Candlemas and St. Anne Line

Please see my blog post for The National Catholic Register in which I first discuss the greatness of the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple and how that is partially obscured by the liturgical calendar using the term "Ordinary Time" for this period between Christmas and Lent.

Then I tell the story of St. Anne Line's arrest on February 2, 1601, just before Father Francis Page, SJ was beginning the celebration of the Feast with the blessing of candles and Mass. He was able to escape capture while she was held in Newgate Prison until her trial and execution later that month.

Now it's time to put away the creches and take down the greenery: the 40 days of Christmas are over and Lent is just a short month away. As Robert Herrick wrote:

DOWN with rosemary and bayes,
Down with the mistleto,
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.
The holly hitherto did sway;	5
Let box now domineere,
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter’s eve appeare.
Then youthful box, which now hath grace
Your houses to renew,	10
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.
When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kinne	15
To honor Whitsontide.
Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With color oken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.	20
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed as former things grow old.

The Arrest of St. Anne Line

On Candlemas, February 2, 1601, Jesuit priest, Father Francis Page, was celebrating Mass for the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple at the safe house in London run by Anne Line.

Father John Gerard, SJ, author of the memoir Autobiography of a Hunted Priest had asked the widowed Catholic convert to be the housekeeper for the Catholic priests staying in London. On that day, the safe house proved to be none too safe, as pursuivants entered the house as Mass was in progress. Father Page was able to discard his vestments and mingle with the congregation, but Anne Line was not able to escape.

Since she was the keeper of the house, and the pursuivants had found an altar, vestments, and all the altar vessels for the celebration of Catholic Mass, Anne Line was arrested.

She was held and tried and executed for harboring and assisting priests on February 27, 1601. One of the priests executed that day after her at Tyburn, Blessed Roger Filcock, had once been a guest in the safe house. Father Francis Page was eventually captured and executed on April 20, 1602. St. Anne Line is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970--she shares a separate feast with St. Margaret Clitherow and St. Margaret Ward. Blessed Roger Filcock (and his companion on the way to Tyburn, Blessed Mark Barkworth) were beatified by Blessed John Paul II in 1987 among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales, and Blessed Francis Page was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929, among 136 martyrs of England and Wales.