For love of priests, and holy Mass...

 "We are born to love, we live to love,  and we will die to love still more." - St. Joseph Cafasso
 

"March 26th is one of two days the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church honors a Pearl of Our Lady's Dowry. The Church chose this day, as it was the first available. In reality, she was put to death on quite a momentous day. Not only was it March 25th - the date that the Feast of the Annunication is normally celebrated, but in the year that she died, 1586, this date was also Good Friday. She followed in her dear Saviour's footsteps so closely that she died in a cruciform position, her hands and arms outstretched and bound to the floor on which she would be crushed. After having been secured in the cruciform position mentioned before, in imitation of Christ, the martyr was crushed to death by several hundred pounds of weights that were laid on top of her. She was not the only victim of the execution. She had been four months pregnant.

This "Pearl" is St. Margaret Clitherow. She died in defense of the Catholic faith. More specifically, she died in defense of the priesthood, the Mass, and the Blessed Sacrament. 

St. Margaret opened her home to the most reviled class of people in Elizabethan England - Catholic priests. "This is a war and a trial in God's Church," she wrote of the persecution in her country. "Therefore, if I cannot do my duty without peril and dangers, yet by God's grace I will not be slacker for them. If God's priests dare venture themselves to my house, I will never refuse them."

One biographer wrote, "The heart and center of [St. Margaret's] life was the Mass." One priest that she harbored, Father John Mush, wrote, "Her most delight was to kneel where she might continually behold the Blessed Sacrament."

Source: Click here: An Imitation of Christ - St. Margaret Clitherow

St Margaret Clitherow

England ~ 1556-1586

Convert, Wife, Mother, Martyr

aka "Pearl of York"

FEAST DAY - March 26

"I die for the love of my Lord Jesu."- St Margaret Clitherow  Moved by her saintly life, all her children entered the religious life. 
Anne became a nun. Henry and William both became priests.

St Margaret Clitherow, pray for us!