Cardinal Basil Hume; Homily, St Philip Howard
St Philip Howard
Homily of Cardinal Basil Hume OSB
on the 25th anniversary of the canonisation of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales and the 400th anniversary of St Philip Howard's martyrdom.
Arundel Cathedral 25 October 1995 It is a moving experience to meet and speak with someone who has been imprisoned and tortured, because of that person's faith. There are many of these in Eastern Europe, for example. I remember one such meeting.
It was the serenity of the man that struck me. He was courageous, free, at peace. I knew that I was in the presence of true greatness. Had it not been for the fear of embarrassing a humble man, I would have gone down on my knees out of respect for one who had known the martyr's experience. It is with such thoughts in my mind that I approach my task here today-with awe and admiration.
We are recalling the memory of a great man, St Philip Howard. In so doing I trust that we shall be inspired to be, like him, devoted followers of Christ, prepared to die for our faith, if called upon to do so.
St Philip was one of over 350 persons who died for their faith in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He belongs to that special group, the Forty Martyrs, whose feast we celebrate today, October 25th. It is twenty-five years ago this very day that St Philip and his 39 companions were canonised in St Peter's by Pope Paul VI. It is four hundred years ago this month that Philip died - Sunday 19 October 1595 - at 12 noon to be precise.
He had been a prisoner in the Tower for just over ten years. He was 38 years old. I do not think it necessary to dwell at length on the biographical details of this saint. They will be well known in this diocese, and in any case there is the admirable brochure entitled Saint Philip Howard-his life and times written by Cecil Kerr. My task is to reflect in your presence on certain details of the saint's life and to draw conclusions to help me and, I trust you as well, to be better and more dedicated followers of Christ.
As he was dying, Philip prayed. From time to time he said these words: "O Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Jesus spoke these words as he was dying on the cross. These are golden words for they express at once a child-like trust - "into thy hands" - and total acceptance of God's will-"I commend my spirit."
When condemned to death in 1589 Philip showed that cheerful embracing of God's will which was such a characteristic of all our English martyrs. Philip waited for his execution to take place. It never did. Why? The Queen, Elizabeth, never signed the death warrant. Philip, remarkably, was never told. So he expected each day to be his last. He lived every hour the martyr's cheerful and courageous acceptance of death.
We read:"not a bell sounded, but it might be his knell; not a footstep was heard, but it might be the messenger of death. Each morning, as he rose, he knew not but that, before night, he might be a headless corpse; each night, as he lay his head upon his pillow, he was uncertain whether the morning might not summon him to another world." Acceptance of God's will and the desire to do his will, at whatever the cost, there is the secret of holiness.
Philip's holiness was the result of his prayer-life and of his suffering. These two, prayer and suffering, conform us best to him who prayed: "Father, let this chalice pass from me, but not my will but thine be done... Into thy hands, Father, I commend my spirit." Suffering detaches us from making life in this world, with all its attractions, our only objective; prayer attaches us to God who increasingly becomes the ultimate reason of all our human endeavour.
A virtuous life had not always been characteristic of Philip Howard. The change came in 1581 when he had been present at a disputation between some Protestant theologians and Edmund Campion. After listening to Campion he realised increasingly that he must embrace the Catholic faith, and change his way of living. His intention was to leave the country and live abroad. It was this plan that began the process of his being imprisoned in the Tower with all the suffering and deprivation that this involved.
He had been betrayed. He was arrested not long after his ship set sail from Littlehampton.
His life had been a frivolous one both at Cambridge and at Court where he was a favourite of the Queen. It was, however, his neglect of his wife that troubled him most, as he looked back on his life and examined his conscience. He had married young, too young, even in an age when betrothals and marriages occurred in the early teens of a young person's life, or even before. But he had ill-treated Anne Dacre, his wife since 1569.
Allow me a word about that remarkable woman. Her biography, written by the priest who had been her chaplain, tells the story of a woman of great spiritual maturity.
Her life was a long one. She died at the age of 74. In addition to the neglect by her husband in the early years of her marriage, she had to suffer being parted from him when the time of reconciliation had come and both were leading lives of heroic sanctity. Anne had to suffer, too, from the dislike the Queen had for her and the petty persecutions she had to endure in consequence. I believe that Anne herself achieved the highest degree of sanctity even if this has not been officially recognised by the church.
It was the courage and goodness of these two, Philip and Anne, which impressed me most when I read the accounts of their lives. I was, of course, impressed too by their steadfast adherence to their Catholic faith. There was a toughness of spirit which was characteristic of the martyrs and recusants of that time, a toughness we should, in our day, try to recapture-a toughness tempered by truth and charity.
One day Philip scratched into a wall of his cell these words: "Quanto plus afflictiones pro Christo in hoc saeculo, tanto plus gloriae cum Christo in futuro" - 'the more affliction we endure for Christ in this world, the more glory we shall obtain with Christ in the next' (cf. Rom 8).
We need sometimes to write out our prayers. The exercise enables mind and heart to concentrate on the words of the prayer. The writing is a way of overcoming whatever doubts, darkness or depressions may be lurking within us. It is a way of saying: "Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief." Perhaps Philip felt that need, as other saints have done.
We are told that a serious prayer life will often - indeed perhaps always - include periods of dryness and darkness. These are necessary to ensure that our prayer is made for God's sake, so to speak, and not for our own satisfaction.
Nonetheless, Philip must also have experienced the delights of prayer, I mean those moments of joy, which are the fruit of years of fidelity to it. We read about the amount of time Philip devoted to prayer and we know what prayers he said. What he experienced through and beyond the words and thoughts of these prayers, we do not know. We are just told: "his knees were grown very hard and black. " (Life p. l09) He must, I suspect, have already been at home in another world, a courtier in a different kingdom.
To prayer Philip added fasting and almsgiving, the traditional companions of prayer. He lived in prison saying "yes" to God and "no" to himself-generous to others, hard on himself. It was so of Anne his wife too.
Saints set standards, ones too far out of reach for us, unless prompted and helped by God's grace. They show us what is important, and we do our best not to fall too far behind.
On 25th October 1970 the Basilica of St.Peter's, Rome, had become for that day an English parish church. We sang English hymns, we met friends from different parts of the country, we held our heads high, proud to belong to a church which had been blessed with so many martyrs. We all had our favourites. For me there were the Benedictines, Alban Roe and Ambrose Barlow, and the heroic women, Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line and Margaret Ward, and inevitably, lots of Howards to rejoice and honour St. Philip.
But we were not arrogant. We knew that in Queen Mary's reign others had had their martyrs too. Tudor days were indeed violent ones. We had also heard Pope Paul VI speak of our Anglican friends as belonging to a sister church. We were proud of our Catholic past; proud, too, of our Catholic faith, but there was another task to be undertaken, namely to pray and work for Christian unity. It is thus today.
St Philip has reminded us that growth in personal holiness is the necessary condition for us to become instruments fit to do God's work-prayer, fasting, almsgiving, a constant saying "yes" to God with a measure of "no" to ourselves.
Above all we must pray for the grace to be steadfast in our Catholic faith, and proud to profess it.
