Today October 19

We have today, among many illustrious saints -- in particular, St. Isaac Jogues and the other martyrs of North America who gave their lives under truly horrific conditions -- also the heroic layman, Blessed Philip Howard (1557 - 1595). He was neither a founder nor a member of a religious order, not even a third order, but a married man and, despite the restrictive conditions of his later life (he was locked up in the notorious Tower of London for 10 years), a father. Bloody Queen Elizabeth never let him see his son, born after his imprisonment, nor his faithful wife Anne who stood by him through it all: his early unfaithfulness and neglect (while he was at court and trying to make a good impression), his conversion to Catholicism (which he knew would cost him dearly, but he said: "[I am at the point] in which I must consent either to the certain destruction of my body or the manifest endangering of my soul"), and his long, bitter imprisonment.

He was thrown into prison for converting (with his wife) to Catholicism, and had the great misfortune of being still in prison -- and still a Catholic -- during the invasion of the Spanish Armada. He was tried on trumped-up charges and "evidence" extracted during torture, but still the treason charge did not stick. "The Catholic Roman faith which I hold is the only cause why either I have been thus long imprisoned or why I am now ready to be executed." But he never was executed; he died of his bad treatment on this day in 1595 in prison. To the end, he refused to attend Protestant services -- he just didn't believe in what was SAID in them -- and thus languished in that dank cell.

He was earl of Arundel (where his relics now lie) and wanted nothing more than to live his life in peace -- with his faithful hound (pictured with him in his stained-glass window in his parish church), but he didn't want it enough to turn his back on his new-found faith. Blessed Philip Howard, pray for us.