The Good Shepherd
New Guinea Martyrs Day, 2 September, 1981
The Most Reverend Sir Philip Strong, KBE, CMG. CStJ, DD, MA, ThD
Bishop of New Guinea, 1936-1962
The Good Shepherd Layeth Down His Life for the Sheep (Jn 10:11)
This is the text which is inscribed at the foot of your centenary
window, dedicated in 1946 in memory of the New Guinea Martyrs of
1942. It is appropriate indeed that we should be offering this Holy
Eucharist in thanksgiving for them, here this evening of New Guinea
Martyrs' Day. For St Peter's Church was, I think, perhaps the first
church in Australia to commemorate the New Guinea Martyrs in this
way and to do so in such a permanent manner that it might be a
reminder of them for all time.
It was the then Vicar of St Peter's, the much beloved and revered
Canon Farnham Maynard, who conceived the idea of erecting in your
northern transept this large window of three lights—both to
commemorate the centenary of St Peter's Church and the New Guinea
Martyrs. Father Maynard, as one of my Australian Commissaries, had a
few years before this represented St Peter's Church, and indeed the
Church in Victoria and Australia, at the Consecration of the
Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, Dogura, on 29 October 1939. This
visit made a deep and indelible impression on him, and he was ever
after fired by the fact that though the Church in New Guinea had
been largely started and built up by the Church in Australia, yet it
was now giving, by its witness to the love and power of God,
more to the Church in Australia than the Church in Australia had
ever given or could ever give to it: and he was all the more fired
with this idea when, less than three years after his visit, that
witness had become steeped in the blood of Martyrs. He most
graciously invited me to be present when the then Archbishop of
Melbourne, the late Dr Booth, dedicated this window and preached.
Incidentally, my diary records that on my way here to be present I
met at Mascot Aerodrome, Sydney, for the first time, a young priest
who was just arriving from England. David Hand had been inspired to
offer himself for New Guinea on hearing the story of the martyrdom
of another young priest, Vivian Redlich. My diary records of that
meeting: 'He reminded me of my old Cambridge friend Alec Vidler. His
full face also seemed to bear resemblance to the Archbishop of
Sydney' (who at that time was Archbishop Howard Mowll). I went on,
'I was very impressed with him and felt he had been sent to us by
God, perhaps maybe the ultimate answer to our needs for the future
when I need Episcopal help in my own great responsibilities if this
Diocese is enlarged'.
So wonderfully does God work in making the blood of the Martyrs the
seed for future life in his Church, that some four years after I
first met him, he was consecrated as an Assistant Bishop to me on St
Peter's Day in 1950, at Dogura, and as you well know, after some
thirteen years, he succeeded me as Bishop of New Guinea in 1963 and
was fourteen years later to become the first Archbishop and Primate
of a Province of Papua New Guinea which, instead of having one
Diocese only, has five Dioceses, and he still remains as such.
Now let me speak further about your New Guinea Martyrs memorial
window. Forgive me if I speak of much that you may already know, but
I rather guess that after thirty-five years from its erection, many
in this present generation may have often admired it but not
realised and grasped all that is contained in it, and the fullness
of the witness that it gives. This big three light window is indeed
a great work of art and thought to be one of the most perfect works
carried out in Australian coloured glass. The theme of it is an
inspiration. It was entirely the conception of Canon Maynard with
Napier Wailer as its artist.
The theme represents BEAUTY, TRUTH and GOODNESS—three of the
attributes of God himself—and shows these being represented and
revealed in the Church in Papua New Guinea. Taking first the
left-hand light: the top panel is of a woman missionary among
primitive children, holding up a flower revealing God through the
beauty of nature. Above the first panel is represented the Holy
Spirit coming down as a dove. The next panel immediately below it
shows a woman missionary in a primitive mission school—as many of
them were in those days—teaching the truth as it is in God. Two of
the four martyred women missionaries were teachers.
Mavis Parkinson of the coastal station of Gona was one, and I
remember how when I suggested to her some months before her
martyrdom that she should be moved to an inland station which
I thought might perhaps be safer, though it proved later that it
would not have been so—how she implored me with tears in her eyes
not to do so, saying, 'What will the children do if I go?' And then
there was Lilla Lashmar of Sangara, who in her last letter to her
mother a short time before the invasion, writing of the
uncertainties of life then, said, 'I only want to be a good soldier
of Jesus Christ'.
