From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Let charity be exercised by your living good lives   
      
   The heedless person forgets to put an end to a quarrel; the stubborn   
   one is loath to grant pardon when asked; the person who is proudly   
   ashamed disdains to beg pardon. Animosities live on in these three   
   vices, but they kill the soul in which they don't die. Let a spirit of   
   recollection keep watch against heedlessness, of compassion against   
   vindictive stubbornness, of gentle good sense against proud shame. If   
   you recall that you have neglected to make it up with someone...   
    --Augustine of Hippo*   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   September 10th - St. Ambrose Barlow   
   (Also known as  Ambrose Brereton, Ambrose Radcliffe, Edward Ambrose Barlow)   
      
   Memorials   
       10 September   
       25 October as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales   
       29 October as one of the Martyrs of Douai   
      
   (1585-1641)   
   St. Ambrose Barlow was one of several Benedictine priests who grace   
   the long list of the English Catholic martyrs of the Reformation.   
   Baptized Edward, he was the son of a prominent knight of Lancashire.   
   Though baptized a Catholic, he conformed to the State Church until 22.   
   Then he returned to Catholic practice and entered the English Catholic   
   seminary at Douay, Belgium. On a vacation back in England he was   
   arrested as a Catholic and imprisoned for several months. When   
   released, he went back to Douay, joined the English Benedictines   
   there, took the name Ambrose, and was ordained a priest in 1617. Then   
   he was sent as a missionary to his native Lancashire.   
      
   The peril of death that had hung over Catholic missionaries in England   
   since the days of Queen Elizabeth was not quite so heavy in the days   
   of King James and Charles I, but it was still a threat since there   
   were many English penal laws that hobbled Catholics. Like most of the   
   priests of the English mission, Father Ambrose concealed his identity   
   by using aliases, especially “Radcliffe” and “Brereton”. His 24 years   
   of life as a missionary priest were geographically restricted,   
   necessarily wary, and very intense. He became much loved for his zeal   
   for souls, for his love of poverty and of the poor, and his wonderful   
   priestly example. Although never in good health, he did not bother to   
   consult physicians. Often wronged, slandered and threatened, he   
   brushed off these injuries with a smile and a joke. In fact, one of   
   his penitents said that St. Thomas More must have been much like   
   Father Ambrose, so great was his wit and good cheer in the face of   
   difficulties.   
      
   In 1628, Father Barlow administered the last sacraments in prison to   
   Father Edmund Arrowsmith, a secular fellow missionary of his in   
   Lancashire. After the martyrdom of St. Edmund, on August 28, 1628, he   
   appeared to Father Barlow (who did not yet know he had died) and   
   warned him that he, too, would be called on to give up his life. “Say   
   little,” he counseled Barlow, “for they will endeavor to take hold of   
   your words.”   
      
   Father Ambrose lived 13 years waiting for the prophecy to be   
   fulfilled. He was imprisoned four times during that period, but each   
   time released. Then in March 1641, Parliament practically forced King   
   Charles I to order all priests out of the country under penalty of   
   treason. A few weeks later, on Easter Sunday, the local Anglican vicar   
   led a party of 400 men armed with swords and clubs to arrest Father   
   Barlow. They seized him as he preached after the Easter Mass at a   
   private house at Leigh. The Benedictine had lately suffered a stroke,   
   so a man had to sit behind him on the horse to keep him from falling   
   off as they rode to the jail.   
      
   Father Barlow was held in prison four months before being called to   
   trial. Brought into the courtroom, he acknowledged straight out that   
   he was a priest. The judge asked him why then he had not left the   
   country as the law ordered. Barlow replied that the law had referred   
   to “Jesuits and seminary priests”, and he was a Benedictine. Anyhow,   
   he had been too ill to travel that far. Asked, then, what he thought   
   of the penal laws against Catholics, he replied boldly that they were   
   unjust and barbarous. He was nevertheless promised freedom if he would   
   stop “seducing the people”; that is, seeking to bring them back to   
   Catholicism. “I am no seducer,” he replied firmly, “but a reducer of   
   the people to the true and ancient religion. I am in the resolution to   
   continue until death to render this good office to these strayed   
   souls.” (As one who had himself “strayed” in his youth, this seems to   
   have been for him a most urgent concern.)   
      
   The trial took place on September 8, 1641. Five days before that,   
   unbeknown to Father Barlow, he had been elected a monastic prior by   
   his companion monks at Douay. But he was condemned to death on the day   
   of his trial – to a “traitor’s” death of hanging, drawing and   
   quartering. Before he mounted the scaffold he prayed the psalm, “Have   
   mercy on me, O God, in your goodness” (Ps. 51). In circulating his   
   death notice, his brother monks asked that his friends, instead of   
   offering requiem Masses for him and prayers for the dead, celebrate   
   Masses of thanksgiving and recite prayers of thanks. He had died for a   
   priesthood that he had truly honored by his life. Father Ambrose   
   Barlow was proclaimed a saint by Pope Paul VI in 1970.   
   –Father Robert   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   God refuses only the person who does not admit his own weakness; He   
   sends away only the unhappy proud person. You must "hold him" well and   
   strongly, with a poor spirit, with a poor heart, with a life entirely   
   poor...   
   --Saint Raphael Kalinowski   
      
   Bible Quote:   
    Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house,   
       lest he become weary of you and hate you. Proverbs 25:17  RSVCE   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   A Prayer Of Confidence In God   
      
   Jesus of the loving Heart, I believe that thou doth care for me more   
   than Thou careth for the birds of the air or the lilies of the field.   
      
   I believe that Thou doth care for me more than a mother careth for the   
   child in her arms.   
   I believe that even though a mother may forget the child of her womb,   
   yet wilt Thou not forget me.   
      
   And, therefore, I trust in Thee in all and through all and in spite of   
   all. Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)