From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Diligence in prayer   
      
    . . . The crown of every good endeavor and the highest of   
   achievements is diligence in prayer. Through it God guiding us and   
   lending a helping hand, we come to acquire the other virtues . . . as   
   the work of prayer is greater than other work, so it demands greater   
   effort and attention from the person ardently devoted to it, lest   
   without him being aware the devil deprives him of it. The greater the   
   good a person has in his care, the greater the attacks the devil   
   launches on him; hence he must keep strict watch, so that fruits of   
   love and humility, simplicity and goodness--and, along with them,   
   fruits of discrimination--may grow daily from the constancy of his   
   prayer. These will make evident his progress and increase in holiness,   
   thus encouraging others to make similar efforts.   
   --St. Symeon Metaphrastis   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   February 21st – St. Robert Southwell, Martyr   
      
   (d. 1595)   
   ROBERT SOUTHWELL, English Jesuit and poet, son of Richard Southwell of   
   Horsham St Faith's, Norfolk, was born in 1560/61. The Southwells were   
   affiliated with many noble English families, and Robert's grandmother,   
   Elizabeth Shelley, figures in the genealogy of Shelley the poet. He   
   was sent very young to the Roman Catholic college at Douai, and thence   
   to Paris, where he was placed under a Jesuit father, Thomas   
   Darbyshire. In 1580 he joined the Society of Jesus, after a two years'   
   novitiate, passed mostly at Tournay.   
      
   In spite of his youth he was made prefect of studies in the English   
   college of the Jesuits at Rome, and was ordained priest in 1584. It   
   was in that year that an act was passed, forbidding any English-born   
   subject of the Queen who had entered into priest's orders in the Roman   
   Catholic Church since her accession to remain in England longer than   
   forty days on pain of death. But Southwell at his own request was sent   
   to England in 1586 as a Jesuit missionary with Henry Garnett. He went   
   from one Catholic family to another, administering the rites of his   
   Church, and in 1589 became domestic chaplain to Ann Howard, whose   
   husband, the first Earl of Arundel, was in prison convicted of   
   treason. It was to him that Southwell addressed his Epistle of   
   Comfort. This and other of his religious tracts, “A Short Rule of Good   
   Life”, “Triumphs over Death”, “Mary Magdalen's Tears” and a “Humble   
   Supplication to Queen Elizabeth”, were widely circulated in   
   manuscript. That they found favour outside Catholic circles is proved   
   by Thomas Nash's imitation of “Mary Magdalen's Tears” in “Christ's   
   Tears over Jerusalem”.   
      
   After six years of successful labour Southwell was arrested. He was in   
   the habit of visiting the house of Richard Bellamy, who lived near   
   Harrow and was under suspicion on account of his connexion with Jerome   
   Bellamy, who had been executed for sharing in Anthony Babington's   
   plot. One of the daughters, Anne Bellamy, was arrested and imprisoned   
   in the gatehouse of Holborn. She revealed Southwell's movements to   
   Richard Topcliffe, who immediately arrested him. He was imprisoned at   
   first in Topcliffe's house, where he was repeatedly put to the torture   
   in the vain hope of extracting evidence about other priests.   
      
   Transferred to the gatehouse at Westminster, he was so abominably   
   treated that his father petitioned Elizabeth that he might either be   
   brought to trial and put to death, if found guilty, or removed in any   
   case from "that filthy hole." Southwell was then lodged in the Tower,   
   but he was not brought to trial until February 1595. There is little   
   doubt that much of his poetry, none of which was published during his   
   lifetime, was written in prison. On the 10th of February 1595 he was   
   tried before the King's Bench on the charge of treason, and was hanged   
   at Tyburn on the following day. On the scaffold he denied any evil   
   intentions towards the Queen or her government.   
      
   “St. Peter's Complaint” with other Poems was published in April 1595   
   without the author's name, and was reprinted 13 times during the   
   next forty years. A supplementary volume entitled Maeoniae appeared   
   later in 1595, and A Foure found “Meditation of the Four Last Things”   
   in 1606. This, which is not included in Dr A. B. Grosart's reprint   
   (1872) in the Fuller Worthies Library, was published by Mr Charles   
   Edmonds in his Isham Reprints (1895). “A Hundred Meditations of the   
   Love of God”, in prose, was first printed from a MS. at Stonyhurst   
   College in 1873.   
      
   Southwell's poetry is euphemistic in manner. But his frequent use of   
   antithesis and paradox, the varied and fanciful imagery by which he   
   realizes religious emotion, though they are indeed in accordance with   
   the poetical conventions of his time, are also the unconstrained   
   expression of an ardent and concentrated imagination. Ben Jonson told   
   Drummond of Hawthornden that he would willingly have destroyed many of   
   his own poems to be able to claim as his own Southwell's "Burning   
   Babe," an extreme but beautiful example of his fantastic treatment of   
   sacred subjects. His poetry is not, however, all characterized by this   
   elaboration. Immediately preceding this very piece in his collected   
   works is a carol written in terms of the utmost simplicity.   
      
   Southwell was beatified in 1929 and canonized by Pope Paul VI as one   
   of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales on 25 October 1970.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Mary was raised to the dignity of Mother of God rather for sinners   
   than for the just, since Jesus Christ declares that he came to call   
   not the just, but sinners.   
   --St. Anselm   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Never suffer pride to reign in thy mind, or in thy words:   
   for from it all perdition took its beginning. (Tobias 4:14)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   IDLE TALK   
      
    A sin that is most common and very   
    little recognized is the sin of idle talk.   
    Let us ponder what the Holy Bible   
    has to say on this subject and then   
    adjust our lives accordingly. From the   
    Holy Bible: “But I tell you that of every   
    idle word men speak, they shall give   
    account on the day of judgment.   
    For by thy words thou wilt be condemned”   
    (Matt. 12:36-37). What is the general rule   
    about the use of the tongue?   
    “But let every man be swift to hear,   
    slow to speak, and slow to wrath.   
    For the wrath of man does not work   
    the justice of God” (James 1:19-20).   
    What does idle talking lead to? “   
    But avoid profane and empty babblings,   
    for they contribute much to ungodliness   
    and their speech spreads   
    like a cancer" (2 Tim. 2:16:18).    
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)