Lives of Saints and Anglican Worthies

Contents

• St. Blaise
• Pope St. Damascus
• St. David of Wales
• The Rev. Neal Dodd
• St. Chad of Lichfield
• St. Charles Stuart

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Pope St. Damasus, Bishop of Rome & Confessor (304-384 A.D.)

St. Damasus was born of Spanish parents living in Rome in 304, during the days of the fierce anti-Christian persecutions instigated by the Emperor Diocletian. His father was a priest in the city and saw that Damasus received the best education available. The young man developed his skills in grammar, rhetoric, and poetry but excelled in his knowledge of the Church’s Sacred Scripture. He was ordained to the diaconate by Pope Liberius and served as an ecclesiastical administrator and assistant to the Pope until Liberius’ death in 366. Damasus was elected to his place and was consecrated Bishop of Rome when he was 62 years old.

At the time the Church was in the midst of the turmoil instigated by Arius, the notorious heretic. From Egypt to England Arianism (the notion that our Lord was a "semi-divinity" but not fully God) threatened the peace and unity of the Church. St. Damasus vigorously led the attack against Arianism in Rome, calling several Councils which condemned the heresy, preaching against its errors and defending the truth. He worked closely with St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, to convene the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381. This Council (which issued the Nicene Creed in the form we use it today – well, for the most part, anyway) saw the defeat of Arianism. The next year Damasus called a Council of Italian Bishops to Rome to confirm the previous year’s acts. Attending the Council was a new Secretary to the Pope, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, known to us as the erudite but cantankerous St. Jerome. In addition to ratifying the actae of the Constantinoplian Council, the Bishop passed several canons (church laws) and resolutions of their own. One of these confirmed the listing of books they recognized as comprising the New Testament. Concerns were expressed at the Council about many difficulties in the text of the Latin Scriptures then in use and, as a result, Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, who had a well-deserved reputation as an expert Latinist, to oversee a new version of the Latin Bible. The project, which Jerome began in 382, was to occupy the next 23 years of his life.

Pope Damasus never saw the work completed. He died of a fever two years after setting Jerome to his great task.

To complete his work Jerome traveled extensively around the Mediterranean world, collecting and comparing tests, visiting scholars and, along the way, learning Hebrew! He finally settled in Bethlehem in 386, remaining there until his death in 420. The Latin Bible of St. Jerome, called nowadays the Vulgate, was the standard version of the Bible used by all western Christians for almost 1,000 years. It was the Bible of Pope St. Gregory, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Henry VIII (wherever he may now be). When King James 1,200 years later ordered the English translation of the Bible which often goes (improperly) by his name, he was following in the footsteps of Pope St. Damasus.

– Fr. Wilcox

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The Rev. Neal Dodd, Founding Rector of St. Mary of the Angels Church

Fr. Neal Dodd, the founding rector of St. Mary of the Angels Church, was born on September 6, 1878 in Fort Madison, Iowa. He attended Nashotah House, an Anglo-Catholic seminary in Wisconsin and, after his ordination, served cures in Indiana and Oregon before coming to Hollywood in 1917. Fr. Dodd came with the intention of ministering to people involved in the fledgling motion picture business, at a time when most Churches didn’t want to be involved with anyone who had anything to do with the "industry." He established his first mission in the back room of a storefront business on Vermont Avenue in 1918, and within a few years moved the congregation to a building on New Hampshire Boulevard, where the Lutheran church now stands. In the meantime, Fr. Dodd worked as a technical advisor to early filmmakers on matters of religion and, as he got to be known, found himself sought after by many to deal with weightier matters of faith and the spiritual life. In 1924 he was a founding member, along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplan, of the Motion Picture Relief Fund of America (which today runs to Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, a retirement center for those in the industry).

As his congregation grew plans were made for an ambitious building project – a new Church of St. Mary of the Angels, intended originally to take up the whole block on which our parish now stands. The original plans had to be laid aside following the stock-market crash of 1929, but Fr. Dodd saw what is now St. Mary’s completed in 1930, at a cost of just over $100,000.