Then the third panel below that is of a missionary nurse in a
missionary dispensary building, binding up the sick and revealing
God through the works of goodness. Two of our four martyred women
missionaries were nurses. Margery Brenchley of Sangara, of whom a
young Papuan youth said to me after her death, when he told me of
many who had died through an epidemic, 'If Sister Brenchley had been
here they would not have died'. And the other was May Hayman of
Gona, who a few months before her death had become engaged to Father
Vivian Redlich. She, like Mavis Parkinson, had said to me, 'What
will the sick do if I move from here?' and on a visit to Gona three
months later, and only a month before the Japanese invasion, in
addition to her caring for the Papuan sick, I found she was nursing
also an American wounded airman who had fallen from the skies and
been found in the jungle by Papuans and brought by them to Sister
Hayman at Gona Mission Station. He would otherwise have died; she
undoubtedly saved his life, so that it could have been said of her,
as of her Divine Master to whom she was to be faithful unto death,
'She saved others, herself she could not save'.
The bottom panels of each of the three lights portray martyrdom,
and the bottom one of that first light shows two women missionary
martyrs and the two Papuan martyrs fleeing before the Japanese. We
may think of those two women missionaries as representing Mavis and
May, often called 'The two Gona Sisters'. I have already given you a
glimpse of the confidence I was privileged to share with them which
enabled me to see dearly the purity of heart that was in them and
the measure to which they counted the cost, and their willingness
and readiness to give up all for Christ's sake. When speaking to
them of what the Japanese might do to them if they came they simply
said 'We are in God's hands, and are ready to suffer for them if he
so wills'. I felt humbled indeed after their deaths to realise that
I had seen in them the true martyrs' spirit of selfless devotion;
and I felt indeed that immediately they had passed through their
transient sufferings, terrible though they may have been, by being
taunted by their captors and then bayonetted to death over an open
grave, their Glory must have been unspeakable. The Church in New
Guinea from its earliest days owed so much to its women
missionaries—but of that I have not time to speak tonight.
Then we can see depicted in that bottom panel the two Papuan
martyrs, Leslie Gariadi and Lucian Tapiedi. Leslie, the faithful
helper of Father Henry Matthews who died with him; and Lucian, the
loyal and faithful attendant of the Sangara missionaries, who was
killed by axes by the heathen people who took the missionaries
captive to hand them over to the Japanese, when he stood up
for them and tried to defend them. Of all our martyrs in Papua, his
body and that of the two Gona Sisters alone were recovered, and it
is appropriate that white and brown should have been eventually laid
side by side in graves at the Sangara Mission Station, even though
that was to be eventually devastated in the Mt Lamington eruption of
1951.
Turning now to the middle light of our New Guinea Martyrs memorial
window—the top panel shows the glorious Cathedral of St Peter and
St Paul, Dogura, and the procession led by me, as Bishop, on its
way to the Consecration at which your one-time Vicar Father Maynard
was present. This symbolises BEAUTY, first revealed through nature,
now expressed in the worship of the Catholic Church in that
beautiful House of God which gave such inspiration to all of our
martyred missionaries when they were assembled there for our
Conference in 1941, less than a year before they were to lay down
their lives for Christ.
The second middle panel is of the Procession formed outside the
Cathedral, and the then Archbishop of Brisbane, the late Dr William
Wand (later Bishop of Bath and Wells, then Bishop of London, and
then Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, London) seated and hearing the
Petition for its Consecration being read out. This symbolises TRUTH
expressed now in writings. And the third panel is of the interior of
the Cathedral before the High Altar at the time of Communion—a
Priest giving communion the GOODNESS of God in the Sacraments, clothed
in purple vestments because it is through suffering that we enter
into glory and triumph. Beauty, truth and goodness. And below
is the martyrdom of three priests. Actually there are four priests
commemorated today, for besides the three working in Papua, Vivian
Redlich, Henry Holland and Henry Matthews, there was also John
Barge, beheaded by the Japanese in New Britain. He was the only one
I did not know personally, for at that time New Britain came under
the Diocese of Melanesia, only to be taken over into the Diocese of
New Guinea in 1949.
