"In your patience you shall possess your souls"

"With tragic consequences, a long historical process is reaching a turning-point. The process which once led to discovering the idea of "human rights"—rights inherent in every person and prior to any Constitution and State legislation—is today marked by a surprising contradiction. Precisely in an age when the inviolable rights of the person are solemnly proclaimed and the value of life is publicly affirmed, the very right to life is being denied or trampled upon, especially at the more significant moments of existence: the moment of birth and the moment of death… This is what is happening also at the level of politics and government: the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people—even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the "right" ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism."
—POPE JOHN PAUL II, Evangelium Vitae, “The Gospel of Life”, n. 18, 20

Look with eyes that see. We need to wake up and see that soon this country and the world will be sunk in the mire of totalitarianism where Christianity will be persecuted and not tolerated. We need to pray for the grace to persevere until the end...

"And there shall be great earthquakes in divers places, and pestilences, and famines, and terrors from heaven; and there shall be great signs. But before all these things, they will lay their hands upon you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into prisons, dragging you before kings and governors, for my name's sake. And it shall happen unto you for a testimony. Lay it up therefore into your hearts, not to meditate before how you shall answer: For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist and gainsay.
And you shall be betrayed by your parents and brethren, and kinsmen and friends; and some of you they will put to death. And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake. But a hair of your head shall not perish. In your patience you shall possess your souls. And when you shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an army; then know that the desolation thereof is at hand." ~Luke 21:11-20 Douay-Rheims version

Argeles Nazi Concentration Camp

The First Christian Persecution

The first documented case of imperially-supervised persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire begins with Nero (37-68). In 64 A.D., a great fire broke out in Rome, destroying portions of the city and economically devastating the Roman population. Nero himself was suspected as the arsonist by historian Suetonius, claiming he played the lyre and sang the 'Sack of Ilium' during the fires. In his Annals, Tacitus (who claimed Nero was in Antium at the time of the fire's outbreak), stated that "to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace"

Persecution

"Christ said: In this world you will suffer persecution, but in such wise that the persecution will not overwhelm, and the attack will not overcome you. Against Christ’s army the world arrays a twofold battleline. It offers temptation to lead us astray; it strikes terror into us to break our spirit. Hence if our personal pleasures do not hold us captive, and if we are not frightened by brutality, then the world is overcome. At both of these approaches Christ rushes to our aid, and the Christian is not conquered. If you were to consider in Vincent’s martyrdom only human endurance, then his act is unbelievable from the outset. But first recognize the power to be from God, and he ceases to be a source of wonder." —St. Augustine, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol. 3, p. 1316

Those who say "tolerance" are quickly becoming the least tolerant of all. Often intolerance is a front for heavier things, such as disdain, scorn or even malevolence. Think upon how such things can explode into persecution and how often this has occurred in the past. We must hope for the best, yet prepare for the worst. For myself and my family, I pray for the grace of a strong faith, and perserverance unto death. Amen+

A chilling tile mosiac depicting the Christian persecution under the Roman rule of Nero.

Persecution & Hope

Pope Benedict XVI (far right) on the day of his ordination 6/21/51

"It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love." —POPE BENEDICT XVI, —Spe Salvi, n. 37

No truer words were ever spoken. Persecution is coming, perhaps not to every part of every nation, but to the Christian who lives a Christian life, very real persecution is coming. Can't you feel the wicked wind coming? The secret is to not be of this world, be unattached to your things for they are just so much rubbish. Cast yourself upon the feet of Jesus, call upon Mary - bow down to the ground at her feet before the cross of Christ and the floodgates of mercy will be open to you! Joy is found in embracing the crosses in your life!

"Turn me over, I am done on this side!"

~St. Lawrence as he was being burned to death

Persecution cometh...

St. Thomas Becket, bishop of Canterbury, martyred 1170 A.D

"The world is rapidly being divided into two camps, the comradeship of anti-Christ and the brotherhood of Christ. The lines between these two are being drawn. How long the battle will be we know not; whether swords will have to be unsheathed we know not; whether blood will have to be shed we know not; whether it will be an armed conflict we know not. But in a conflict between truth and darkness, truth cannot lose." —Bishop Fulton John Sheen, D.D. (1895-1979)

The devil and his minions do indeed prowl about the world seeking for those they can devour.

