The Scribe Eleazar and Another English Martyr!

So I was watching the EWTN Daily Mass yesterday as I do every morning. Father Joseph celebrated the Mass for the Weekday (not choosing either Saint Gertrude the Great or St. Margaret of Scotland) and offered his homily on the first reading from Second Maccabees, which I had posted on yesterday. He referred to a letter or note he had received from one of Mother Angelica's Poor Clares who is 90 years old: I think he said she's the last  of the nuns who had come to Alabama from Canton, Ohio, and she was reflecting on the Scribe Eleazar, who was 90 years old at the time of his martyrdom. (The Mass will be posted on EWTN's Daily Mass YouTube channel today so you may view his comments for more details.)

She used the phrase that she had not been told that she was to die (yet)--paraphrasing Blessed Richard Langhorne, the barrister and lay councillor to the Jesuits in England, a Popish Plot victim. Then Father Joseph read the poem Langhorne wrote when he'd been condemned to death:

O Blessed News!!

It is told me I must die.
O blessed news!
I must quit
Earth for Heaven.
My earthly prison for a liberty of joy,
My banishment for my true country.

I must pass
From time to eternity,
From misery to felicity,
From change to immutability.

I must go to fill
My spirit with a plenitude of light,
My will with a fullness of peace,
My memory with a collection of all goods,
My senses with a satiety of pleasures.

I go where I shall find
All things which I can desire,
Nothing which I can fear.
I shall no more want any good,
God shall be unto me all in all,
And my all for all eternity.

I shall see and I shall live,
I shall praise and I shall bless,
And this I shall forever do.

It is told me I must die,
Oh, what happiness!
I am going
To the place of my rest,
To the land of the living,
To the haven of security,
To the kingdom of peace,
To the palace of my God,
To the nuptials of the Lamb,
To sit at the table of my King,

To feed on His blessed sight,
To see what no eye hath seen,
To hear what no ear hath heard,
To enjoy what no mortal can conceive.
Amen.

These English martyrs just follow me--or rather lead me--wherever I am!

Holy Maccabean martyrs, pray for us!

Blessed Richard Langhorne, pray for us!