7th July - Blessed Ralph Milner
Eternal God, you bestowed upon your humble layman, the Blessed Ralph Milner, the courage and conviction of his faith, to desist the repeated attempts of the evil one to deny his faith in order to save his life. He rather lay down his life for his faith in the Living God. May we, by his example be endowed with courage to proclaim and practice our faith openly. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Prayers and Petitions)
Blessed Ralph Milner was a poor, uneducated yet devout rancher, a husband and a father of eight kids in sixteenth-century England. He was raised an Anglican, but changed over to Catholicism. He was apprehended upon the arrival of his First Communion for the wrongdoing of changing over. He was such a model detainee, that the corrections officers gave him keys so he could go out to work and come back to serve his sentence. He utilized this opportunity to get a cleric, including Blessed Roger Dickenson, into the correctional facility to minister to other Catholic detainees. Blessed Ralph was captured with Father Roger for the wrongdoings of helping a cleric, going to Mass and helping individual Catholics during the mistreatments of Queen Elizabeth I. He was given the opportunity for absolution if he denied Catholicism and went back to the Protestant church; but he declined. They got his children to the correctional facility with the expectations of altering his perspective; but he gave them a dad’s favoring, and proceeded with his readiness for execution as a martyr. He was beatified in 1929.