We must repent all our sins, forgive all who have ever harmed us, go to confession and pray for the strength to lead holy lives. Never quit, never give up, hold fast to your Catholic faith even if the entire world stands against you. It matter not one bit what others think of you - care ONLY about what God thinks of you. Seek to please Him and Him alone.

To those who have fear - Fear not for the Lord your God will rescue you from the hands of your enemies! By His mighty arm you will be saved! Do not be afraid! Do not trade the salvation of your soul for the ashes of comforts of this life. How sad will be the soul on Judgment Day who does this! We must not apostasize, no matter the worldly consequence.

"Death but not sin!" ~St. Dominic Savio

Persecution & Martyrdom, Part VII

Blessed John Nelson

1534-February 3, 1578

English Jesuit martyr

executed during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Nelson was from Skelton, near York. He was nearing 40 when he left for Douai in 1573 for training as a priest. Two of his four brothers would later follow him there to become priests. He was ordained at Binche in Hainaut by Monsignor Louis de Berlaymont, Archbishop of Cambrai, on June 11, 1576. The next November, he left for his mission, which appears to have been in London. He was arrested on December 1, 1578, "late in the evening as he was saying the Nocturne of the Matins for the next day following", and put in Newgate prison.

When interrogated about a week or so later, he refused to take the oath recognizing the Queen's supremacy in spiritual matters, and was induced by the commissioners to declare the Queen a schismatic. Under the Legislation of 1571, this was high treason and punishable by death. He was condemned a few weeks later on Saturday February 1, 1578 and was confined after the trial in an underground dungeon in the Tower of London, the so called Pit of the Tower. While in prison he subsided on bread and water and was able to say Mass and confess.

On his execution day, he refused several Protestant ministers after meeting family members. Taken to Tyburn and was allowed to speak before the bystanders, who were mostly hostile in the historically Protestant London. He refused to ask pardon of the Queen and asked any Catholics in the crowd to pray with him as he recited several common prayers in Latin.
He was hung and cut down alive, then quartered. As the executioner plucked out his heart, his last words were reportedly "I forgive the queen and all the authors of my death." (source)

Look at the Catholic witnesses in England and pray, for our time is approaching.

Act of Resignation

O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Do with me what You will. Amen+

Persecution & Martyrdom, Part VI

Saint Edmund Campion, S.J.

January 24, 1540 – December 1, 1581

English Jesuit priest and martyr.

Committed to the Tower of London, he was questioned in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, who asked him if he acknowledged her to be the true Queen of England. He replied in the affirmative, and she offered him wealth and dignities, but on condition of rejecting his Catholic faith, which he refused to accept.
He was kept a long time in prison, twice racked (by order of the Council but certainly with Elizabeth's consent), and every effort was made to shake his defiance. Despite the effect of a false rumour of retraction and a forged confession, his adversaries summoned him to four public conferences (September 1 18, 23 and 27 1581). Although still suffering from his ill treatment, and allowed neither time nor books for preparation, he reportedly conducted himself so easily and readily that he won the admiration of most of the audience. Tortured again on October 31, he was indicted at Westminster on a charge of having conspired, along with others, in Rome and Reims to raise a sedition in the realm and dethrone the Queen.

He was sentenced to death as a traitor, which he answered with the prophetic words "In condemning us, you condemn all your ancestors, all the ancient bishops and kings, all that was once the glory of England" and with the Te Deum laudamus, and, after spending his last days in prayer, was led with two companions to Tyburn and hanged, drawn and quartered on December 1, 1581, aged 41.

The ropes used in his execution are now kept in glass display tubes at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire; each year they are placed on the altar of St Peter's Church for mass to celebrate Campion's feast day.
(source)

Look at the Catholic witnesses in England and pray, for our time is approaching.
Act of Resignation

O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Do with me what You will. Amen+

Persecution & Martyrdom, Part V

Blessed Thomas Abel (c. 1497 – 30 July 1540)

Imprisoned in the Tower of London, in the Beauchamp Tower, he carved the above rebus, or visual pun, on the wall: a play on his name, 'A-bell'

Thomas was an English priest who was martyred during the reign of Henry VIII. His place and date of his birth are unknown.

