Today March 25

Today is usually the glorious feast of the Annunciation, but we celebrate it tomorrow, so today we can celebrate the feast of St. Margaret Clitherow, also spelled Clitheroe.

I feel very close to this secular saint, who could truly be the patron of housewives, although she is actually the patroness of businesswomen, converts and martyrs. And what a martyr she was! Imprisoned several times for sheltering priests and hearing Mass, this convert (formerly Anglican) was sentenced to be pressed to death. Eight hundred pounds of stones were piled bit by torturous bit on top of the heavy wooden door she was forced to lie under. To add to the torture, a small rock was placed under the small of her back. Eventually the weight would snap her spine. This diminutive woman, faithful wife, harmless housewife . . . tortured to death publicly, just because she chose to exercise her religion! How many of us would dare to keep practicing in the face of such odds . . . we, who barely practice!

She was the daughter of the sheriff of York, Thomas Middleton, and his wife Jane. She married the butcher John, who was raised and stayed Anglican, bravely paying the stiff penalties in the form of fines for his wife's determination to stay away from the Protestant services. She was the finest wife, he testified, and in which nothing more could be desired. She never displeased him, except that due to her crisis of conscience, she would not attend services with him. She ever spun and sewed, cooked and cleaned, raised their three children (two boys and a girl!), and kept her voice pleasant and her temper even. But beneath the calm exterior and the steady bustle of life breathed a fervent spiritual life. She took great chances harboring visiting priests and took her rare Communions with an outpouring of fervor bordering on ecstasy. The graces of the sacraments she received no doubt aided her in her many imprisonments and her final arrest and sentencing. She was brought to trial and would not plead, her only statement being, "Having made no offense, I need no trial." Even in the end, her only thoughts were for her children, desiring that they not be put through the torment of having to testify against her. A real mother. I KNOW this woman. I want to BE this woman! May her children rise to praise her at the city gates! And in fact, her children did live to praise her with the testimony of their lives: the two boys became priests and the girl became a nun. Her husband never converted to her faith, but he testified to her goodness and virtue, even in tears. All this due to the "laws" of a greedy and over-bearing state which appropriated to itself powers it did not have . . . power over the Church and the consciences of its people.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a long lyrical poem of Margaret Clitheroe, and composed a verse illustrating the additional fact that though the authorities desired to "press her to death" naked, in service of modesty and justice:
"The last thing Margaret's fingers sew
Is a shroud for Margaret Clitheroe."