Recordings of the online colloquium celebrating St Newman’s 10th anniversary of beatification and 1st anniversary of canonisation.
***The recordings are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***
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***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***
Please donate here:
The fourth talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters will explore the spirituality of one of the Church’s greatest theologians: Thomas Aquinas. Known for his unique and massive synthesis of Catholic theology, Aquinas earned the title of “The Angelic Doctor” not just for his great learning, but for the wisdom and light he brought to the Church’s thinking. In this talk, Fr Richard Conrad, O.P. will focus particularly on the themes of being, freedom and friendship. As the greatest of God’s gifts, they are fundamental to this great saint’s spirituality.
Richard Conrad studied chemistry at Cambridge, and after his doctorate joined the Dominican Friars. He has served as Prior in Cambridge and Leicester, and for 8 years was Novice Master of the Province. He taught dogmatic theology at Maryvale Institute part-time from 1992 to 2016, and from 2007 has been resident at Blackfriars, Oxford, where he teaches dogmatic theology and the thought of Thomas Aquinas, and is currently Director of the Aquinas Institute.
***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***
Please donate here:
The third talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters explores the spirituality of the latest English person to be canonised: John Henry Newman. Known for his great intellect and his conversion from Protestantism to the Catholic Faith, Newman’s journey was powered by his grasping of the realism and certainty of God’s presence. At the heart of this journey was his conscience, drawing him “out of the shadows into truth”. This talk will focus on Newman’s ‘realism’ and his conversions.
Tutorial Fellow in Latin Language and Literature at Corpus Christi College Oxford. He came to St Andrews in 2016 after research fellowships at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He worked as an assistant editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin, and has published especially on Latin language and literature, philosophy of language, and the theory of fiction, ancient and modern, including above all Tolkien’s views on the ‘mystery of literary creation’. He is an Associate of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Art in St Andrews and the Tolkien Editor of the Journal of the Inklings Studies. He is a member of the RSE Young Academy Scotland, the Young Academy of Europe, and a collaborator of the Meeting of Rimini, for which he has curated exhibitions on John Henry Newman (2011, 2014), Oscar Wilde (2015) and JRR Tolkien (2021).
***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***
Please donate here:
The second talk in the series explores the life and spirituality of Therese of Lisieux. Perhaps one of the most beloved saints of Western Europe, Therese died at the age of only 24 after a long struggle with tuberculosis. She had spent 9 years as a Carmelite nun, fighting to be allowed to enter the convent at the age of 15. Her hidden and simple, yet whole-hearted life of prayer was repaid with a special grace of intimacy with God. Her vocation to love in her very ordinary struggles and simple life instantly made her an immensely popular and accessible saint. Canonised only 28 years after her death, her “Story of a Soul” has been read by and inspired countless people all over the world.
Canon John Udris is Spiritual Director at St Mary’s College, Oscott, Birmingham. He has a Licence in Spirituality from the Dominican University in Rome. He is the author of two books on St Therese: ‘Holy Daring’ and ‘The Gift of St Therese of Lisieux.’
***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***
Please donate here:
The first talk in our online series, Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters, explores the life and spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola. Founder of the Society of Jesus, St Ignatius is perhaps one of the most attractive and enigmatic of the Western Saints. A mercenary and a romantic, he was wounded in battle and spent time recuperating in hospital. He famously converted when forced to read the Gospels and the Lives of the Saints out of boredom. The ensuing time he spent in solitude, seeking the real meaning to his life, provided the basis for his Spiritual Exercises. These remain hugely relevant, immensely popular and religiously followed centuries later.
Fr Dominic Robinson, SJ is currently Parish Priest of Farm Street in central London. Farm Street Church, and the adjoining London Jesuit Centre, is a vibrant city centre ministry of the Jesuits, aiming to extend welcome and hospitality to many different groups. Fr Dominic is also UK director of Landings, the programme for returning Catholics, teaches Theology at St Mary’s University, is Chair of Justice & Peace in the Diocese of Westminster and Ecclesiastical Assistant to the charity Aid to the Church in Need.
Sunday 20th September 2020
The lives of the saints have historically provided one of the great staples of the catechetical and spiritual life.
