The Solemnity of the Patron of the Grand Priory was celebrated with joy and pomp in a High Mass (OF) at Warwick Street, the celebrant being Fr Michael Lang of the Oratory, assisted by Fathers Stephen Morrison OPraem and Gary Dench. The music was sublime, under the direction of Toby Ward.
We are delighed to publish below the meditation upon one of Blessed Adrian's maxims, preached by Fr Stephen.
Fr Stephen will also be preaching for the Blessed David Gunson pilgrimage on Monday, to which people are encouraged to come (Our Lady of la Salette Bermondsey, 6pm, Monday 12th July).
Bd Adrian Fortescue, Patron of the Grand Priory of England
“Obey well the good Kirk, and thou shalt fare the better.”
- Bd. Adrian Fortescue, collected proverbs.
Although today is a feast for all of us, whatever our level of association with the Order of St John, it is a particular patronal solemnity for those members of the First and Second Classes, all those on the roll of the Grand Priory, since it is of the Grand Priory that Blessed Adrian is principal patron. Along with the sacrifices commemorated this month of the Venerable Sir Thomas Dingley and the Blessed David Gunson, we remember with pride the sons of this country who exchanged an earthly for a heavenly crown as members of the Order, all of them good servants of the Crown, but God’s servants first and foremost. Blessed Adrian died because he preferred “to obey God” rather than compromise his Catholic faith. Since Knights of Justice, and Knights and Dames in Obedience, have in common either the vow or the promise of obedience, it seems right to meditate this evening on that Evangelical Counsel, especially in the light of the palm of martyrdom. For those of us who have made a vow of that counsel, on this your solemnity, I pray that the words of Blessed Adrian scribbled at the end of a volume written in his own hand seven years before his death, may inspire you today: “Obey well the good Kirk, and thou shalt fare the better.” Taking a look again at his collection of proverbs, there are many that are wonderful. I suggest that this one - “be blythe at thy meat, and devout at thy Mass” - is one that you already keep rather well! And just as I do not reproach any of you of any lack either of blitheness or devotion, neither do intend a sermon on a martyr’s obedience to be a reproach to any of you. Far from it. No sooner do we examine the notion of holy obedience than we realise that all of us, daily, are disobedient…even though we try to obey God, our superiors, and legitimate authority, we so easily fall into sin. As my novice master told me, the conventual life will hopefully keep you poor, and chaste, to a far greater degree than if you were in the world. What it cannot make you is obedient. Obedience is tough. Those of you in vows, and those of you in obedience, stand to gain a great deal from our confrere Blessed Adrian’s intercession, who urges us with a smile to obey well the good Church, that we may fare the better for it.
Before examining the virtue of obedience, let us remember that, one thing that makes it easier is precisely our conventual life, in whatever form that takes. We obey God and our superior together. Yes, only I am responsible for my own will, my own decisions, my own free choices. But this virtue is not lived individually, but collectively. Obedience makes collective existence possible and indeed fruitful. We will see how it brings freedom, the freedom to choose God above all else as the martyrs did, but it is a collective freedom, one which brings a common purpose, a common peace, and a common good. So, together with Adrian, Thomas and David, our saintly confreres, let us seek and find that purpose, that peace, that good.
“Obey.” Obedience is at the heart of the life of the Trinity – because the Son obeys the Father. St Paul reminds us that Christ was humbler yet, “obediens usque ad mortem,” when He embraced the Cross to accomplish the Father’s plan of salvation. Every martyr adds his own blood to Christ’s when he walks the via crucis to martyrdom. How proud we are that this via crucis was on our streets: the way to Tower Hill became Adrian’s and Thomas’ climb to Calvary Hill, and the way to the famous pilgrims’ “stopping point” of St Thomas Waterings became the “statio ad Crucem” for Blessed David (come with us on Monday to retrace this latter sorrowful and glorious way). Obediens usque ad mortem. Our Beatus was obedient to the Good Church, because he was united with Christ in His obedience to the Father, led on that way by the Spirit. Let the Holy Ghost then so inspire us, who carry the white Cross of the Order, to place our footsteps in those of Christ’s, and to climb Calvary’s hill ourselves, wherever that may be. It will be the greatest honour of our chivalry to walk in the train of the King of Kings, following the supreme witness of our confrere who once waited on and fought for an earthly Prince, and learned to do the same for the Prince of Peace.
