From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   The infinite love of God   
      
    In Jesus we see the infinite love of God extending to each and every   
   individual as he gives freely and wholly of himself to each person he   
   meets. Do you approach the Lord with confident expectation that he   
   will hear your request and act?   
      
   "Lord Jesus, you love each of us individually with a unique and   
   personal love. Touch my life with your saving power, heal and restore   
   me to fullness of life. Help me to give wholly of myself in loving   
   service to others."   
      
   ==========   
   July 19th - St John Plessington, Priest & Martyr   
    (1637-1679)   
      
   As the son of Queen Henrietta Maria, King Charles II was naturally   
   imbued with Catholic sympathies; and the story of his deathbed, when   
   Fr Huddleston brought the Blessed Sacrament to him from Queen   
   Catherine of Braganza’s chapel, is well known.   
      
   Yet during the collective mania whipped up by Titus Oates under the   
   pretense of a “Popish Plot” (1678-79), King Charles did little or   
   nothing to save Catholics who found themselves in mortal peril. The   
   only potential victims on whose behalf he intervened were the Queen   
   and Louis XIV’s emissary Claude de la Colombière, SJ, of prior note.   
      
   Some 35 Catholics were executed, nearly all of them entirely innocent   
   of treason. Of course, Charles was under intense pressure from skilful   
   and unscrupulous politicians such as Lord Shaftesbury, who knew how to   
   manipulate the mob.   
      
   The essential point, though, was that the Merry Monarch had no   
   intention of going on his travels again. It is not easy to warm to the   
   complacency with which he appeared to regard the deaths of so many   
   falsely accused men.   
      
   One of these was John Plessington. The youngest of three children, he   
   was born in 1636 into a Catholic family at Dimples Hall, Garstang,   
   near Preston in Lancashire. His father fought for the King in the   
   Civil War and was taken prisoner.   
      
   John’s vocation may have been inspired by a family chaplain called   
   Thomas Whitaker, who was captured and executed in 1646. At all events,   
   Plessington, having attended the Jesuit school at Scarisbrick Hall,   
   near Ormskirk, followed Whitaker in being educated at Saint-Omer and   
   Valladolid. While abroad, he went under the name of William   
   Scarisbrick. In 1662 he was ordained in Segovia. The next year,   
   however, ill health brought him back to England.   
      
   For a while he served at the shrine of St Winifred in Holywell, North   
   Wales. Then in 1670 he moved to Puddington Hall in the Wirral, as   
   tutor to the Massey family.   
      
   For a while Plessington was able to minister openly to the local   
   Catholic population. But when the scare of the Popish Plot extended to   
   the north, a timeserver called Thomas Dutton collected a reward for   
   arresting him.   
      
   There was no charge against Plessington, beyond his occupation as a   
   Catholic priest, which sufficed for a death sentence. When the   
   executioner came to measure him, Plessington joked that he was   
   ordering his last suit.   
      
   According to a local tradition, St John was implicated at the   
   insistence of a Protestant landowner simply because he had forbidden a   
   match between his son and a Catholic heiress. Three witnesses gave   
   false evidence of seeing St John serving as a priest: he forgave each   
   of them by name from the scaffold.   
      
   He was hanged, drawn and quartered in Chester on July 19 1679. His   
   speech from the scaffold at Gallow’s Hill in Boughton, Cheshire was   
   printed and distributed: He said: “Bear witness, good hearers, that I   
   profess that I undoubtedly and firmly believe all the articles of the   
   Roman Catholic faith, and for the truth of any of them, by the   
   assistance of God, I am willing to die; and I had rather die than   
   doubt of any point of faith taught by our holy mother the Roman   
   Catholic Church…   
      
   I know it will be said that a priest ordayned by authority derived   
   from the See of Rome is, by the Law of the Nation, to die as a   
   Traytor, but if that be so what must become of all the Clergymen of   
   the Church of England, for the first Church of England Bishops had   
   their Ordination from those of the Church of Rome, or not at all, as   
   appears by their own writers so that Ordination comes derivatively   
   from those now living.”   
   --StJohnPlessingtonSpeech1   
      
   StJohnPlessingtonSpeech2   
   -displayed in St Winefride’s Church in Little Neston, on the Wirral, UK   
      
   St John was buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas’s, Burton, after   
   Puddington locals would not allow his quarters to be displayed.   
   Attempts to locate and exhume his body, as recent as 1962, have been   
   unsuccessful but vestments associated with him are kept at St   
   Winefride’s in Neston and a small piece of blood-stained linen is   
   treasured as a relic in St Francis’s Church in Chester.   
   By Matthew   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul   
   in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue   
   except in mere appearance.   
   --Saint Augustine of Hippo   
      
   50 Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig   
   tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.” 51 And   
   he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven   
   opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of   
   man.”  (John 1: 50-51)  RSVCE   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   A Prayer for after the Holy Mass   
      
       I Beseech Thee,   
       most sweet Lord Jesus Christ,   
       that Thy Passion may be to me power   
       by which I may be strengthened,   
       protected and defended.   
      
       May Thy wounds be to me food   
       and drink by which I may be nourished,   
       inebriated, and delighted.   
      
       May the sprinkling of Thy Blood be to me   
       an ablution for all my sins.   
      
       May Thy death prove for me unfailing life,   
       and may Thy Cross be to me eternal glory.   
      
       In these be my refreshment,   
       joy, health, and delight of my heart:   
       Thou who livest and reignest forever.  Amen.   
      
       (Name of this Prayer: "I Beseech Thee, most sweet Lord Jesus Christ.")   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)