Original photo of St Charles Lwanga
Today in Ireland we celebrate the feast of St Charles Lwanga and his companions, the martyrs of Uganda. We are a day out from the rest of the Church because on the 3rd June we mark the memorial of St Kevin of Glendalough, so St Charles has been moved.
Charles is a saint to whom devotion should be growing, a young man whose witness is of profound relevance to all Christians in these times. You know his story: he and a number of companions, all men and servants of Mwanga, the king of Bukanda, were martyred by their king when they refused to participate in homosexual activities with him. Indeed, they reminded him that such acts were morally wrong. For their heroic stance he had some hacked to death, and others burned alive.
St Charles was in charge of the pages of the royal court, and he heroically protected them from the evil desires of the king. He led many of them into the Church, and in the hours before their martyrdom, he baptised the catechumens among them in preparation for their deaths. He was not the protomartyr of the group, but for his heroism his name heads the list.
A year or so ago I discovered that there was a photograph of many of these martyrs with other Catholics with two missionary priests who ministered to them, St Charles included. So above you will see a original photograph of St Charles himself - he looks like a capable and strong young man, indeed a pure soul. See the full photo here with the martyrs marked.
I first discovered the martyrs of Uganda in my teens, and have had a bit of devotion to them. Of the group St Charles and St Matthias Kalemba have interested me the most - their stories are fascinating, particularly St Matthias' journey to the Catholic faith. When in Rome I was given relics of these two, ex ossibus, and I cherish them.
As I said above, St Charles and his companions are necessary witnesses for our time as Christians today face a persecution from militant homosexualists. As the governments of our nations are becoming more and more like pawns in the hands of gay groups, those who profess the orthodox Christian faith are now the target of laws which are, in essence, anti-Christian and destroying religious freedom. The tyranny of the gay king Mwanga is alive and well in the 21st century.
That said, my devotion to St Charles was strengthened after I started helping Courage, a Catholic organisation which ministers to men and women with same sex attraction. It is a marvellous organisation peopled with saints - men and women struggling but with faith in Christ, relying on the sacrament of confession and prayer, and making much better Christians than this priest here! Pray for them today, and for our various countries.
You have an outstanding blog, Father. I came across it after watching you and Fr. Gorman on EWTN. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteSaint Charles Lwanga please pray for us
ReplyDeleteSaint Catherine of Siena, a religious mystic of the 14th century, relays words of Our Lord Jesus Christ about the vice against nature, which contaminated part of the clergy in her time. Referring to sacred ministers, He says: “They not only fail from resisting this frailty [of fallen human nature] … but do even worse as they commit the cursed sin against nature. Like the blind and stupid, having dimmed the light of their understanding, they do not recognize the disease and misery in which they find themselves. For this not only causes Me nausea, but displeases even the demons themselves, whom these miserable creatures have chosen as their lords. For Me, this sin against nature is so abominable that, for it alone, five cities were submersed, by virtue of the judgment of My Divine Justice, which could no longer bear them…. It is disagreeable to the demons, not because evil displeases them and they find pleasure in good, but because their nature is angelic and thus is repulsed upon seeing such an enormous sin being committed. It is true that it is the demon who hits the sinner with the poisoned arrow of lust, but when a man carries out such a sinful act, the demon leaves.” (St. Catherine of Siena, El diálogo, in Obras de Santa Catarina de Siena (Madrid: BAC, 1991), p. 292)
Saint Bernardine of Siena, a Franciscan preacher of the fifteenth century, makes an accurate psychological analysis of the consequences of the homosexual vice. The illustrious Franciscan wrote: “No sin has greater power over the soul than the one of cursed sodomy, which was always detested by all those who lived according to God….. Such passion for undue forms borders on madness. This vice disturbs the intellect, breaks an elevated and generous state of soul, drags great thoughts to petty ones, makes [men] pusillanimous and irascible, obstinate and hardened, servilely soft and incapable of anything. Furthermore, the will, being agitated by the insatiable drive for pleasure, no longer follows reason, but furor…. Someone who lived practicing the vice of sodomy will suffer more pains in Hell than any one else, because this is the worst sin that there is.” (St. Bernardine of Siena, Predica XXXIX, in Le prediche volgari (Milan: Rizzoli, 1936), pp. 869ff., 915, in F. Bernadei, op. cit., pp. 11f)