Of the three I knew so intimately, I have already spoken of Vivian
Redlich; that happy, youthful, gifted, gallant soul—and yet subject,
as kindred spirits like him so often are, to depressions. A former
Bush Brother in the Rockhampton Diocese who, when his term of
service in the Brotherhood was over, decided not to go back home to
England whence he had come, but to offer himself for missionary
service in New Guinea, and who had joined us only a year or two
before he laid down his life for Christ. We rejoice to think that
the story of his martyrdom which, as I have already said, inspired
David Hand to offer to take his place in New Guinea, is enshrined
for all time in the Chapel of Modern Martyrs in St Paul's Cathedral,
London.
Then there was dear Henry Holland, one who was aging in the Master's
service; simple, sincere and wholly surrendered; living, loving and
working only for his Master Jesus Christ; first, and for many years
as a lay Apostle of Christ to the peoples of Sangara and Isivita,
and then to the great joy of himself and his people, endowed only a
few years before he was called to make the supreme sacrifice
with the gifts of the priesthood, that he might minister
sacramentally to those whom he had led to the knowledge of Christ.
He had resolved to put a white flag up on his station; thinking in
his simplicity that the Japanese would respect that, and he had
resolved to stay on his station, and only at the last moment he
realised that if he did so the Japanese would not only kill him—he
was ready for that—but all his Papuan fellow-workers and their
families, and so for their sakes only he left it for the jungle,
only later to be beheaded with the other missionaries.
Then there was that faithful servant of God, Henry Matthews, who had
been for many years Rector of Port Moresby, and who at the general
evacuation at the beginning of the war decided to remain to act as
chaplain to the then very young and inexperienced Australian
soldiers being rushed up to Port Moresby to defend it and Papua. In
the months that followed, though his own home and church were
shamefully looted by those very soldiers whom he had stayed to
serve, he did most noble and self-sacrificing service and became
beloved and admired by all as he went about doing his Master's
service. I spent some weeks with him in April 1942 over Holy Week
and Easter and witnessed, and was humbled in doing so, his courage,
fearlessness and complete disregard of his own personal safety.
Great was his grief when the military authorities decreed that as he
was well advanced in his sixties, his chaplaincy must cease on 8
August and it was on the previous day, 7 August, the Feast of the Name
of Jesus, when he was still a chaplain, that he was killed by
machine gun fire when travelling by sea to minister to some
mixed race peoples in the west of Papua.
Finally I turn to the third light of our window. At the bottom is
represented the martyrdom of two other women missionaries and a
layman. We can think of these as being the two Sangara Sisters,
Lilla Lashmar and Margery Brenchley, and the lay missionary
carpenter, John Duffill; all three of whom with Vivian Redlich and
Henry Holland were beheaded on the Buna beach and their bodies
thrown into the sea and never recovered. Of Margery and Lila I have
already spoken—they had for years devoted themselves to the work of
the Mission at Sangara, and their refusal and scornful rejection of
all suggestions that they might go to safety was typical of their
dogged determination and whole hearted acceptance of their vocation
as missionaries; and their refusal continued even on the day after
the Japanese landing had driven them out of Sangara Mission Station,
when an Australian soldier at some risk to himself sought them out
in the jungle and offered to take them across the mountains to Port
Moresby. The young layman, John Duffill, had only been with us three
years, but in that short time had shown a keen desire to serve and
devote himself to the work of Christ and his Church, and a
conscientious application to each task that had been allotted to
him. He had refused to go on furlough when his furlough was due
because of the pressure of his work. Had he done so he would not
have been with us in those critical days and would not today be
numbered among the Martyrs. He was with me in March 1942 when the
first enemy attack on the north-east coast fell on us, and he
manifested at that time a courage to be admired.
With the other three panels in the third light, the theme of Beauty,
Truth and Goodness works upwards rather than downwards as with the
other two lights. With the third from the top is depicted the
destruction of native villages and the sufferings of the native
people. It symbolises beauty being destroyed by war and wickedness,
as is still happening all over the world today in many spheres and
ways; the attempts of the powers of evil to undermine and mar God's
handiwork in the life of the Church and of the world.
