Church. This led to their being taken to London, where they were asked to take the Oath of Supremacy, acknowledging Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. They acknowledged the queen as their lawful queen in all secular affairs but refused to swear the Oath. As this was a treasonable offence under the Second Act of Supremacy, they were condemned to death, were returned to the Isle of Wight near the place where they had landed, and were hung, drawn and quartered on 25 April 1586.
They were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Gregory of Nyssa (335 - 395)
Gregory of Nyssa was the younger brother of St Basil of Caesarea (“St Basil the Great”). He, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, “Gregory of Nazianzus”, are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. They were active after the Council of Nicaea, working to formulate Trinitarian doctrine precisely and, in particular, to pin down the meaning and role of the least humanly comprehensible member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Basil was the leader and organizer; Gregory of Nazianzus was the thinker, the orator, the poet, pushed into administrative and episcopal roles by circumstances and by Basil; and Gregory of Nyssa, although not a great stylist, was the most gifted of the three as a philosopher and theologian. Together, the Cappadocian Fathers hammered out the doctrine of the Trinity like blacksmiths forging a piece of metal by hammer-blows into its perfect, destined shape. They were champions – and successful champions – of orthodoxy against Arianism, a battle that had to be conducted as much on the worldly and political plane as on the philosophical and theological one.
The works of Gregory of Nyssa whose extracts appear as Second Readings are not as rhetorically beautiful as those of Gregory of Nazianzus, who was an acclaimed orator; but they are helpful and clear. Most of them are commentaries on Scripture passages. They involve the mind and deepen the understanding.
Liturgical colour: red
Red is the colour of fire and of blood. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate the fire of the Holy Spirit (for instance, at Pentecost) and the blood of the martyrs.
| Mid-morning reading (Terce) | (Apocalypse 1:17-18) © |
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I saw the Son of Man, and he said to me, ‘Have no fear! I am the First and the Last. I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.’
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Colossians 2:9,12 © |
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In Christ lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you too find your own fulfilment. You have been buried with him, when you were baptised; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | 2 Timothy 2:8,11 © |
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Remember the Good News that I carry, ‘Jesus Christ risen from the dead, sprung from the race of David’. Here is a saying that you can rely on: ‘If we have died with him, then we shall live with him.’
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