Daily Masses - Saints Marcellinus and Peter, and Saint Charles Lwanga and the martyrs of Uganda

That must be the longest title yet for the blog posts here. After Pentecost Sunday, and the feast of our Blessed Mother on Monday, we've dropped down a little to Ordinary (or Ordered) time, where we count down the weeks of the year in an ordered manner, from the ninth to the thirty-first in November, when we shall be all ready again for Advent.

Mass was offered yesterday for the Holy Souls and today for the repose of the soul of Padraig Quinn (+). May they rest in the peace of Christ. The readings at Mass are rather random at the moment, so I'm more interested in the Saints whose memorials we are marking in these days. Yesterday was the memorial of the ancient martyrs Marcellinus and Peter, whose names are among the many at the end of Eucharistic Prayer I, which tells us of their immense status in the Roman Church of the early centuries. Marcellinus is called a priest and Peter an exorcist (one of four minor orders of the ancient church, the others being porter, lector and acolyte; the major orders were subdeacon, deacon and priest). They were victims of the persecution of the anti-Christian Roman emperor Diocletian. More about them here.

Today's Saints, Charles Lwanga and the other Uganda martyrs, are newer to me than the old Roman martyrs, for they are more recent in the memory of the Church, their story beginning in the late nineteenth century. Charles was a convert to Catholicism, a member of the Baganda tribe and with a significance office in the court of king Mwanga II of Buganda. Wikipedia talks about a 'ritual pedophilia,' which seems to have been a part of Ugandan culture of the time, and was the cause of the several martyrdoms. The king would have his wicked way with the young boys who were part of his entourage. When Mwanga, who found the Christians to be a strong opposition to his pedophilic ways as well as an unwanted, foreign challenge to the integrity of his personal rule, orchestrated the massacre of Anglican missionaries in 1885, and had an influential Catholic courtier and lay catechist called Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe beheaded for opposing him, Charles Lwanga arrived on the scene. He was to take up Balikuddembe's job, and almost immediately sought baptism from a missionary White Father, along with several other catechumens. Lwanga came to protect boys in his charge from the sexual advances of the king. A few months later, the king called an assembly of his court to see if the Christians would renounce their religion, and Lwanga and the royal pages he led refused to do so; they were sentenced to death. Charles Lwanga was burnt alive on the 3rd of June, 1886, and soon after him twelve Catholics and nine Anglicans. Another Catholic, Mbaga Tuzinde, was clubbed to death and his body thrown into the furnace with the others. Thus the Ugandan martyrs, and may they pray for us and for Christians everywhere who are persecuted for their religion and for their strong sense of morality and social justice.