Then above it there is the panel of reconstruction—a missionary who
is meant to represent the late Archdeacon Romney Gill, sitting
surrounded by his people with plans drawn for rebuilding. This
symbolises Truth being redeemed: that is the constant work of the
Church: rebuilding, reconciliation, restoration.
Finally, in the top panel, is a priest offering the Holy Sacrifice
clothed in a green chasuble—green, the colour of growth and
perserverence—and above him a vision of the Holy City, the new
Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven. This symbolises the
vindication of goodness. This vindication, with the great and
historic truth that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church, I saw and felt vividly on my recent visit to Papua New
Guinea, just over a month ago for the Consecration of a national,
only the third so far, as an Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Aipo
Rongo. Bishop Blake Kerina was a schoolboy at Dogura when I first
arrived as Bishop of New Guinea in January 1937, over 45
years ago: Later I licenced him as a teacher and evangelist, in
which he did wonderful work, and at a later date still he was the
first Papuan to offer himself to me to go as a missionary with
Bishop David Hand to open our missionary work in the north of New
Guinea in the Highlands, where he has remained ever since.
As I preached and took part in that Consecration on St Laurence's
Day 10 August 1980 in St Laurence's Church, Simbai before a huge
crowd of Highland Christians on the ninetieth anniversary of the
landing of the first missionaries on the coast of Papua, hundreds of
miles away beneath Dogura, I felt indeed the triumph of goodness
over all losses, adversities and sufferings. I had felt it too on a
visit I paid during the weekend before to Popondetta, that very area
where most of our missionaries suffered martyrdom, which at that
time when they did so had few if any Christians and was but a
smallish native village and is now one of the largest towns in Papua
New Guinea. And when I preached to a large congregation in the fine
Cathedral of the Resurrection in Popondetta and visited other
centres of vital spiritual life in that area, the Christian Training
Centre, the newly transferred Theological Seminary, Newton College
for the training of future clergy, the Friary of the Society of St
Francis at Ururu, the Community House at Hetune of the Papuan
Sisterhood of the Visitation, and the large and splendid Martyrs
Memorial School for boys at Agenehambo with over 400 boys—all these
have undoubtedly sprung out of the death of the Martyrs.
The Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Martyrs, like
the Good Shepherd, laid down their lives for the sheep because, like
him, they cared and loved and were imbued with the spirit of
sacrifice which springs out of an unconquerable love, a love which
witnesses to God's great attributes of beauty, truth and goodness,
even if they have to be attained through much tribulation. As is
also inscribed in the window: They knowing full well the risk,
elected to stay with their flock.
Let me end with the Book of Common Prayer Collect for the Seventh
Sunday after Trinity, which I learnt by heart as a small boy, having
been taught it by my parents, which I think is a prayer for the
triumph of beauty, truth and goodness:
LORD OF ALL POWER AND MIGHT,
Who art the author and giver of all good things;
[beauty]
Graft in our hearts the love of thy name,
[beauty again]
Increase in us true religion,
[truth]
Nourish us with all goodness,
[goodness]
And of thy great mercy keep us in the same;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Martyrs of 1942
Margery Brenchley
John Duffill
Leslie Gariadi
May Hayman
Henry Holland—priest
Lilla Lashmar
Henry Matthews—priest
Mavis Parkinson
Vivian Redlich—priest
Lucian Tapiedi
The Proper Collect for the New Guinea Martyrs
O Almighty God, who didst enable thy missionary and Papuan martyrs,
in New Guinea, in a day of sore trial and danger, to be faithful to
their calling and to glorify thee by their deaths: Grant we humbly
beseech thee that, by the witness of these thy martyrs, thy whole
Church may be enriched and strengthened for the gathering into thy
fold of thy children in all lands; and that we thy servants,
following the example of their steadfastness and courage, may labour
the more fervently for the coming of thy kingdom, and may so
faithfully serve thee here on earth that we may be joined with them
hereafter in heaven. Through thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who
liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God,
world without end. Amen.
Bishop Philip Strong
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