Fr. Dodd shepherded the parish through thirty years of change – the Second World War, the economic bust of the Depression, and the boom of the 50's. But Fr. Dodd retained his friendships and ties in Hollywood’s movie industry. His role as technical advisor changed to one of actor. He appeared in more than 300 motion pictures between 1924 and 1951, always in the role of a clergyman. He was the priest who "married" Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in It Happened One Night and the Chaplain to the Senate in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Hollywood paid tribute to Fr. Dodd in a book written about him by Robert Wagner and Rupert Hughes, The Decades. Subscribers and sponsors of the book included Eddie Cantor, Frank Capra, Ronald Coleman, Cecil B. deMille, Sid Grauman, Al Jolson, Myrna Loy, Louella Parsons, David Selznick and Daryl Zanuck. They chose a most fitting epithet for the founder of our Parish. To them he was "the Padre of Hollywood." Fr. Dodd retired as rector of St. Mary’s in 1961, but lived right around the corner from the church. He died on May 26, 1966.

On May 26th each year, I celebrate a requiem for Fr. Dodd on the anniversary of his death. I hope you will join me for the Mass if you are able; if not, I hope you will remember Fr. Neal Dodd, the founding rector of our parish and the Padre of Hollywood, in your prayers. May he rest in peace.

- Fr. Wilcox

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The Royal Martyr - St. Charles Stuart

King Charles the Martyr was canonised by the Church of England, and is honoured as a martyr because he died for the Church. He was offered his life if he would abandon episcopacy but he refused for this would have taken the Church of England away from 'the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.’ So we venerate him for his sacrifice and see in it inspiration for us today. In the words of Dr. Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London from 1897-1901 and a noted ecclesiastical historian: ‘Had Charles been willing to abandon the Church and give up episcopacy, he might have saved his throne and his life. But on this point Charles stood firm: for this he died, and by dying saved it for the future.’

Immediately upon the Restoration of Church and King on 19th May, 1660, the Convocation of Canterbury and York, now being free to assemble and act, canonised King Charles and added his name to the Kalendar of Saints at the revision of The Prayer Book. It came into use with the authority of Church and State in 1662 and since that time parish churches and chapels have been dedicated under the title of St. Charles (often as King Charles the Martyr).

St. Charles is also honoured for his strong personal piety and for his protection and patronage of the Church. His reign saw the beginning of a revival of the Religious Life in the Church of England and the first attempt at Community Life (after the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII), which began at Little Gidding and was encouraged by St. Charles. Throughout his reign he continually sought to benefit the Church: the restoration and adornment of churches and cathedrals, the founding and advancement of charities, the improvement of the liturgy and the re-introduction of the episcopacy in Scotland. His reign witnessed, albeit briefly, a Golden Age for Anglicanism especially in spiritual and devotional writing which is still much appreciated today.

An Account of the Martyrdom of St. Charles

On the morning of 30th January, 1649 Charles awoke early and told his attendant Thomas Herbert, “this is my second marriage day. . . for before night I hope to be espoused to my blessed Jesus.”

The winter weather was so severe that the Thames had frozen over. The King was concerned that the cold would make him shiver giving the appearance of shaking with fear, so he asked as he was dressed to be provided with an extra shirt for warmth (one of these shirts is kept at Windsor Castle and the other at the Museum of London). William Juxon, Bishop of London, arrived to read Morning Prayer with the King and to administer the Sacrament. The Bishop read the lesson for the day, which was the account of the Passion of Christ. Charles thought that this passage had been especially chosen by the Bishop but was told that it was the proscribed lesson in the Prayer Book for that day. The King found this very reassuring. At ten o’clock Colonel Hacker told the King that it was time to leave for Whitehall. Charles, Juxon and Herbert were escorted on foot from S. James’ Palace. Two companies of infantry guarded the route. The party was led through the inside of several buildings to avoid the gathering crowds. They passed over the upper floor of the Holbein Gate from where Charles would have seen the scaffold below and then into the Banqueting House.

