+ Blessed ARTHUR BELL, Franciscan, 1643

THE OFFICE OF OUR LADY

Born of a good Catholic Worcestershire family, he was educated first at St. Omer’s, then at Valladolid. He asked for admission into the Order of St. Francis in the Province of the Immaculate Conception, and took the habit at the Convent of Segovia, August 9, 1618. He was distinguished by a rare union of learning with a sweet, joyous, and ardent temper, and an over- flowing sympathy with hisfellow-creatures which drew them like a magnet to his side. From his earliest years he had s- special devotion to Our Blessed Lady. He bound himself by vow to recite her office daily, and was in the habit of saying it alternately in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, French, Flemish, and English. He was successively Guardian of his Order and Professor of Hebrew at Douay, first Provincial in Scotland, and then laboured on the English Mission. Our Lady’s protection was manifested throughout his life. He was professed on the Feast of her Nativity, September 8, 1619. On the same Feast, 1634, he was sent on the Eng­lish Mission, and his death sentence, for which he had prayed her twenty years, and had recited daily the Psalm xxxv., Dixit injustus, was pronounced on the Feast of her Immaculate Con­ception, 1643.

“Blessed is the man that heareth Me, and that watcheth daily at My gates, and waiteth at the posts of My doors.”—Prov. viii. 34