Saint AMBROSE BARLOW, OSB, 1641

HORROR OF SCANDAL

SOME months before his last apprehension, for he was several times a prisoner, he heard that some persons, dear to him as his own soul, were bent upon doing something very wicked, and which was Hke to be the ruin of many souls. The news of this scandal so strongly on a sudden affected him that he was seized with a fit of dead palsy, which deprived him of the use of one side and put his life in danger. What added very much to his cross was the fear lest his poor children whom he had begotten in Christ should now be left destitute of spiritual assistance. Moreover, he had the additional affliction that, while his convulsions and pains seemed to have brought him to death's door, no priest could be found to administer the Holy Sacraments to him. In this anguish God was pleased to comfort him, and he made an act of complete conformity to God's will, preferring that entire resignation to the use of the Sacraments or to martyrdom itself. While in these dispositions a Jesuit father arrived to assist him, as he himself had twelve years before exercised the same charity to B. Arrowsmith when in prison, at which time that confessor of Christ had foretold that he must be the next to follow.

" Who is weak and I am not weak ? who is scandalised and I am not on fire?."—2 COR.xi.29.