LOVE OF OUR LADY
Blessed Arthur Bell - Franciscan Friar
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| Blessed Arthur Bell - Franciscan Friar |
BORN of a Worcestershire family, he was educated first at St Omer, then at Valladolid, and became a Franciscan at Segovia in 1617. He was distinguished by a rare union of learning with a sweet, joyous and ardent temperament and an overflowing sympathy with his fellow men which drew like a magnet. From his earliest years he had a special devotion to Our Lady.
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| Fellow English Martyr, Father Henry Morse, instructs recusant Catholics using an image of Our Lady, outlawed during Penal Times. © 2014 Mary's Dowry Productions Screenshot from 'Saint Henry Morse' DVD |
He bound himself by a vow to recite her office daily, and is said to have been in the habit of saying it alternately in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, French, Flemish and English. He filled various offices in his order, and then laboured on the English Mission. Our Lady's feasts marked the important events of his life. He was professed on her Birthday, and on the same feast was sent on the English mission; his death sentence, for which he had prayed twenty years and recited daily Psalm 35, was pronounced on the feast of her conception. Bell was executed for his priesthood at Tyburn on 11 December 1643.
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| The hangman's noose © 2015 Mary's Dowry Productions |
"Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors." - Prov. 8, 34.
Reading for 20th December
Mementoes of the Martyrs and Confessors of England and Wales
by Henry Sebastian Bowden
For films about the English Martyrs:
In 2007 Mary’s Dowry productions created a new form of film media to present the lives of the saints. Mary’s Dowry Productions recreates silent visuals, informative, devotional narration, and original contemplative music that touches your spirit to draw you into a spiritual encounter with the saint. Watch with your spiritual eye, listen with your spiritual ear.
Our films seek to offer a window into the lives of our saints. Using your spiritual senses we invite you to shut out the world, sit prayerfully and peacefully and go on a journey of faith, history and prayer with our Saints and English Martyrs.
Blessed Arthur Bell, who in religion was known as Father Francis, is also one of the patrons of the Shrine of Our Lady of West Grinstead in West Sussex
(See our upcoming post about the Door of Mercy and the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation).
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