On Saturday 24th May 1997 the Society was made welcome, once again, to the Church of St James, Spanish Place, London by the Rector Rt Rev Mgr Canon F Miles. The occasion was a High Mass of the Ember Saturday in the Octave of Pentecost offered as an act of thanksgiving to Almighty God for the coming of St Augustine of Canterbury to our land 1,400 years ago. The Celebrant was Fr A Wadsworth. A congregation estimated at 600 people joined in singing the Creed, the Sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus and the Te Deum. Victoria's Missa Salve Regina was sung by the Choir of Our Lady's Church, St John's Wood under Mr Claude Crozet, their Director, while alternate verses of the Te Deum were sung to a setting by Henry Washington. The organ was played by the Director of Music at Spanish Place, Mr Terry Worroll. Our thanks go to all those who helped make this such an inspiring occasion and in particular to Mgr Miles for his beautiful sermon, the text of which, with his permission, follows:The beginnings of the real Italian mission to England - a mission which went on long after St Augustine - is marked by a series of striking and contrasting parallelisms.
When the young monk, Gregory, saw those young Anglo-Saxon slaves in the Roman Market Place, he was so impressed by their noble features and dignified bearing, so shocked to discover that they and their fellow countrymen were pagan, that he was consumed by a passion to go to Britain to win these wonderful people for Christ.
So he went to the Pope, Benedict I, and having secured his permission (not without difficulty), set off at once by night with hardly a word to anyone - lest the Holy Father should change his mind or have it changed for him.
Well it was changed for him. There was a popular outcry, and the Pope was besieged by a clamouring crowd demanding that Gregory (who as a Regional Deacon had served the people with wonderful charity and devotion) be recalled. Messengers were sent in haste to pursue the would- be missionary who reluctantly but obediently returned to Rome. It was the year 574. But he never abandoned his plans for evangelising Britain.
FIFTEEN years later St Gregory was elected Pope; and soon he decided that if the people of England were to be won for Christ, it would have to be by monks of his own monastery of St Andrew on the Coelian Hill. It was a place of prayer, fasting and holy discipline - a powerhouse of spirituality: the kind of holiness that moves hearts and inspires faith.
Of course it was he who had to urge them to undertake the mission - it was he, the Pope, who had to instruct and train them - imbue them with his own zeal and confidence.
And there you have the first point of contrast. The young monk Gregory twenty years earlier had had to plead with the Pope to let him go on just such a mission: now as Pope he himself was the moving spirit. A small group of monks would be needed, he declared; and chose the Prior, Augustine, to lead them.
In the Summer of 596 they set out on the long trek - first by boat to Marseilles and then overland as far as Aix-en-Provence. Sadly, there they fell among prophets of doom: "The people of Britain are uncouth, savage; they hate foreigners and are cruel to them. If you succeed in setting foot on their land you'll face certain death." So they were told.
Morale was low anyway - the hardships of travel, strange lands, strange customs, strange language had all taken their toll of the enthusiasm of the missioners. For all these reasons, the grim predictions were the last straw for the little band: their spirits sank to zero. And this is where we come to the second point of contrasting parallel:
Gregory en route to Britain had been waylaid by Pope Benedict's envoys and ordered back: Augustine, however, through fear, chose to return to Rome and to confront the Pope with the misgivings he shared with his fellows - and to tell him the horrible truth about Britain and the Anglo-Saxons. In fact, he went back alone - ostensibly to seek further instructions from Pope Gregory.
Gregory was sympathetic but adamant. The Mission must go on. He saw the need for greater discipline, so he gave Augustine the authority of Abbot, sent letters to influential people - clerical and lay - begging them to help the monks on their journey, and to add worthy priests to the little party in the latter stages of their journey.
But most important of all: his words to Augustine and his written message to the monks gave them new heart, new zeal and a much greater trust in God's providence in all the trials that lay ahead. That was the power of a saint; and Gregory was a great Saint. He wasn't called Gregory the Great for nothing. You can see it in our own day too. The person who empties his heart of self and of attachment to worldly things for the sake of Our Lord is made an instrument of the Holy Spirit - a channel for the power of the Spirit to enter the lives of other men and women inspiring them to do great work for God. Think of Mother Teresa, for example, or any of the great founders of Religious Congregations - the recently beatified Mgr Escriva of Opus Dei or Fr Marciel of the Legionaries of Christ. Thus St Gregory worked upon Augustine and his fellows, giving them new spirit and zeal. And that's one last parallel of contrast: Pope Benedict had obliged the returning Gregory to remain in Rome to take up his earlier work in Monastery and City: Pope Gregory pointed Augustine firmly back to England and the work of conversion.
By the time they reached the coast of Kent the band of missionaries had grown to forty, their number being supplemented by Frankish priests and interpreters, and Augustine had the powers of a Bishop. It was May 597, just 1400 years ago, that they went ashore at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet.
Here it was that St Augustine showed his shrewdness - or ought we not to call it holy wisdom? Having ascertained who it was that got things done in the neighbourhood (the local Mrs Thatcher so to speak) he sent emissaries to Canterbury to explain his presence. The King of Kent, Ethelbert, a pagan agreed to meet the monks. He would come out to the coast with Queen Bertha and meet them in a field. A last century print shows the Royal Party, with the King on a kind of deckchair, the group of monks and priests in their rough garb with downcast eyes singing their monastic chants as they processed behind a silver crucifix into the royal presence.
Something about them impressed the King. Who knows? It may have been their sheer poverty and recollected bearing, or the powerful simplicity and intrinsic spiritual quality of their plainsong. At all events he gave them permission to preach and to make converts, and arranged for a house to be prepared for them in Canterbury.
All was now set for the establishment of the Kingdom of God in our land.
That coming is the event we celebrate today. That is the grace for which we give thanks to God in this Holy Mass. We remember with gratitude the great-heartedness of St Gregory the Great; who loved the English people from afar and is called Apostle of the English. We give thanks for St Augustine, who came here and is rightly called the Apostle of England.
Let us be proud of the Catholic England that flourished from the seed St Augustine sowed here: its steadfast loyalty to the Holy See, its deep and tender devotion to Our Blessed Lady - the Shrine at Walsingham, all those mediaeval poems and carols of extreme sweetness sung in her honour. It is no surprise, then, that England was called the Dowry of Mary. We have so much to take pride in - to take courage from the history of Catholic England. Not least the glorious band of martyrs who went to their execution radiant and light-hearted.
It's no wonder that when our nation as a whole seceded from the Pope in the 16th Century; the Italian Mission (as I called it at the start) was revived. Men like Fr Rosmini lamented the loss to the Church of this jewel in her crown - this English nation that Gregory had so admired and wanted to win for Christ. Rosmini sent the saintly Fr Gentili to work in this mission; later came the Blessed Dominic Barberi (who received Cardinal Newman). Then there was St Vincent Pallotti. Fired with love for England and for her return to the Faith but not permitted to come here himself, he sent his holy priests and sisters to spread the gospel in our land. All of this is a tribute to the Catholic England that was.
This anniversary should give us heart, pride in our Catholic forbears, and an ever deeper love of the Holy Faith brought to us with such love, and, handed on to us at such cost.