The “Good Kirk” reminds us that there was also a bad one – the pretence of the monarch in the Act of Supremacy rendered sour the once loyal and most Petrine of churches, cutting it off from that lifeline which is communion with the Holy See. The Good Kirk, the Church of God, is that which is faithful to the deposit of Faith, and united to Peter. And this faith of Blessed Adrian in obedience to the Church was not dependent on who precisely it was who occupied the chair of the prince of the Apostles: Paul III was no saint; he had five children by his mistress, and there is a famous portrait of him and his grandchildren by Titian! It might be easy to mock, but the Farnese at least had a catholic understanding of family planning (!) and it was Paul III who bravely issued the two excommunications of King Henry VIII, the first having been suspended in the wise hope of his repentance, failing which the second was then issued. It was the principle, not the persons, which mattered; the office, not the particular office-holder. The Pope was the Pope, and the King’s good Majesty was that of the Lord’s Anointed – even “Defender of the Faith” at one stage – but when the Pope’s spiritual and temporal authority in this realm was seized by the King, a faithful Catholic had no option but to obey God over the King. Obedience, dear brethren, is to legitimate authority. Pilate was told by Christ that he would not have authority, were it not given to him by above. Our Blessed Lord did not deny even Pilate’s right to execute the death penalty, as legitimate (though resented) authority in that place – but he made clear the injustice of His own condemnation as King of the Jews: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” And Blessed Adrian faced the dilemma of those who love this realm, but seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. Obey well the good Kirk, and thou shalt fare the better. I wonder whether, before his execution, the martyr thought of this proverb he had recorded several years earlier, with a wry smile… was this faring better? The martyr, by a special grace, knows that it is indeed to fare better to die for Christ in obedience to him. It was the same grace that made Sir Thomas More regret the clemency of death by beheading rather than the passion of Tyburn, and wish it otherwise for himself and for his children. “How sweet would be our children’s fate, if they, like them, could die for Thee.” I think Blessed Adrian would have received that same grace of courageous submission to the will of God in faith and obedience.
“Faring better.” Submission of one’s will to the Will of God is a fiat which, like Our Blessed Lady’s, renders us free, and ostensibly so. Obedience brings freedom, not chains. There is a difference between genuine liberty and license, as we know – the former is a virtue, the latter a real enslavement. The obedience of those in the Grand Priory, whether by vow or by promise, gives you the freedom to serve, and to serve above all else. We are commanded to love, but we have volunteered to serve. The feudal obedience of serfdom leaves no personal choice to those recruited, leaving room for the ego to grow, but not for the soul to flourish; the chivalrous obedience of the religious means the channelling of one’s will towards God, the source and goal of its flourishing; as our prayer has it, “may I forget myself, and love God more.” This is a loving service which can be summed up in the word “friendship.” Our Lord says, I call you servants no longer, I call you friends.” Our obedience gives us this intimacy with God, where we truly find Him, and His Will, and truly find ourselves, having placed our wayward will under the harness of his Providence. And since “greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends,” we can see that friendship with God leads to that loving devotion to God’s own – friendship in our common obedience with our confreres, and friendship with the poor and the sick. Blessed Adrian knew that fiat, and lived it to the end.
Finally: Friendship, service, chivalry, these all seem like a young man’s ideals. But our martyr was a full 57 years old when he joined the Order, and 62 when he died. We’re never “past it” to do the right thing. He went up to the Altar of God, the God who gave joy to his youth – and indeed, he looks remarkably young in his iconography; whether this is the result of graceful ageing and good genes, or whether it is the artist’s way of showing a sort of timeless holiness, I leave to you to decide. But I think that, reading the accounts of their deaths, many martyrs who face the scaffold later in life seem to bounce with the energy of the young, and radiate a youthful holiness, God restoring in them the joy of their youth – perhaps there is something of the Holy Innocents in all God’s martyrs, the babes and sucklings in whose mouths, the psalmist says, God has found praise to foil his enemies. “My beloved comes, leaping over the mountains like a gazelle, like a young stag,” as we read in the Song of Songs. We are never too old to further our conversion, to further our progress in obedience. To say we are “past changing” or “past improving” is the lament of the coward, and it is not worthy of a Christian, let alone a Knight of the Order of St John.
So let us be rejuvenated tonight, by our Confrere’s example and merits. By his prayers, may the Grand Priory flourish. May our obedience, in imitation of Christ’s own obedience to the Father, make progress along the way of perfection. Together, may we seek and find a common purpose, a common peace, and a common good. May we discern the limits of temporal authority, so as to obey heavenly authority with a good conscience. May we find in our obedience that liberty and that friendship which was the special virtue of Blessed Adrian and a grace which led him to victory. And may our promise of fidelity to Christ in His “Good Kirk” mean that we indeed ‘fare the better’, usque ad mortem in this life, and eternally with the Saints in the next.
Blessed Adrian Fortescue, Pray for us.
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