October 29: James Hannington, Bishop, and His Companions, Martyrs, 1885

The Collect of the Day

James Hannington

O God, by whose providence the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church: Grant that we who remember before you James Hannington and his companions, may, like them, be steadfast in our faith in Jesus Christ, to whom they gave obedience even to death, and by their sacrifice brought forth a plentiful harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

James Hannington

O God, by whose providence the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church: Grant that we who remember before thee James Hannington and his companions, may, like them, be steadfast in our faith in Jesus Christ, to whom they gave obedience unto death, and by their sacrifice brought forth a plentiful harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Peter 3:14–22
Psalm 124
Matthew 10:37–42

James Hannington was born in Sussex on September 3rd, 1847, and was educated at Temple School in Brighton. For six years, he assisted his father in the warehouse business. The family became members of the Church of England in 1867, and the following year, Hannington entered St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he obtained his BA and MA degrees.

Following his ordination at Exeter, Hannington served as a curate in his native town until, in 1882, he offered himself to the Church Missionary Society for its mission in Victoria, Nyanza, Africa. Serious illness soon required his return to England, but he went out again to Africa in 1884, as Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa.

Hannington’s mission field was on the shores of Lake Victoria. He dreamed of creating a shorter and more efficient route directly from Monbasa, in Kenya, to Buganda. Ignoring the advice of his local guides and porters that the venture would be politically sensitive, and failing to heed a warning from emissaries of King Mwanga to stop, he and his party were apprehended and imprisoned. After a week of cruel privations and suffering, he and the remaining members of his company were executed on October 29th, 1885, on the orders of King Mwanga.

Hannington’s last words were: “Go, tell Mwanga I have purchased the road to Uganda with my blood.” Other martyrs of Uganda shared his fate before the gospel was firmly planted in this heartland of Africa, where today the church has a vigorous life under an indigenous ministry. Mwanga was eventually exiled to Seychelles in 1899, where he was received into the Anglican Church and baptized. He died there in 1903.

Lessons and Psalm

First Lesson

Psalm

¹If the Lord had not been on our side, *let Israel now say;

²If the Lord had not been on our side, *when enemies rose up against us;

³Then would they have swallowed us up alive *in their fierce anger toward us;

⁴Then would the waters have overwhelmed us *and the torrent gone over us;

⁵Then would the raging waters *have gone right over us.

⁶Blessed be the Lord! *he has not given us over to be a prey for their teeth.

⁷We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; *the snare is broken, and we have escaped.

⁸Our help is in the Name of the Lord, *the maker of heaven and earth.

Gospel

¹⁴But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, ¹⁵but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; ¹⁶yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. ¹⁸For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ²⁰who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. ²¹And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²²who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.