Their biographies, in varying levels of literary and spiritual complexity, would be read by Christians of all ages. Children would be presented early on with these figures in story book form. As they grew, so also did they in knowledge of and friendship with the saints, through reading more complex or original texts as they were able to.
This has always been a self-evidently important element in the formation of a person’s faith, since the saints are guiding lights for the sincere Christian. They mark out a true and trodden path that navigates the difficulties and complexities of this life, while making a bee-line for Heaven. The saints are those who have ‘fought the good fight… finished the race… kept the faith’ (2 Timothy 4:7).
They have faced the world, they have discerned what is right and what is wrong, and they have relentlessly pursued the former. Do we not still need them today?
It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that our celebrity culture has, to a large extent, either pushed the saints off our radar or filled in the previously-vacated space that the saints used to inhabit. The saints were at once role models and witnesses to the reality of our faith. Celebrities also serve as role models, and most often as witness to the realities of this world. The saints are clearly a less attractive role model to someone who does not understand the primacy of Heaven over earth, or the spiritual over the physical.
And equally, someone whose primary aim is to make the most out of this world, rather than to strive for Heaven, will not see their relevance.
Perhaps it is precisely the apparent unpopularity or unattractiveness of the saints that serves as a warning of our need for them more than ever.
It continues to be in the relational nature of humans to look for role models, to aspire after others and to imitate that which we see as appealing in them. This is especially true throughout childhood, in the most formative years of our character. So it is precisely then that we let children down most of all if we fail to present them with these great, Christian role models.
If we take seriously the words of Pope Francis, “To be saints is not a privilege for the few, but a vocation for everyone” – in other words, if we take seriously the fundamental Christian precept that we are all called to holiness – we cannot discard what the saints have to offer us. Pope Benedict XVI once said that for him, “Art and the saints are the greatest apologetics for our faith”. A vivid and real knowledge of the lives of the saints is itself a powerful testimony to the reality of God and the possibility of a relationship with Him. Every young boy who sees the attraction of combat and soldiering can draw great inspiration from St Ignatius of Loyola’s mercenary adventures and his discovery of the one cause worth fighting for. Every young girl who wants to find the means to security and success can look to the commanding and uncompromising presence of St Teresa of Avila.
Moreover, knowing the saints well teaches us that their lives are not somehow simply summarised in a single, beautiful stained-glass window. Seeing the saints means seeing how to struggle to find what is good, how to fight to choose that good for ourselves, and how to persevere in that choice of the good. Knowing the saints is empowering. It teaches us that, as Pope St John Paul II said,
“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures: we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son”.
It is tremendously liberating to truly know and live this, because it gives us both the courage to identify and name our sins, as well as to fight them.
If, on the one hand, St Ignatius warns us that “It is preferable for us to avoid sin than to be lords over the whole world”, on the other, Padre Pio encourages us with the reminder that “Jesus is never so close to you as he is during your spiritual battles”.
The lives of the saints and the fruits of their spiritual wisdom are treasures that we should not be willing to discard or to fail to hand on. They are part of that great spiritual heritage of Catholic Christianity, which constitutes a sure foundation for navigating this earthly pilgrimage.
With the upcoming 50th anniversary of the canonisation of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales, and the first anniversary of John Henry Newman’s canonisation, it is an opportune time to revisit our spiritual patrons and friends in Heaven. At Stonyhurst we have therefore brought together a number of highly respected and well-known speakers, to offer insights into the lives and spirituality of some of the great spiritual masters of the Western Church. The series of talks that they will present will be offered online for free (they will also be accessible afterwards on our website).
Stefan Kaminski is the Director of the Christian Heritage Centre, Stonyhurst.
Friday 1st May 2020
St Anselm, together with St George, offers a clear model for a pragmatic faith during the difficulties of lockdown.
This last week has seen the feast days of two ‘English’ saints, one perhaps more recognised than the other: St George on the 23rd April, and St Anselm of Canterbury on the 21st April.
Apart from their faith, what they do have in common is that neither, despite being associated with England, was English! While St George was born in Cappadocia (modern-day Turkey), St Anselm hailed from Aosta in northern Italy.
