The start of every summer is chock-full of feasts, and this week is no different. Just the other week we celebrated St Alban, the first martyr of this land, and SS John Fisher and Thomas More — albeit on the Cambridge date. Today, having gone through the first, and the (perhaps!) most glorious, we reach the last English martyr: St Oliver Plunkett.

Claiming St Oliver as the last English martyr is, perhaps, a little controversial — he was actually Irish, and ended his life as the Archbishop of Armagh. All the same, it was London’s soil that he consecrated with his blood. In a funny way, he owed his vocation to our own St Philip, who so loved the English mission, even though he was born thirty years after St Philip’s death: it was a Father of the Roman Oratory, Fr Pierfrancesco Scarampi, who had been sent by the Pope on a mission to Ireland, and on his return journey took back with him to Rome a small group of would-be seminarians, among them a young Oliver.

He was ordained priest in Rome in 1654, but he could not return to Ireland: it was too dangerous. This was the time of the Commonwealth, and Cromwell’s forces were particularly brutal towards Catholics. Nevertheless, in late 1669 he was appointed Archbishop of Armagh. The Restoration of the monarchy had seemed to bring with it religious toleration, and so he returned. He found a flock waiting to be sent a shepherd. Although his predecessor had been in office for twelve years, he had only been able to spend two periods of a couple of years in his diocese before being expelled from the country. St Oliver was a good shepherd to his people. He reformed the clergy, set up a Jesuit school, and confirmed 48,000 people in the course of just four years. 

All great persecutions go out with a bang, and the suffering of the Church after the Reformation was no different. Like a new Persecution of Diocletian, the carnage unleashed by the calumnious ‘Popish Plot’ saw a new series of martyrs, last of whom was St Oliver Plunkett. He was a shepherd of souls to the last, even administering the Last Rites to the Archbishop of Dublin as he lay dying in the cell next to St Oliver’s. He was brought to London to be tried in Westminster Hall, the site of St Thomas More’s trial almost 150 years earlier, where he was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered for the crime of “promoting the Roman religion”.

What a grace it is that we live in a place and a time where we can practice our religion freely — where our priests and bishops can minister to us without hindrance. Not least it means we don’t have to join a queue of 48,000 when we wish to be confirmed! But every Sunday, after Benediction, we pray not just that we might be able to be Catholics, but for the conversion of England back to the faith of our fathers. We don’t do this out of a strange kind of pining for medieval England. We do it because we believe wholeheartedly that we have Good News to share with everyone, the Good News of Jesus Christ risen from the dead. God has greatly blessed us in granting us the grace of being Catholics, of being able to come to Mass and receive his sacraments. But that enormous privilege is not just for us. We must share it with others, by our lives, by our example of love, by our prayer. Don’t forget the example of St Thérèse, now the patron saint of missionaries, who never left her Carmel, but helped the missionaries by praying. Pray for England, through the intercession of St Oliver and all the English Martyrs. 

St Paul once stood by while St Stephen was stoned for his faith in Christ and “entirely approved of the killing,” but then became the great Apostle to the Gentiles. Let us pray that England, which once entirely approved of St Oliver’s martyrdom, may return to the faith which Saints Peter and Paul brought to the Eternal City, and which St Gregory sent St Augustine to bring to this land. The Good News of Jesus Christ is not something just for Mass on a Sunday. It is something transformative, something which our holy martyrs loved so much that they laid down their lives rather than give it up. By God’s mercy, we aren’t asked to make that choice today — but we are asked to share the graces we have received, to build up God’s Church for his greater glory.

On Monday we celebrated the feast of St Thomas More (together with St John Fisher of course), those great defenders of the Catholic Faith in this land. I have on my desk a little card with words attributed to More: “Thank you, dear Jesus, for all you have given me, for all you have taken away from me, for all you have left me.” It is always remarkable that the saints, even in the midst of dungeon, fire, and sword, are able to lift up their hearts with joy and with gratitude.

Gratitude is so entirely capital in our Christian life — in our prayer and in our outlook. When we think of holiness, of our following of the Good Lord, we often think of heroic sacrifices, extraordinary acts of charity, or dramatic moments of courage, but the saints teach us that gratitude is key: we cannot love, or be loved, without being thankful for it. And it is gratitude that is absolutely necessary if we are to be happy and to be holy — it is rather difficult to be thankful and bitter at the same time. Gratitude is the great tonic to all those thoughts and attitudes that act as such a poison to Christian charity and joy. If we really do count our blessings each day then we find it very much harder indeed to be consumed by envy or greed.

Every day at Vespers the whole Church sings the great Magnificat of Our Lady: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” When the Blessed Virgin reflects on God’s working in her life it is not with worry about the future or complaints about the present (or the past!). She begins with thanksgiving and with gratitude and she sees everything in the light of what God has done. The Magnificat is not simply a hymn of praise. It is a lesson in perspective.

We live in an age that is very good at noticing what is wrong — think of all those news websites with their ‘sidebars of shame’ with the latest moral or fashion failing of public figures. For our own lives too of course: we can wake up in a bad mood and easily spend the day ruminating on our disappointments and perceived slights, our wounds whether real or imagined. But it doesn’t have to be like that; we can choose joy instead.

St Thérèse wrote: “All is grace.” And she wrote that amidst illness and approaching death whilst yet so young. God’s gifts are everywhere, that is what she had learnt so perfectly. There is something similar in St Francis of Assisi. Towards the end of his life, weakened by illness and nearly blind, he composed the Canticle of the Creatures, praising God for “Brother Sun”, “Sister Moon”, but also for “Sister Bodily Death”. We can, and must, be thankful even when it takes much more effort to be so — maybe it is precisely when it is harder that the change of perspective it brings is most powerful. Every Mass is a school of gratitude too — ‘eucharist’ means thanksgiving after all. We bring to the Lord all that we have received from him and he returns it transformed and sanctified.

Oxford, perhaps more than many places, reminds us of this. This is a city of comings and goings. At this time of year we say goodbye to students who have become familiar faces in our parish and then in a few months’ time we shall welcome new faces, and the steady stream of summer tourists who wander into our churches seeking beauty, history, shade from the sun, but whom we hope will find something more and Someone Else. Amidst transition and change, the instinct of us all is to focus on the loss, but gratitude reminds us that God’s work is never done; that he and the Father are always at work; it is in allowing ourselves to recognise his gifts and rejoice in them that we see him so very much more clearly — magnified and magnificent.