From St Gregory on the Caelian

A tablet in the forecourt of San Gregorio al Celio records the following saints and worthies who came from this place in the days of its first flowering, after St Gregory turned his family home into a monastery (originally dedicated to St Andrew, to whom St Gregory had a great devotion - hence the naming of St Andrew in the Embolism at Mass):

• St Gregory himself, founder and father of the monastery;
• St Eleutherius, abbot;
• Hilarion, abbot;
• St Augustine, Apostle of the English;
• St Lawrence, Archbishop of Canterbury;
• St Mellitus, Bishop of London and soon afterward Archbishop of Canterbury;
• St Justus, Bishop of Rochester (Roffensis);
• St Paulinus, Archbishop of York;
• St Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse;
• SS Antonius, Merulus and John, monks;
• St Peter, Abbot of Canterbury;
• Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury;
• Merinianus, Archbishop of Ravenna;
• Probus, custodian of the house of pilgrims (curator xenodochii) at Jerusalem, chosen by St Gregory;
• Sabinus, Bishop of Callipolis;
• Felix, Bishop of Messina;
• Gregory, Cardinal Deacon of St Eustachius.

• Here also lived for a long time the mother of St Gregory, St Silvia.

Most of these men were sent on the English Mission - or should we call it, as the Anglicans mocked at English Catholics in recent centuries, the Italian Mission?

St Augustine of Canterbury and his monks preach the Gospel to King Ethelbert of Kent.

So the Church in England, which converted the pagan Angles, Jutes and Saxons, was Roman as Rome itself... none of these men forswore the Faith, broke with the Pope, reviled the Roman Mass, rejected the Saints, married against the canons of the Western Church, nor chose Caesar over God. Let Anglicans attend to this lesson: the witness of the first millennium of Christianity in England is against them.

St Andrew's on the Cælian

From various references I've read, it turns out that the monastery of St Gregory (originally called St Andrew's, but renamed after him who set it up) on the Cælian Hill, where I will be staying while in the Eternal City, is the selfsame monastery where monks from Monte Cassino took refuge when turfed out by the rampaging Lombards, and the very house from which came St Augustine of Canterbury and his little band, who were sent forth by St Gregory to convert the English. Amazing.

In a very real sense, I will be returning to the place of my remote origins - insofar as most of my ancestors (but for an Irishwoman, a Manxman, and a German, all far off on one side of the family tree), Scottish and English, owe their faith in Christ to the labours, fourteen hundred years ago, of those saintly men of God who evangelized the pagan Angles and Saxons.

St Augustine of Canterbury and Companions, pray for us.

St Augustine of Canterbury

By my schedule, I will be driving to Queenstown soon...

The Church bids us celebrate the feast of St Augustine (but not that wonderful Father and Doctor, that loving and lovable saint, beloved of the Middle Ages, by too many to-day rejected as cold) - the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury, sent to Kent by Pope St Gregory the Great, the Apostle of the English, and there received with joy by King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha; as the Pope commanded him, he converted the pagan Angles and Saxons (among them my ancestors) to Christianity, and established bishoprics to care for them, among them the metropolitical see of Canterbury, the capital of the Kingdom of Kent, of which he was the first shepherd.

As is too well known, some thousand years passed, and wicked kings and queens (all too likely, it is feared, thus to have perished in hell) dragged England away from true Christian belief into a perverted Erastian cult, whose chief marks are confusion in doctrine and practice, love of pretence (with purported priests, priestesses and even an Archdruid of Canterbury) and a misguided pride in itself - whereas, as St Edmund Campion made plain to the raw Anglicans of his day, all their fathers, bishops, saints and men of old do testify against them that they were loyal sons of Rome, rejoicing in the truth, and no Protestant mob, deceived and deceiving.

Pray for illumination of the intellect and inspiration of the will by the Holy Ghost, at the intercession of St Augustine of Canterbury, of all Saints of England, and of Our Lady of Walsingham, ut unum sint.

(I would blog on the Collect of to-day, but have not time now: it too recalls God's making use of St Augustine to bring the pagan English the light of true faith, and prays that all who wander in error may be reunited in one Church.)

Since I'm in N.Z., and here Anglicanism was brought also, pray likewise for these folk who strive to follow the Gospel such as they know it - I saw in the newspaper a few days ago some foolish man describing himself as a "Christian agnostic" - and he was a retired Anglican cleric of some standing! He had been speaking at the graduation ceremony of the University of Otago, telling the graduands to query all, and accept no Bible, Koran or Pope as sure judge of truth: what a vile liberal madness, complete with anti-Catholic jibe. Pray for him!

And after the example of his great namesake, Augustine of Hippo, let us pray Christ to stir up love and true charity in our hearts, that we be rekindled, and rekindle the flame of fire in others.