lent 39 - Queen Kateryn

Ive just finished reading a book about Henry VIII 's 6th wife Kateryn Parr.   It was a historical novel by Phillipa Gregory so a fair bit of it was fiction, but the bits for which there is historical evidence were as factual as they could be.  And I knew nothing much about this period of history so found it all very interesting.   What was most compelling about the story was the role Henry's last wife had in the Reformation.  She was the first woman in Britain to write and publish a book - and it was a book of prayers.  She later wrote another which was basically her testimony.  She had a huge input into the translation of the Bible from Latin into English and spent the four years she was Queen of England walking the tightrope of Henry's madness trying not to get beheaded whilst advocating for making the Bible and the Liturgy available to the man in the street in a language he could understand.  She was a student of the scriptures and her reading led her to understand that God wanted a relationship with everyone and that Jesus was the only mediator between God and man. She saw the superstition and profiteering of the Catholic church at that time as  keeping the common people away from God.   Henry VIII vacillated wildly between wanting a complete break from Rome and reforming the church, to burning reformers at the stake and reinstating the Mass and the priesthood.   The horrors of the persecution and torture of people who were merely trying to be true to their faith in those days is appalling.    We tend to forget so easily that only a few hundred years ago people were being burned at the stake, hanged drawn and quartered, put on the rack and tortured in this country because they believed in the Trinity.  Or didnt believe in transubstantiation.  Or prayed to the saints.  Or didnt pray to the saints.   Kateryn Parr was at the heart of the turmoil and danger of these times and her contribution to the translation of the scriptures was an act of bravery in the face of her husband's insanely dangerous political game playing.  For more about Queen Kateryn theres a good summary here.    https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/katherine-parr-marriage-henry-viii-husbands-death-writing/

I owe the fact that I have a Bible beside my bed, written in English, to many brave and sacrificial individuals who believed so fervently in my right to have access to the Word of God that they were prepared to die for it.   And of course I owe the salvation it offers to a Saviour who was prepared to carry a tonne weight of wood on his flayed bloody back and be nailed up in front of His mother as a mockery - for me.

This faith by which we live has cost, and today is still costing, lives and pain and bloodshed.  It is a deadly serious matter.  We have a responsibility to the God who hung on a tree, and all of those who gave up their lives rather than deny Him, to treasure the truth, love the Word and live fully in the freedom we enjoy.