Thursday, April 17, 2008

Faith of our Fathers

I've caught up in the reading! This is an exquisite book.
Today from Momentoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors, For Every day in the Year

April 17
PRAYER FOR ENGLAND
Ven. HENRY HEATH, O.S.F., 1643

ON his trial he said, "I came to this country to free souls from the servitude of the devil and to convert them from heresy." "Which heresy?" they asked. "Protestant, Puritan, Brownist, Anabaptist," I replied, "and many others, for whoever professes these are rightly called heretics." Again, "I was a Protestant myself up to my twenty-fourth year, and professed the same heresy that you do now. But, as Job says, Perish the day in which I was born, so I heap up curses and execrations on the day on which I began to imbibe the Protestant superstition." As he was being dragged to the hurdle he prayed God to remove the darkness and blindness of the Protestants, and on the scaffold, with the rope round his neck, he protested that his return to England was for no other design but to spend his life and labours in the conversion of his country, and that for this alone was he condemned to die. After he had recited the hymn and prayer of St. Anicetus, Pope and Martyr, whose day it was, he finished his course praying, "Jesus, Mary Jesus, for give my sins; Jesus, convert England ; Jesus, have mercy on this country. O England, turn thyself to the Lord thy God." Tyburn, April 17, 1643.

"Convert us, O Lord, to Thee and we shall be converted; renew our days as from the beginning." LAM. v. 21.


Hat tip to Fr. Tim at The hermeneutic of continuity

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