It was intended that the beheading should proceed immediately but the official executioner, Brandon, refused the task in horror. There followed a search to find someone to take his place. The identity of the man who finally wielded the axe remains a mystery, for he and his accomplice wore masks. About three hours had elapsed with cruelly Charles being kept waiting. It is sometimes suggested that the delay was caused by a last-minute sitting of Parliament to pass an Act prohibiting the proclamation of the Prince of Wales as King. However, this had been done the previous Saturday, and anyway, many members of the House had deemed it expedient to be absent from the City that day. The wait must have been extremely trying for the King but all those around him remarked on his calmness and composure.

Midday arrived and a meal was prepared for him, this he refused having resolved to take no food that day other than the Blessed Sacrament. Fearing that the lack of food and passing of time would cause the King to feel faint, Juxon persuaded Charles to eat just a little. He was presented with a small loaf of bread and a glass of claret; thus he had his Last Supper. He spent much time in prayer with the Bishop. Sometime after one o’clock all was ready on the scaffold.

The King emerged from the relative gloom of the Banqueting House, where many of the windows had been boarded up, to the brightness outside, where the sun had broken through the clouds. The street was packed. Ranks of soldiers, on foot and mounted, filled the area near the scaffold preventing any rescue attempt. The public were kept at a distance so that they could see and hear very little. The railings of the scaffold were hung with black drapery to obscure the view further. In the centre of the platform was a low billet of wood with attached ropes and staples in case the King resisted and needed to be secured to the block. A cheap deal coffin, which cost ‘but six shillings’ lay to one side with a black pall to cover it.

With Charles were Juxon, Colonel Tomlinson, Colonel Hacker, the two headsmen and two or three shorthand writers. To the witnesses Charles appeared to be fully confident. He had been denied the right to speak freely at his trial after the sentence was passed and although he realised that few would hear him he spoke to the crowds. He declared himself to be “an honest man, a good king and a good Christian” and that he had not begun the Civil War and that he considered his sentence illegal. He added though that he was receiving just punishment from God, a reference to his allowing the execution of Strafford earlier in his reign to placate the puritans, which he bitterly regretted and repented of. He said that his desire was for liberty, freedom and the rule of law and government and not for arbitrary rule; for all this, “I am a martyr of the people.” He concluded by saying, “I die a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England as I found it left to me by my father . . . I have a good cause and I have a gracious God.”

He then spoke words of forgiveness to the two headsmen and explained that he would give a signal when he was ready for the axe’s blow. Juxon helped the King to tuck his long hair into a cap so that it might not impede the axe. The Bishop said, “There is but one stage more which though turbulent and troublesome, yet is a very short one; you may consider that it will carry you a very great way; it will carry you from Earth to Heaven, and there you shall find to your great joy, the prize you hasten to; a Crown of Glory.” Charles replied, “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.” He then passed his George to Juxon and said, “Remember!” Charles stood for a moment in silent prayer, then lay down with his head on the block.

After a few seconds of prayer he stretched out his hands as the sign. The ‘bright axe’ flashed and at one blow Charles’s head was severed from his body. Contemporary accounts record that a great groan went up from the crowd. One of the headsmen held up the blessed martyr’s head and against custom, did so in silence. Sir William Sanderson, who was a witness, recorded that the fatal blow was struck within a minute to two o’clock.

- from the website of the Society of King Charles the Martyr
found at www.skcm.org/SCharles/scharles_main.html
St. Mary’s has a stained-glass window dedicated to St. Charles. Can you find it?

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St. Blaise, Bishop & Martyr

The ninth-century martyrologies of Europe in their lists, give on 15 February the name of St. Blasius, Bishop of Sebaste and Martyr. The historical notices concerning him in the above-mentioned martyrologies rest on the legendary Acts.

All the statements agree that St. Blasius was Bishop of Sebaste in Armenia and most of the accounts place his martyrdom in the reign of Licinius (about 316). According to the legend Blasius was a physician at Sebaste before he was raised to the episcopal see. At the time of the persecution under Licinius he was taken prisoner at the command of the governor, Agricolaus. The hunters of the governor found him in the wilderness in a cave to which he had retired and while in prison he performed a wonderful cure of a boy who had a fishbone in his throat and who was in danger of choking to death. After suffering various forms of torture St. Blasius was beheaded; the Acts relate also the martyrdom of seven women.