He was educated at Oxford and entered the service of Queen Catherine of Aragon as her chaplain some time before 1528 and appears to have taught the queen modern languages and music. Catherine sent him to Spain in 1528 to the emperor Charles V on a mission relating to the proposed divorce. On his return she presented him with the parochial benefice of Bradwell, in Sussex,and remained to the last a staunch supporter of the unfortunate queen in the case of the validity of her marriage with Henry VIII.

In 1532, he published his Invicta Veritas, an answer to the determination of the most famous Universities, that by no manner of law it may be lawful for King Henry to be divorced from the Queen's grace, his lawful and very wife (with the fictitious pressmark of Luneberge, to avoid suspicion). The work contained an answer to the numerous tracts supporting Henry's ecclesiastical claims. For this he was thrown into Beauchamp Tower, and after a year's liberation again imprisoned, in December, 1533, on the charges of disseminating the prophecies of the Maid of Kent, encouraging the queen "obstinately to persist in her wilful opinion against the same divorce and separation", and maintaining her right to the title of queen. He was kept in close confinement until his execution at Tyburn, two days after the execution of Thomas Cromwell. There is still to be seen on the wall of his prison in the Tower of London a rebus consisting of the symbol of a bell with an A upon it and the name Thomas above, which he carved during his confinement. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII as one of a group of fifty-four English Martyrs on 29 December 1886.

There is extant a very pious Latin letter written by him to a fellow-martyr, and another to Cromwell, begging for some slight mitigation of his "close prison"; "license to go to church and say Mass here within the Tower and for to lie in some house upon the Green". It is signed "by your daily bedeman, Thomas Abell, priest". His act of attainder states that he and three others "have most traitorously adhered themselves unto the bishop of Rome, being a common enemy unto your Majesty and this your Realm, refusing your Highness to be our and their Supreme Head of this your Realm of England" (source)

Look at the Catholic witnesses in England and pray, for our time is approaching.

Act of Resignation

O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Do with me what You will. Amen+

Persecution & Martyrdom, Part IV

St. Margaret Clitherow (1556 – 1586)

English saint and martyr.

She is also known as"the Pearl of York".

In 1586, Margaret was arrested and called before the York assizes for the crime of harbouring Roman Catholic priests. She refused to plead to the case so as to prevent a trial that would entail her children being made to testify, and she was executed by being crushed to death – the standard punishment for refusal to plead. On Good Friday of 1586, she was forced to strip naked, laid out upon a sharp rock, her hands tied out straight from her body, and a door was put on top of her and loaded with an immense weight of rocks and stones. Death occurred after fifteen minutes. St. Margaret was approximately 14 weeks pregnant.

"God be thanked, I am not worthy of so good a death as this" ~St. Margaret Clitherow

Look at the Catholic witnesses in England and pray, for our time is approaching.

Act of Resignation

O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Do with me what You will. Amen+

Persecution & Martyrdom, Part III

Image: The first three Carthusian Martyrs who died by order of King Henry VIII. They were: Sts. John Houghton, Robert Lawrence and Augustine Webster, priors of the charterhouses of London, Beauvale and Axholme respectively.

"Lo! Dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage?"

~St Thomas More to his daughter as he witnessed from the window of his cell the first three Carthusian martyrs.

"The Carthusian Martyrs were a group of monks of the London Charterhouse, the monastery of the Carthusian Order in central London, who were put to death by the English state from June 19, 1535 to September 20, 1537. The method of execution was hanging, disembowelling while still alive and then quartering. The group also includes two monks who were brought to that house from the Charterhouses of Beauvale and Axholme and similarly dealt with. The total is of 18 men, all of whom have been formally recognized by the Catholic Church as true martyrs."

"At the outset of the King's Great Matter (his divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon so he could marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn), the government was anxious to secure the public acquiescence of the monks of the London Charterhouse, since for the austerity and sincerity of their mode of life they enjoyed great prestige. When this attempt failed in this, the only alternative was to annihilate the resistance, since a refusal engaged the prestige of the monks in the opposite sense." (source)

Look at the Catholic witnesses in England and pray, for our time is approaching.