Both are fitting saints for Eastertide, however. The story of St George requires no retelling, but his emblem – the red cross – is a reference to Christ’s saving death, to which he joined his own martyrdom at the hands of the Emperor Diocletian in the year 303. The dragon he fought is most commonly taken as a symbol of his conquest of the devil, by means of his faith and fortitude.
St Anselm is a somewhat contrasting figure to the Roman soldier, but no less staunch and heroic in a different age and place. Born in 1033 or ’34, he came to England via the Benedictine monastery of Bec, in Normandy. While a monk at Bec he quickly gained a reputation for his great intellect and profound spirituality, thus also further increasing the monastery’s already-established reputation as a centre of learning.
In 1078 he was elected as Abbot of Bec and it was this that first brought Anselm to England. William the Conqueror had previously granted lands both in Normandy as well as in Canterbury to the Bec monastery; as the Abbot, Anselm was required to visit these lands on certain occasions.
By the time the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury died in 1089, William had been dead two years and had been succeeded by his son, William Rufus. The younger William was a tyrant, who had only just been kept in check by the previous Archbishop of Canterbury. Once his grasping nature took hold, however, injustices flowed.
Among these, he kept deferring his permission for the replacement of the various vacant bishoprics while he seized their revenues year on year, and left dependent communities in near-poverty. It was only when he became violently sick and seemed to be on his deathbed that he returned briefly to his conscience, fearing for his eternal salvation. From this state he not only settled outstanding debts, granted pardons and fed prisoners, but he also nominated the widely-esteemed Anselm as Bishop of Canterbury.
The reluctant Anselm accepted the position, but used every occasion and means to try to both reconcile the King with Rome and reform the Church in England. (William Rufus’ momentary penitence had quickly disappeared as he regained health.) Anselm’s continual struggle against the king’s injustices, his rampant passions and his manipulation and censoring of the Church eventually forced Anselm to leave the country to seek the Pope’s support.
At a council with Pope Urban II, at which the situation in England was also discussed, Anselm yet again demonstrated his Christian compassion. The Pope was about to excommunicate William Rufus on the advice of the council, when Anselm threw himself at the Pope’s feet and begged for mercy for his nemesis. The excommunication was delayed. In the end, however, William died suddenly during a hunting accident before Anselm could return to England or reconcile him fully with the Church – something that caused the saint great bitterness.
Anselm’s nobility of soul and character can be understood both by his contemplative detachment from this world and through his motto, ‘Faith seeking understanding’. His greatest pleasure was in contemplating God, and every object served the purpose of raising Anselm’s mind to his Creator.
His motto, while easily misunderstood, is eloquent in its simplicity: faith, for Anselm, is neither a blind belief nor even primarily an act of the intellect or mind. Faith consists in the action of our will: a movement of love that comes from the heart, and an active desire to do God’s will. Such a faith “seeks understanding”, in that it wants to know God more deeply. In other words, faith is first of all a state of desire or a willing, rather than a state of thought, or of the mind.
This Easter has perhaps been a particularly challenging and opportune moment for assessing our own faith. In a sense, the best measure of this has been the extent to which we missed the liturgy and the Sacraments, for it is indeed through the Sacraments that the Resurrection of Christ touches us and that the graces are given to transform us into a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17).
Equally, without being able to actually participate in the Church’s liturgies, we have had to rely more so on our own motivation – on our faith – to engage with the Easter mystery.
The lockdown is making life harder for many (if not most), particularly by challenging our internal resources. It is, however, an opportunity to grow in faith. Both St George and St Anselm are strong characters of faith because their lives were built by fixating their hearts on God, and everything else was motivated by that.
This locked-down Eastertide, the one thousand, nine hundred and eighty-seventh Easter in human history, is an opportunity to delve more deeply into our hearts, to discover and nourish a greater capacity for loving the God who gave His life for us.
Prayer of St Anselm
I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving, that you have made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you, and love you.
But that image is so worn and blotted out by faults, and darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do that for which it was made, unless you renew and refashion it.
Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height, for my understanding is in no way equal to that, but I do desire to understand a little of your truth which my heart already believes and loves.
I do not seek to understand so that I can believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I believe that unless I do believe, I shall not understand.
Stefan Kaminski is the Director of the Christian Heritage Centre, Stonyhurst.
