I take this occasion to raise the question of the honouring of those blessed souls in the Anglican Church who were clearly saints to their people: how are they to be remembered by those who enter the Ordinariates or by those who find other ways to carry on.
Today is not the Anglican Feast Day of Mother Cecile, but I decided to let my focus fall on her by way of underlining the significant number of Anglican holy souls who laboured in the Vineyard of the Lord in Africa.
If a nation can remember its war dead with ceremony and the heart-rending declaration "We will remember them." then surely something should be done so that we remember with even greater devotion those soldiers in the Lord's own armies without whose labour for Christ we should not be where we are today in the arms of the Saviour.
Do not the martyrs of our own era especially deserve recollection, and should we not call on them for their prayers? Manche Masemola, pray for us! Janani Luwum, pray for us!
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A few quotations from the sainted Mother Cecile of Grahamstown:
"Nothing helps one so much
as to fix one's mind on Christ
and let Him teach one how,
from the Manger to the Cross,
Incarnate Love gave to the uttermost.
"If we look long enough at that great fact,
the nails may still be iron,
but there comes the grace and strength
not to wish to come down
from our own cross."
Mother Cecile of Grahamstown
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| Mother Cecil, pray for us. |
"We must never forget
that Our Blessèd Lord Himself
first looked out in human form
upon this world of ours
in the face of a little child;
and we want to nurture and train
his children for Him,
that their life and their work here on earth
may be a steadfast looking up
to the Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ. "
Mother Cecile of Grahamstown
The Sisters of the Community
Of the Resurrection of Our Lord
Remembered: 20 February
South Africa
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