Act of Resignation
O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Do with me what You will. Amen+

Persecution & Martyrdom, Part II

St. John Fisher, by Hans Holbein the Younger

"...a public outcry was brewing among the London populace who saw a sinister irony in the parallels between the conviction of John Fisher and that of his patronal namesake, Saint John the Baptist, who was executed by King Herod for challenging the liceity of Herod's marriage to his brother's widow, Herodias. For fear of John Fisher's living through his patronal feast day, that of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist on June 24, and of attracting too much public sympathy, King Henry commuted the sentence to that of beheading, to be accomplished before June 23, the Vigil of the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. His execution on Tower Hill on June 22, 1535, had the opposite effect from that which King Henry VIII intended. John Fisher's beheading created yet another ironic parallel with that of the martyrdom of St John the Baptist whose was also beheaded."

"Bishop John Fisher's last moments were thoroughly in keeping with his previous life. He met death with a calm, dignified, courage which profoundly impressed all who were present. His body was treated with particular rancour, apparently on King Henry VIII's orders, being stripped and left on the scaffold till evening, when it was taken on pikes and thrown naked into a rough grave in the churchyard of Allhallows, Barking. There was no funeral prayer. A fortnight later, his body was laid beside that of Sir Thomas More in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in London. The bishop's head was stuck upon a pole on London Bridge, but its ruddy and lifelike appearance excited so much attention that, after a fortnight, it was thrown into the Thames, its place being taken by that of Sir Thomas More, whose martyrdom occurred on July 6."

(Source)

Look at the Catholic witnesses in England and pray, for our time is approaching.

Act of Resignation

O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Do with me what You will. Amen+

Persecution & Martyrdom, Part I

St. Thomas More comforting his daughter, Margaret on his way to the scaffold 6 July 1535 (aged 57), London, England. More's body was buried at the Tower of London, in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. His head was placed over London Bridge for a month after which it was rescued by his daughter, Margaret, before it could be thrown in the River Thames. His skull is believed to rest in the Roper Vault of St. Dunstan's, Canterbury.

Look at the Catholic witnesses in England and pray, for our time is approaching.

Act of Resignation
O Lord, my God, from this day I accept from your hand willingly and with submission, the kind of death that it may please you to send me, with all its sorrows, pains, and anguish. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Do with me what You will. Amen+

Our Share in Persecution

"Lord Jesus, you foretold that we would share in the persecutions that brought you to a violent death. The Church formed at the cost of your precious blood is even now conformed to your Passion; may it be transformed, now and eternally, by the power of your resurrection."

~Psalm-prayer, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol III, p. 1213 n

Lord, may you receive much glory from the persecutions of your faithful ones! Amen+

The Coming Persecution

The following is an excerpt from the blog of Mark Mallet. This deserves to be read in its entirety here.

I have said at other times that I believe the world who knows not God, chomps at the bit to persecute those who do. We MUST be willing to give our lives as the early Christians did. This is not about raising calls of panic, it is about the salvation of souls. Do you not hear the cry to persecute those who believe in the absolute Truth of the gospel? These truths that are held in the fullest in the only church on earth founded by Jesus Himself - the Holy Catholic Church.

BEWARE THE WOLVES!

"Errant theologians have watered this down. Misguided clergy have failed to preach it. Modernist philosophies have replaced it. This is why the Sacrifice of the Mass has been reduced to a "community celebration." Why the word "sin" is rarely used. Why confessionals have cobwebs. They are wrong! The Gospel, the message of Jesus, is that Salvation comes through repentance, and repentance means turning from sin and following in the bloody footsteps or our Master, to the Cross, through the Tomb, and toward an everlasting Resurrection! Beware of those wolves in sheep’s clothing who preach a different Gospel than the one Christ has given us. Beware of those false prophets who try to douse the flames of Hell, and attempt to line the Way of the Cross with daisies and padded cushions. Stay away from those who remake the narrow road to Heaven into a superhighway, paved with the comforts of this world."

"The engagement ring of the Bride of Christ in this life is suffering. But the wedding ring in the next is eternal joy in the Kingdom of God, given to those Blessed who endured persecution (Matt 5:10-12). Pray, then, brothers and sisters, for the grace of final perseverance."

Those who are like Me in the pain and contempt they suffer will be like me also in glory. And those who resemble Me less in pain and contempt will also bear less resemblance to Me in glory. —Jesus to St. Faustina, Diary, n. 446