The veneration of the saint was brought at an early date into Europe, as is shown by the recitals in the historical martyrologies of the ninth century; so that Blasius became one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. Most probably one ground was that according to the legend he was a physician and wonderful cures were ascribed to him; for this reason the faithful sought his help and intercession when ill. Numberless churches and altars were dedicated to him and many localities (Taranto, Ragusa, the Abbey of St. Blasius in the Black Forest) possess some of his relics. He was also one of the Fourteen Holy Martyrs.

In many places on the day of his feast the blessing of St. Blasius is given: two candles are consecrated, generally by a prayer, these are then held in a crossed position by a priest over the heads of the faithful or the people are touched on the throat with them. In other places oil is consecrated in which the wick of a small candle is dipped and the throats of those present are touched with the wick. At the same time the following blessing is given: "Per intercessionem S. Blasii liberet te Deus a malo gutteris et a quovis alio malo" (May God at the intercession of St. Blasius preserve you from throat troubles and every other evil). In some dioceses is added: "in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus" and the priest makes the sign of the cross over the faithful. He is represented holding two crossed candles in his hand (the Blessing of St. Blasius), or in a cave surrounded by wild beasts, as he was found by the hunters of the governor.

- from the Catholic Encyclopedia (online)

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ST. CHAD OF LICHFIELD   

Chad was one of four holy brothers, all of whom became priests, whereof two were advanced to the episcopate, namely, holy Chad himself and his elder brother Saint Cedd. Chad was at first Abbot of the monastery called Lastingham, in the Wolds of Yorkshire, and a man holy and lowly, well read in the Scriptures, and a diligent practiser of what he hearnt therefrom. Wherefore Wini, Bishop of the West Saxons, at the desire of King Oswy, ordained him Bishop of York. Being so consecrated, he set himself to look to the orthodoxy and clean living of the clergy, to seek after lowliness, self-control, and learning; and to make a visitation of the towns, country, cottages, hamlets, and castles, that he might preach the Gospel therein; going always not on horseback, but on foot, after the fashion of the Apostles. Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, took Bishop Chad to task as though he had not been rightly consecrated. To whom he answered: If thou knowest that I have not rightly been made a bishop, I willingly lay down mine office; neither did I ever deem myself fit to hold it; but when I was commanded, I took it, for obedience’s sake. Theodore marvelled at his lowliness, and made him Bishop of the Mercians and of Lindisfarne in the which office he strove to do his duty in great perfection of life, after the ensample of our ancient Fathers. When the hour of his death drew near, he exhorted the brethren who stood by the keep love and peace with each other and with all the faithful of the monastic life. His sickness increasing, he made him ready to depart by receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord; and on the seventh day his soul went away to be in gladness for ever. He died at his own See City of Lichfield, on March 2 , 672.

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ST. DAVID OF WALES

Holy David, Patron of Wales, is one of the most celebrated of the British Saints. But in the absence of authentic records, there now remaineth of his life little more than the glorious memory of his holiness and of his labours amongst the Welsh peoples. For much of what hath come down to us concerning him is the invention of pious affection, in an attempt to make manifest his greatness of mind and soul. He lived in the latter part of the sixth century, and is said to have been the son of a Welsh chieftain. He was ordained priest, and studied for a while, perhaps on the Isle of Wight, under the direction of a disciple of that Saint Germanus who later became Bishop of the Isle of Man. Thereafter David was a most active missionary, and taught the Faith and built churches in very many places. Finally he settled in the southwest corner of Wales, at Menevia, and founded a monastery, wherein he and his monks lived a life of extreme austerity, in imitation of the cenobites   of the Thebaid. And because they never drank anything stronger than water, Saint David got the nickname of Waterman. There is an old story that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and that he was there consecrated Archbishop of Wales by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. However it may have happened, it is certain that he was made Bishop of Menevia, which same was afterwards called Saint David’s in his honour, and was the chief See of Wales. His death is supposed to have occurred that the year 601. Giraldus saith that he was a great ornament and example to his age, and that he continued his rule as bishop until he was a very old man, when he went to God. In 1398, Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury ordered his feast kept throughout his province of the Church.