May 28th - Margaret Pole

Political loyalty, religious loyalty, family, and friendship. There can be an odd collision of the understanding of loyalty among these.
Unless, that is, Christ is the guiding and foundational light of each. Then they work in harmony and benefit all.
Such was the case for Margaret. Like so many of that period, including Thomas More, the pull of secular thought might call one to be practical, give in, sign the paper, renounce the Faith; there were also political and monetary practicalities that would urge one to be "prudent" in human understanding of such things. Though she was assailed for her loyalty on all fronts and suffered greatly, she held true to Christ regardless of the pressures posed from outside against her interior life. In her loyalty to Christ, she excelled in loyalty to others.
It behooves us all to follow our conscience instead of the fickle winds of human activity and to remain true to the Gospel no matter what the cost.

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The crowd joined in the attack on them, and the magistrates had them stripped and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After inflicting many blows on them, they threw them into prison and instructed the jailer to guard them securely. When he received these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and secured their feet to a stake. About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened, there was suddenly such a severe earthquake that the foundations of the jail shook; all the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew [his] sword and was about to kill himself, thinking that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted out in a loud voice, “Do no harm to yourself; we are all here.” He asked for a light and rushed in and, trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved.” So they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to everyone in his house. He took them in at that hour of the night and bathed their wounds; then he and all his family were baptized at once. He brought them up into his house and provided a meal and with his household rejoiced at having come to faith in God.

-- Acts 16:22-34