St Sebastian, Bl Cyprian Tansi

Saint Sebastian

Martyr. Patron of soldiers, archers, in time of plague. St Sebastian died during the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian. He was buried on the Appian Way close to the basilica which was named after him.

Little is known about him, but according to legend, he was a soldier from Gaul who enlisted in the Roman army in 283. He was soon made a captain in the Pretorian guard and visited the Christian martyrs Mark and Marcellian in prison. When the Emperor Diocletian learnt that Sebastian was also a Christian, he ordered him to be shot to death with arrows. He recovered from this ordeal but the Emperor then had him beaten to death with clubs.

The earliest images of St Sebastian are in mosaics at Ravenna, and at St Peter in Chains in Rome (7th century). He is also depicted in St Saba's church in Rome (8th century). Most of these depict him as an elderly bearded man. The more familiar image of him tied to a tree and shot with arrows became very popular with artists during the Renaissance.

Blessed Cyprian Tansi

"If you are going to be a Christian at all, you might as well live entirely for God."[1]

Iwene Tansi was born in 1903 in Igboezunu, southern Nigeria. His parents, Tabansi and Ejikwevi, were Igbo farmers who practised traditional religion. In 1909 he was sent to the Christian village of Nduka, where he was baptized three years later by Irish missionaries and given the name Michael.

He was an able and diligent student and qualified as a teacher, soon becoming a headteacher, but in 1925, against his family's wishes, he entered St Paul's Seminary in Igbariam. After finishing his philosophical and theological studies, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Heerey in the cathedral of Onitsha in 1937. He was the first indigenous priest in the Aguleri region. In 1939 he was appointed parish priest of Dunukofia. His example of prayer and joyful dedication to others deeply affected the community, resulting in many vocations to the priesthood and religious life. He showed the same attributes during his time as parish priest of Akpu, where he served from 1945 until his transfer to Aguleri in 1949. He especially strove to promote the dignity of women and the education of young people.

Despite being a successful parish priest Fr Tansi felt a desire for a life of complete self-surrender to God in a contemplative Order. At a meeting of diocesan clergy sometime in 1949 or 1950, Bishop Heerey expressed the desire that one of his priests would embrace the monastic life so that he could later establish a contemplative monastery in the Diocese of Onitsha. Fr Tansi volunteered, and the Trappist Abbey of Mount St Bernard in Leicestershire accepted him for a trial period as an oblate. Life in Trappist monasteries follows the Strict Observance of the Cistercian Rule with an emphasis on fraternity, solitude and silence.

In the summer of 1950 Fr Tansi led his parishioners on a pilgrimage to Rome for the Holy Year and went on from there to Mount St Bernard. English culture and weather must have been a terrible shock, but he settled into this new enclosed and austere life of prayer, humility and obedience, working in the refectory and bookbindery. After two and a half years as an oblate, he was admitted to the novitiate, taking the name Cyprian, after the 3rd Century bishop of Carthage of African Berber descent. Fr Tansi was solemnly professed as a monk of St Bernard on 8 December 1956. His brother monks remembered him as "absorbed in prayer" and "a living example of patience and charity".

In 1963 the time seemed right to establish a monastery in Nigeria, but political tensions in the country led his superiors to choose to found the new monastery in neighbouring Cameroon instead. This was a bitter blow for Fr Cyprian, and his brother monks recalled it as only time they ever saw him angry. At last he came to accept the decision as God's will.

In January 1964 he became suddenly unwell and sadly died a few days later in Leicester Royal Infirmary of an aortic aneurysm. He was buried at Mount St Bernard. Fr Tansi had long expressed the desire to return to Nigeria so in 1988 his remains were exhumed and reburied near the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, Onitsha, where he had been ordained a priest 51 years earlier. Despite this Mount St Bernard remains a place of pilgrimage, especially for Catholics of Nigerian heritage.

In 1941, as a young priest, Fr Tansi baptised a nine-year old boy from the village of Eziowelle, Anambra. Francis Arinze grew up to follow Tansi into the priesthood, going on to become Archbishop of Onitsha and President of the Nigerian Bishops Conference. He has been a Cardinal since 1985 and was one of the principal advisors to Pope John Paul II. Cardinal Arinze never forgot the man who had baptised and then inspired him, and he recommended Tansi for beatification. At the Mass of his beatification on 22 March 1998, at Oba, Nigeria, Pope John Paul II said:

"Blessed Cyprian Michael Tansi is a prime example of the fruits of holiness which have grown and matured in the Church in Nigeria since the Gospel was first preached in this land. He received the gift of faith through the efforts of the missionaries, and, taking the Christian way of life as his own, he made it truly African and Nigerian."

Blessed Cyprian's Feast Day is on 20th January. He is the patron of Nigerian priests.

Mount St Bernard Monastery is the destination of the Diocese of Nottingham Pilgrim Way, the Way of Blessed Cyprian Tansi. See: www.pilgrimways.org.uk/nottingham-gpx-only

PRAYER TO BLESSED CYPRIAN TANSI

Blessed Cyprian,
during your life on earth
you showed your great faith and love
in giving yourself to your people
and by the hidden life
of prayer and contemplation.

Look upon us now in our needs,
and intercede for us with the Lord.

May he grant us the favour we ask
through our prayers. Amen.

PRAYER FOR THE CANONISATION OF BLESSED CYPRIAN TANSI

O God, who granted many graces to your servant,
Priest and Monk, Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi,
choosing him as your faithful instrument for evangelisation and sanctification of your people,
grant also that I may spend my life loving you and my neighbour and serving the Church.
Deign to glorify your servant Cyprian Michael and through his intercession to grant me the favour I now ask in faith.

[1] Entirely for God: the life of Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi, Elizabeth Isichei (Cistercian Publications, 1980)

See also this piece by Laurence Walsh ocso: www.indcatholicnews.com/news/15503