Boniface, Barnabas, Basil, Butler, Bernard,
and the Seven Hundred Children Martyrs of Soweto
June, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
June 5 -Boniface: Psalm 115:1-8, or 31:1-5,
Acts 20:17-28
Luke 24:44-53
June 11 - Barnabas: Psalm 112
Isaiah 42:5-12
Acts 11:19-30;13:1-3
Matthew 10:7-16
June 14 - Basil the Great
Psalm 139:1-9 or 34:1-8
I Corinthians 2:6-13
Luke 10:21-24
June 16 - Joseph Butler
Psalm 119:89-96, or Ps. 1.
Wisdom 7:7-14
Luke 10:25-28
June 16 - The 700 Children Martyrs of Soweto/25th Anniversary
(Common of Martyrs #1)
Psalm 126 or 121
2 Esdras 2:42-48
1 Peter 3:14-18,22
Matthew 10:16-22
June 18 - Bernard Mizeki
Psalm 116:1-8 or Ps.14
Revelation 7:13-17
Luke 12:2-12
June seems to have an early and abundant harvest of the saints and martyrs for the calendar. We call upon only hundreds to shout their "Presente!" with us at the eucharist today. It has been the custom in Central America, since the U.S. sponsored wars against the peoples here, to answer for the witnesses when their names are called out in our prayers, and to note their continuing presence and witness with the shout "Presente!" It was the martyrs after all who taught us all the Resurrection of the Dead, for with Jesus they have always shown themselves alive amongst us since the earliest telling of good news.
Another name for saints is "friends of God", and another name is "witnesses." The Greek word "martyrion" has come to be applied to only the "martyrs in deed", whose lives were taken from them by violence, but the church has always included in its canon those who were martyrs in will as well as deed, as we remember John the Beloved in the days of the Christmas saints, when we even celebrate those Innocents who are martyrs in deed but not in will. Surely the children of the South West Township--SOWETO it was called, in South Africa, are gathered now with all the innocents of our own lifetimes and those of ages past. We celebrate on June 16 the twenty-fifth anniversary of their martyrdom in massacre by a racist police state. It is now gone from history, but they are secure in our memories and in our hearts, having joined that great cloud of witnesses, all of them cheering us on like fans in a stadium. They, being dead, yet speak from South Africa, now converted and finally led by Nelson Mandela into the human community.
Boniface was born in England around 675, but felt called to be a missionary. He was sent by the Pope to Germany in his 40's, became the Archbishop of Mainz, and anointed Pippin, the father of Charlemagne as King of the Franks. He famously chopped down a tree sacred to the god Thor, who one day decades later apparently had his revenge. Nearing 80, Boniface returned to Frisia, his first mission field, and there with his companions he himself was chopped down, as if a tree, by a band of hostile pagans. He had been waiting to meet with a confirmation class, and has since brought many more to faith, and left us a Germany (in spite of the Nazis) tied to the Christian West. The historian Christopher Dawson wrote that "he had a deeper influence on the history of Europe than any Englishman who ever lived." Barnabas the Apostle, originally a Cypriot Jew named Joseph, renamed by the apostles "son of encouragement" because he practiced his communism, sold his land, and turned the proceeds over to the community. We can hold him somewhat responsible for Saint Saul-Paul, for whom he vouched when nobody trusted him, for his having been a persecutor of the church. Not named to the apostleship by Jesus, the Church counts him an apostle because of his partnership with Paul. He went with Paul to Asia Minor on the first missionary journey and he and Paul together won the argument at the Council of Jerusalem, when it was decided that Gentile converts would not have to be circumcised or keep kosher. But he, like so many, argued and parted company with Paul, and went instead with John Mark to Cyprus, where he was martyred in the year 61.
Basil the Great was born about 329 in what is now northeastern Turkey, into a wealthy Christian family. But he wasn't baptized until the age of 28, and ordained a deacon soon after. His sister Macrina isn't nearly as famous as he, but she showed him the way: before Macrina and Basil, there were anchorites, but no monastics. She founded the first monastery for women and Basil followed her example and founded one for men. The Rule he wrote with Gregory Nazianzus changed monastic discipline to a life in community, and set the standard for all Eastern monasticism. Ordained presbyter in 364, he became a staunch warrior in theological battle, defending orthodoxy against the Arian heresy, which struggle culminated in the Nicene-Chalcedonian Creed we hold to still, 'though some folks chafe under it as if in a hair shirt. He was perhaps one of the first to actively campaign to be a bishop, now alas the accepted route. He was elected Bishop of Caesarea and Metropolitan of Cappadocia, but he died young, at the age of fifty, two years before the Second Ecumenical Council affirmed the Nicene faith. His wallet had apparently been baptized as well, for when he died he left Caesarea the wherewithall to build a new town on his estate, complete with housing, hospital, a church and hospice for travellers. A nice example for prosperous prelates. Mostly remembered for his Rule and his writings in theology, some of his most powerful writing is on social justice. Here is what he preached on the Parable of the Rich Fool:
"Who is the covetous person? One for whom plenty is not
enough. Who is the cheat? One who takes away what belongs
to everyone. And are you not covetous, are you not a
defrauder, when you keep for private use what you were given
for distribution? When some one strips a person of their
clothing we call them a thief, and one who might clothe the
naked and does not, should not they be given the same name?
The bread in your cupboard BELONGS to the hungry, the cloak
in your wardrobe BELONGS to the naked, the shoes you let
rot BELONG to the barefoot. The money in your bank account
BELONGS to the destitute. All you who might help, and do
not--to all these you are doing wrong. In other words, you
are committing as many injustices as there are things
you could give away."
A lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, saying "Teacher, what shall I
DO to inherit eternal life?" The televangelist
interrupted and said, You don't have to DO anything--just BELIEVE, pound
the Bible on your pulpit and BELIEVE. But the lawyer's question was "What
shall I DO", not "which creed shall I believe?" And Jesus said What you
have to do is LOVE. All the saints show us how to do that, with their
hearts, their bodies and their souls, their minds not least of all.
Joseph Butler was born in 1692 into a Presbyterian family, but in his
early twenties became an Anglican and was ordained in 1718. He was
appointed Bishop of Bristol. A scholar more than an administrator, he
declined the job of Archbishop of Canterbury, but accepted the bishopric of
Durham, and died June 16, 1752. He wrote "The Analogy of Religion, Natural
and Revealed," and has been called the greatest of all the thinkers of the
English church," his reputation grounded on his defense of orthodox
Christianity against the Deism so popular at the time in England and the
American colonies, and the real religion underneath the shams and
shibboleths of sects today. Although personally pious, he had no time
for Wesleyan "enthusiasts." Yet he was paired with John Wesley ( June 17th)
in the renewal of the English Church, in the calendar of its saints.
Wesley worked on its heart and Butler on its head. Both get star studded
crowns.
The saints hold up various aspects of the coming Reign of God, and it doesn't mean that one is greater than the other, or that they fail because they can't juggle all the balls at once. One star differs from another in its glory but saints usually manage to juggle more than can be reasonably expected.
And now we come to the great crowd of witnesses of Africa, the New Testament country of our times. June 3 we remember together the Martyrs of Uganda--thirty two Anglican and Roman Catholic youth, pages in the court of King Mwanga of Buganda, who their arms hacked off and then had them burned to death in 1886 after their conversion to the gospel and their refusal to be sexual slaves to the King. They went to their deaths singing "Daily, daily, sing to Jesus!" Uganda, evangelized by Africans, is now perhaps the most Christian nation in Africa. In the 1970's thousands of new martyrs joined them, including the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Janani Luwum, murdered by the dictator Idi Amin. June 16th is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the seven hundred martyrs of Soweto, in South Africa, the South West Township of apartheid racist infamy--most of them children peacefully demonstrating in refusal to government demands that they speak Afrikaans, the language of their white oppressors. Appropriately accompanying them on June 18th is Bernard Mizeki, born in Mozambique into a pagan family in 1861. He escaped to Capetown and was befriended and baptized there by Anglican missionaries in 1886. He became a volunteer catechist in Mashonaland, where there was much hostility against the Church as being an European institution allied with colonialism, which it was. During an uprising against colonial rule he was warned to flee but would not desert his catechumens and was stabbed to death in June of 1896. His body was never found, but the implements used to kill him have been enshrined as secondary relics, near the place of his martyrdom, and attract many pilgrims today. He is the chief patron of the Anglican Churches of South and Central Africa.
The earliest Church had a great power surge in Africa--remember that Paul and Barnabas were themselves the first missionaries went to Asia Minor, and thereafter North Africa was next: for Basil went to Egypt to learn monasticism, and teach it to the world. It is the fastest growing of our Churches today--with more Anglicans in Nigeria than in all of the United States.
There are more saints to be celebrated in the June harvest:
June 1 - Justin, martyr at Rome in 167 A.D. Presente!
June 2 -The Martyrs of Lyons, in 177 A.D. Presente!
June 3 - Angelo Roncalli, John XXIII, 1963 A.D. Presente!
June 6 - Philip the Deacon, lst century, Presente!
June 6 - Marcus Garvey, mentor of Panafricanism,1940.Presente!
June 7 - Seattle, Chief of the Duwamish, 1866 A.D. Presente!
June 8 - Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poet, 1889. Presente!
June 9 - Columba, Abbot of Iona, 597 A.D. Presente!
Aidan 651; Bede, 735; Presente!
June 10 - Margaret, Queen of Scotland, 1093, Presente!
June 10 - Deacon Ephrem of Edessa, 373 A.D. Presente!
June 12- Anne Frank, Witness of the Holocaust, 1945. Presente!
June 13 - Anthony of Padua, 1231. Presente!
June 14 - Basil, 379; Gregory of Nazianzus 389; Gregory of
Nyssa, 385. Presente!
June 16 - John Howard Griffin, 1980. Presente!
June 18 - Fortunatus, Philosopher, 569 A.D. Presente!
June 21 - Aloysius Gonzaga, 1591. Presente!
June 22 - Alban, first martyr of Britain, 304 A.D. Presente!
[June 23 - 1935 - birthday of Carlos Fonseca, first Sandinista]
June 25 - Philip Melanchthon, 1560, renewer of the church.
[Presentation of the Augsburg Confession, 1530 A.D.]
June 27 - Cyril of Alexandria. Presente!
[June 27 - 1986 The Hague Court declares U.S. guilty of
violating International Law for its aggression in Nicaragua]
June 28 - Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, c. 202 A.D. Presente!
And of course Red Letters Saints as well--the Nativity of Saint John
Baptist on the 25th, and SS Peter and Paul, Apostles, on he 29th. But
they will have their own serving of Grits on their own plates, later in the
month.
The saints answered the call of God with their whole lives--their hearts, souls, minds, and strength, their intellect, emotions, bodies and blood. They joined themselves to Jesus, our martyred Jewish Liberator, and when we join together in the sacred banquet, we break the bread of justice shared with them, and drink together from the cup of joy poured out for all the friends of God.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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