BL. THOMAS JOHNSON - 20 SEPTEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 20th of September

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

BL. THOMAS JOHNSON 

⬅️ Martyrs of England and Wales

Blessed Thomas Johnson was a Carthusian martyr; he died in Newgate gaol, London, September 20, 1537. 

On May 18, 1537, the twenty choir monks and eighteen brothers remaining in the London Charterhouse were required to take the Oath of Supremacy. 

Of these choir monks Thomas Johnson, Richard Bere, Thomas Green (priests), and John Davy (deacon) refused; and of the brothers Robert Salt, William Greenwood, Thomas Redyng, Thomas Scryven, Walter Pierson, and William Horne. 

On May 29 all were sent to Newgate, where they were chained standing and with their hands tied behind them to posts in the prison, and so left to die of starvation. 

However Margaret Clement, who as Margaret Giggs had been brought up in the household of St Thomas More, bribed the gaoler to let her have access to the prisoners, and disguised herself as a milkmaid and carried in a milk-can meat, wherewith she fed them. 

After the king’s inquiry as to whether they were not already dead, the gaoler was afraid to let her enter again; but she was allowed to go on the roof, and uncovering the tiles, she let down meat in a basket as near as she could to their mouths. However they could get little or nothing from the basket, and as the gaoler feared discovery, even this plan was soon discontinued. 

Greenwood died first (June 6), then Davy (June 8), Salt (June 9), Pierson and Green (June 10), Scryven (June 15), Redyng (June 16). 

It is probable that then Cromwell interfered and ordered those still living to be given food in order that they might be preserved for execution; for Bere did not die till August 9, nor Johnson till September 20. 

Horne survived, and though he could never be induced to quit his religious habit, was not attainted till 1540, when he was hanged, disembowelled, and quartered at Tyburn (August 4) with the Robert Bird (layman), Lawrence Cook (Carmelite Prior of Doncaster), Thomas Epson (Benedictine), Giles Heron (layman), and probably with William Bird (Rector of Fittleton and Vicar of Bradford, Wiltshire). 

All ten Carthusians were beatified by Leo XIII in December 1886. 

(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)