Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Robert Southwell, on ‘The Burning Babe’ of Christmas)

“‘My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
      So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.’
      With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
      And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.”—English Jesuit, poet and martyr St. Robert Southwell (1561–1595), “The Burning Babe,” in St. Peter’s Complaint (1595)