From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Spirit of ownership or poverty in the Spirit?   
      
       Seek for nothing, desiring to enter, for love of Jesus, upon   
   detachment, emptiness and poverty in everything in this world. You   
   will never have to do with necessities greater than those to which you   
   made your heart yield itself: for the poor in spirit are most happy   
   and joyful in a state of privation, and he who has set his heart on   
   nothing finds satisfaction everywhere.   
       The poor in spirit (Mt 5,3) give generously all they have and   
   their pleasure consists in being thus deprived of everything for God's   
   sake and out of love to their neighbor... Not only do temporal   
   goods--the delights and tastes of the sense--hinder and thwart the way   
   of God, but spiritual delights and consolations also, if sought for or   
   clung to eagerly, disturb the way of virtue.   
   --Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), Carmelite, Doctor of the Church   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   September 7th - Bl. John Duckett & Ralph Corby, Martyrs of England   
      
   Memorial   
       7 September   
       29 October as one of the Martyrs of Douai   
      
   The north country family of Duckett had already given one martyr to   
   the Church in the person of Bl. James Duckett (April 19).  He had a   
   son who became prior of the English Carthusians at Nieuport in   
   Flanders. Whether James Duckett who fathered Bl. John was another son   
   is not certain; but Bl. John was related to Bl. James in some way. He   
   was born at Underwinter in the parish of Sedbergh in the west riding   
   of Yorkshire in 1613, went to the English College at Douay, and was   
   made priest there in 1639.  He then studied for three years at Paris,   
   where the long periods he passed in prayer were commented on and he   
   was rumoured to have gifts of contemplation of a high order.   
      
   When he was at length sent to the English mission he passed two months   
   of preparatory retreat with Carthusians at Nieuport, under the   
   direction of Father Duckett, whom Bishop Challoner refers to as his   
   kinsman but does not specify to have been his uncle.  When he had   
   ministered in the county palatine of Durham for about twelve months he   
   was arrested while on his way to baptize two children, on July 2,   
   1644, the day on which the battle of Marston Moor was fought, together   
   with two laymen. Mr. Duckett was examined before a parliamentary   
   committee of sequestrators at Sunderland, and refused to admit that he   
   was a priest, demanding to see their proofs. The holy oils and Rituale   
   found on him were pretty clear evidence, but the examiners wanted a   
   personal admission, so they put him in irons and threatened to torture   
   him. When he heard that the two laymen were being questioned and that   
   inquiries were to be made among his friends and associates, he decided   
   he must save them from the possibility of their implicating   
   themselves; and therefore confessed his priesthood. Thereupon he was   
   sent up to London, together with a Jesuit, Father Corby, who had been   
   seized when celebrating Mass at Hamsterley Hall, near Newcastle.   
      
   Ralph Corby (or Corbington) came from a Durham family, but was born at   
   Maynooth, in 1598. When Ralph was five his parents returned to   
   England, and after years of persecution every member of the family   
   entered religion. The father, Gerard Corbington, became a temporal   
   coadjutor with the Jesuits and reconciled to the Church his own father   
   when he was a hundred years old.  The mother, Isabel Richardson, died   
   a Benedictine at Ghent, and two surviving daughters joined the same   
   order at Brussels, while Ralph's elder and younger brothers also were   
   Jesuits.  He himself joined the Society of Jesus at Watten in   
   Flanders, and came on the mission in 1632, ministering for twelve   
   years thereafter with unquenchable zeal among the widely scattered   
   faithful of county Durham.  Challoner tells us that "they loved him as   
   their father and reverenced him as an apostle".   
      
   On their arrival in London the two confessors were committed to   
   Newgate to await the September sessions. There was no doubt what the   
   upshot would be, and the English Jesuits abroad were making feverish   
   efforts in concert with the imperial chargé d'affaires in London to   
   get Father Corby exchanged for a Scots colonel who was held prisoner   
   in Germany by the emperor. When it seemed as if this would be   
   successful, Father Corby offered the reprieve to Mr Duckett. To which   
   he replied, "This thing is being procured and arranged by your   
   friends. Be you therefore pleased to accept it." Corby disclaimed   
   it--Mr. Duckett was younger and better qualified for service on the   
   mission than himself. And thus it was "handed to and fro between them,   
   neither being willing to accept of it, till an expedient was proposed   
   to save them both; but it succeeded not, for the Parliament, it seems,   
   was resolved they both should suffer". At the trial they both pleaded   
   guilty to being priests, but Father Corby claimed that as he was born   
   in Ireland he did not come within the statute. This plea was overruled   
   (quite properly) and sentence of death pronounced. While he was   
   celebrating his last Mass in their Newgate lodging, Father Corby   
   "appeared to be as it were in an agony of sadness and fear", but the   
   trial passed, and at ten o'clock in the morning of September 7, 1644,   
   they both set out on the journey to Tyburn, with their crowns shaved,   
   in their cassocks, and with a smiling look".  Mr. Duckett spoke little   
   but to give his blessing to the many who asked it and to say to the   
   Protestant minister that would address him, "Sir, I come not hither to   
   be taught my faith but to die for the profession of it".  Bl. Ralph   
   made a short speech, they lovingly embraced one another, and the cart   
   was drawn away: nor would the sheriff allow them to be cut down and   
   disembowelled before they were both dead. He took extraordinary   
   precautions to prevent any relics escaping the flames, nevertheless a   
   hand of Bl. John and some pieces of their cassocks were saved; and in   
   the archives of the diocese of Westminster there is treasured a letter   
   written by Bl. John on the eve of his passion to Dr Richard Smith,   
   titular Bishop of Chalcedon and vicar apostolic of England, who was   
   then living in Paris. "I fear not death", he writes, "nor I contemn   
   not life. If life were my lot, I would endure it patiently; but if   
   death, I shall receive it joyfully, for that Christ is my life and   
   death is my gain."   
      
   Ralph Corby is included in his brother's Certamen Triplex (see   
   biography of Bl. Henry Morse on February 1). See also MMP., pp.   
      
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