Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany came to an end on Friday with the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas (2 February), and we are in Ordinary Time, the time between that season and the 40 days of Lent. Today is the Second Sunday before Lent.
n the past, this Sunday was known as Sexagesima, one of those odd-sounding Latin names once used in the Book of Common Prayer for the Sundays between Candlemas and Lent: Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima. Later this morning I hope to be part of the choir singing at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.
Charlotte and I are planning to visit Paris later this week. So, in these 11 days in Ordinary Time, my reflections each morning are drawing on the lives of 11 French saints and spiritual writers.
I admitted yesterday that I have never been very comfortable with many aspects of French spirituality, such as Sacre Coeur and the political associations of devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the way Joan of Arc has become a symbol of the far-right in France, Bernard’s preaching of the Crusades, or the way Calvin is read today by modern neo-Calvinists. I realise I need to broaden my reading in French spirituality, and so I have turned to 11 figures or writers you might not otherwise expect. They include men and women, Jews and Christians, immigrants and emigrants, monks and philosophers, Catholics and Protestants, and even a few Anglicans.
Before today begins to get busy, I am taking some time for reflection, prayer and reading this way:
1, A reflection on a French saint or writer in spirituality;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
French saints and writers: 2, Francis Le Jau (1665-1715):
Francis Le Jau (1665-1717) was a French-born Anglican priest who studied theology at Trinity College Dublin and became a missionary in South Carolina with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), now USPG.
Le Jau was born into a French Huguenot family in Angiers in 1665. At the age of 20, he fled France during the persecution of Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, became an Anglican and studied in Trinity College Dublin (MA 1693, BD 1696, DD 1700).
The Duke of Ormond had made Dublin a safe place for Huguenot refugees, and there Le Jau worked from 1695 on behalf of William King, Bishop Derry and later Archbishop of Dublin, to obtain many books in French, including works published in Paris, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
Meanwhile, the Irish Nonjuror, Canon Charles Leslie (1650-1722), Chancellor of Connor, had fled to Paris after he was deprived of his Church offices for refusing to take the new oath of loyalty to William of Orange after the Battle of the Boyne. He was said to have been named after Charles I, who was executed the year before Leslie was born.
From Dublin, Le Jau moved to London, where he was installed a canon of Saint Paul’s Cathedral (1696-1700). In 1700, the year he received his doctoral degree (DD) from TCD, he moved to St Christopher’s Island, where he served for 18 months at the request of Henry Compton, Bishop of London from 1675 to 1713. King became Archbishop of Dublin in 1703, and Le Jau continued to correspond with him about books published in France until 1704.
Meanwhile, SPG was founded in 1701, and from 1706 until his death in 1717 Le Jau was a missionary with SPG in to South Carolina, based in Goose Creek. He arrived in South Carolina in December 1706 and wrote numerous letters to SPG describing in the colony as well as his own activities. He describes the colonists celebrating their victory over an attempted French invasion from 27 to 31 August 1706.
Le Jau lived through both the Tuscarora War (1711) and the Yamasee War (1715) in South Carolina During the Yamasee War, a coalition led by the Catawba tribe attacked his home area of Goose Creek and many his parishioners were involved in the fighting.
At the height of the Yamasee War, Le Jau’s family went to live in Charleston with Gideon Johnsons, a fellow missionary and former classmate in TCD. During that time, Henriette Johnson, a painter who shared a French Huguenot background, painted a portrait of Le Jau. Le Jau’s son went on to serve as an aide de camp under General Maurice Moore for the remainder of the Yamasee War.
In his letters to SPG, Le Jau repeatedly refers to the ‘Savannah tongue’ – probably the Shawnee language – as a trade language understood from the Carolinas to Canada. He believed there was a potential use for missionary work, and sent a copy of the Lord’s Prayer in the Savannah language to the SPG. He also refers to the Creek language.
Many of his letters provide an insight into the difficulties SPG missionaries faced in the colonies: the dangers and cost of the journey across the Atlantic, fears of bad weather, piracy and war, and the many setbacks they faced when trying to establish homes and churches after their arrival. Le Jau wrote frequently about his family’s difficulty in acclimatising to a hostile environment, endemic sickness in the area, and attempts to sustain his household with limited assistance from his parishioners.
Le Jau was dependent on the financial and material resource of SPG, as well as local networks of professional support from other neighbouring clergy. But his limited material comfort was underwritten by his purchase of three slaves to help maintain his household.
He was strongly critical of the treatment of Native Americans by the colonists in South Carolina. He describes a plantation owner in Goose Creek burning a Native American slave to death. However, his exploitation of enslaved people within his own household sits uneasily alongside his frequent denunciations of the cruel behaviour he had observed in neighbouring slaveowners. He compromised with slaveowners who were concerned that baptised slaves would seek freedom and equality, and composed a mandatory declaration for slave converts that their baptism was not ‘out of any design’ to free themselves ‘from the Duty and Obedience you owe to your master while you live, but merely for the good of your soul.’
Francis Le Jau died on 10 September 1717. Before he arrived in South Carolina, one eighth of the colony’s white population was of Huguenot descent in 1690; after his death, those numbers had increased and reached 20% in 1722.
For many years, Leslie was the Anglican chaplain at the Jacobite court in St Germainen-Laye. Meanwhile, Charles Leslie returned to Paris in 1717, the year Le Lau died, and published a two folio-volume edition of his Theological Works in 1719. Leslie returned to Ireland in his last days, and died at Castle Leslie, Co Monaghan, in 1722. Leslie later influenced some of the writings of John Henry Newman and the Tractarians. Over 13 pages of the British Museum library catalogue are devoted to his books and pamphlets, making Leslie and Le Jau early Irish literary and Anglican links with Paris.
John 1: 1-14 (NRSVA):
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 4 February 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Gender Justice in Christ.’ This theme is introduced today by Ellen McMibanga, Zambia Anglican Council Outreach Programme:
Many men and women are holding hands to put a stop to abuse in households and the community as the call for gender justice continues to be raised by humanity.
‘Gender equality is the goal that will help abolish poverty,’ asserts Graça Machel (founder of the Graça Machel Trust and a member of The Elders), ‘which will create more equal economies, fairer societies, and happier men, women and children.’
By accepting that men, women and children are equally made by God, freely reconciled by Christ, and given spiritual gifts by the Holy Spirit, we can establish and uphold justice. The call for gender justice serves as a reminder to everyone to treat one another with respect and love, honouring the reality that God loves us (II Corinthians 5: 17). ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28).
In order to promote gender equity and eradicate injustices that are being practised in our homes, communities and countries, it is the responsibility of the Church and all of us.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (4 February 2024, the Second Sunday before Lent) invites us to pray in these words:
Loving God,
Let us renew our love for all of humanity.
May we focus on spreading
the faith, hope and love
you give to us.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection (Rashi)
Continued Tomorrow (Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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