Friday 6th September 2019
Sr Emanuela Edwards looks at storytelling and how, even in our hi-tech digital age, it remains a powerful way to communicate the faith.
One of the greatest challenges, if not the greatest, for the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst is the communication of the faith to the people of our time. The Christian faith we possess, and the roots of our Christian Heritage must be rendered interesting and challenging and be communicated to everyone. It should be done in such a way that it can reinforce the faith of those who believe, whilst at the same time reach out to the periphery to speak of God’s love for all even to those who would not usually be interested!
One way of achieving this aim is to use the ancient art of storytelling. Since primitive times, stories have been used to transmit important truths, events and lessons to successive generations. In fact, the faith was originally handed on by the Apostles who testified or told the story of what they witnessed and learned from Christ. Artefacts and relics, like those in the Stonyhurst Collection, physically bring the stories of the martyrs and saints into proximity to those who look upon the objects. Pope Leo I asked, “why should the mind toil when the sight instructs” and indeed, looking at these artefacts and explaining their story presents an opportunity to recount the Christian faith in a captivating way.
Writing in the 4th Century Tertullian said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith”. Encountering the stories of the lives of the saints and martyrs who have shaped our Christian Heritage sows the seeds of the faith in successive generations. Each artefact in the Stonyhurst Collections works like a silent sermon because it testifies to the life and witness of the martyr in question making their stories enter the present time and touch the life of the person viewing the object perhaps causing them to consider its lesson. Therefore, the stories of the Saints and martyrs become living lessons in the faith that can teach and inspire new generations hopefully calling them to a deeper conversion.
One of the most striking stories in the Collections is told by the relic of the rope that bound St Edmund Campion to the hurdle on which he was dragged through the streets of London before his execution. (The actual relic is the property of the British Jesuit Province on loan to Stonyhurst College). That rope tells the story of a Priest who, on penalty of death, nevertheless came to England in 1580 to preach the Gospel, confess and offer the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass to the Catholics driven underground in order to practice their faith. He preached and disseminated his famous Decem Rationes – ten reasons demonstrating the truth of the Catholic religion and was eventually captured, imprisoned and tortured before his execution at Tyburn on the 1st December 1581. His story raises an interesting question: why did St Edmund not yield to the tortures and inducements to conform in order to save his life? By word and deed St Edmund most eloquently testified that the Catholic faith is worth dying for. He did not change the course of his life as he knew that a seed must die to yield fruit (cfr. Jn 12:24). Today, that fruit is harvested in the hearts of those who are told of this heroic Priest whose behaviour was inspired by the truth of Christ and are brought into contact with the faith he died to proclaim.
The Collections also have a part of the vestment worn by St Oscar Romero who was killed in El Salvador in 1980 whilst offering the Holy Mass. This relic serves as a poignant reminder that Christian martyrdom is not an ancient reality but that this story still continues today.
Another English martyr whose story is told through the artefacts and relics of the Stonyhurst Collections is St Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, who was martyred for refusing to take the Oath of Succession in 1535. This saint’s story demonstrates how artefacts and relics can show the faith of the saint rather than just tell of it hence providing a more powerful source of Christian inspiration. During the homily for the Canonisation of St Thomas More, Pope Pius XI spoke of the “ardour of his prayer” and the “practice of those penances by which he kept his body in subjection.” Indeed, this can be borne out by close inspection of his golden crucifix with spikes on the back that was worn as a penance by the Saint. Here we learn something of the intimate life of the Saint that was founded on a deep prayer life. In fact, it was this intimacy with Christ that strengthened him to resist the tears of his wife and children over his condemnation and to be, “content to lose goods, land and life as well rather than to swear against his conscience”. In this way, the stories of the Saints also teach us that Christian witness is borne through a closeness to Christ in prayer and is not the fruit of the passing moment.
It is hoped that a visit to this beautiful collection will make the stories of the Saints vibrate in our hearts giving us a living lesson in the truths of the faith. May the stories of the martyrs strengthen us by imparting the knowledge of the faith and the inspiration to live it so that we too can witness to our rich Christian heritage that shaped our past and partake in its reconstruction in our own time.
Sr Emanuela Edwards
Missionaries of Divine Revelation
Trustee of the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst
[email protected]
www.mdrevelation.org
