Blessed WILLIAM WARD, Franciscan, 1641

A BURNING HEART

Biography

"BEHOLD the heart of a traitor!" cried the hangman, with the martyr's heart still palpitating in his hand, and threw it into the fire. Eager to obtain a relic, Count Egmont, a pious Catholic then in England, sent his servant with his handkerchief to dip it in the martyr's blood. Others, however, had been before him and not a drop remained. Searching in the ashes the servant found a heap of flesh singed with the fiery coals, and hastily wrapped the whole mass in his handkerchief. An attempt being now made to seize him, he fled across Hyde Park ; but as his pursuers gained he pretended to stumble, and hid his treasure in a bush as he fell. Taken before the magistrates, he was released through the Count's interest. The next day he returned and found his treasure, which proved to be the martyr's heart. As with St. Laurence, the divine fire within was stronger than the outward earthly flame. The hot coals adhering to the flesh had not burned the handkerchief, and the heart itself remained fifteen days incorrupt, when the Count had it embalmed, and took it to Paris with the relics of fourteen other martyrs whose executions he had witnessed, and on July 26, 1650, he signed and sealed the formal deed of authentication now in the archives of Lille.

"And there came in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones."—JER. xx. 9.

Blessed WILLIAM WARD, Franciscan, 1641

CLIENT OF ST. ANNE

Biography

HE was the first martyr under the persecution, renewed in spite of his promises, by Charles I. Born a Protestant, of a good Westmorland family, educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, he became a Catholic travelling abroad. On his return he practised his religion so openly that he was in prison at different times for nearly ten years. He entered Douay, was ordained priest 1608, and embarked for England. A contrary wind, however, drove him to Scotland, where, as a suspected priest, he was kept in an underground dungeon, in total darkness, for three years. Set free, he returned to England, and for thirty years, twenty of which were spent in prison, in spite of continuous suffering from a corrosive fistula and chronic toothache, he toiled for souls. He never preached, but holy conversation and the Sacrament of Penance were the weapons of his Apostolate, and the harvest reaped was abundant. When over eighty years of age, he was sentenced for saying Mass. He had a true Franciscan devotion to our Blessed Lady, and had always kept the Feast of her mother St. Anne with great solemnity, and he was now granted to die on that day. In the morning he said Mass, and going forth with joy won his crown.

"Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates."—PROV. xxxi. 31.

Family of St Anne in Holy Conversation.