How Mary Was Presented in the Temple

God inspired in the heart of the pure Virgin Mary his own intense love for humility, and abhorrence of pride. She possessed, even from her infancy, a far greater horror of pride and ambition, and a far deeper love for humility than did all the saints together. It was the first virtue that she practiced. She abased and humbled herself before all. She esteemed herself, and would have been happy to be treated by others, as the last of all creatures. By the marvelous radiance of her Immaculate Conception, she beheld herself susceptible to the guilt of the children of Adam, except that God miraculously preserved her, and she considered that she might have been capable of all the sins in the world, whose source is original sin. It was this humility which attracted to her the countless graces which rendered her worthy to be the Mother of God, Queen of heaven and earth. Give thanks to Almighty God who resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, and offer him all the glory that this Maiden accorded to his majesty by her practice of richest humility during her childhood and throughout the rest of her life.

Saint John Eudes

-Saint John Eudes (1680) is largely responsible for initiating and popularizing devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

"I shall give to the poor"

Entreaty for sins has the greatest efficacy when accompanied by alms and fasting. Prayer rises up quickly to the ears of God when lifted up by the recommendations of these. Since, as it has been written, "the merciful man benefits his own soul," nothing belongs to each individual more than what has been spent on one's neighbor. Part of those physical resources which are used to help the poor become transformed into eternal riches. Born from this generosity are funds which will not be able to be diminished through use nor damaged through decay. "Blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them." He who constitutes the very exemplar of this precept will also be the sum of their reward...

Be steady then, Christian giver. Give what you receive, sow what you reap, scatter what you collect. Do not fear the cost, do not long after the dubious income. Your property increases by being well spent. Long for the lawful reward of mercy, and pursue the business of the eternal profit. Your benefactor wants you to be the beneficient, and he who gives so that you might have, entrusts it so that you might distribute it, saying: "Give and it will be given to you." You must embrace the condition of this promise and show your gratitude.

Saint Leo the Great

-Saint Leo the Great (461) reigned as pope from 440 to 461. He is a Doctor of the Church.

Why Our Faith Saves Us

Our faith is not founded upon empty words; nor are we carried away by mere caprice or beguiled by specious arguments. On the contrary, we put our faith in words spoken by hte power of God, spoken by the Word himself at God's command. God wished to win us back from disobedience, not by using force to reduce us to slavery, but by addressing to our free will a call to liberty.

The Word spoke first of all through the prophets, but because the message was couched in such obscure language that it could only dimly be apprehended, in the last days the Father sent the Word in person, commanding him to show himself openly so that the world could see him and be saved.

We know that by taking a body from the Virgin he refashioned our fallen nature. We know that his humanity was of the same clay as our own; if this were not so, he would hardly have been a teacher who could expect to be imitated. If he were of a different substance from me, he would surely not have ordered me to do as he did, when by my very nature I am so weak. Such a demand could not be reconciled with his goodness and justice.

Saint Hippolytus

-Saint Hippolytus (236) was a Roman priest who died as a martyr.

Perseverance

We find no pleasure except in Christ; we neither value nor want to know anything but Christ crucified.  We even say, "I find my pleasure and want to glory in my Lord Jesus Christ, for whose love the world despises me and I the world."

Up then!  Since this holy cross is so sweet that is relieves all bitterness, pick it up for your journey along this road.  For we pilgrim travelers need this holy wood for support until we have reached our destination, where our soul is at rest in our final home.  How sweet to us now are the burdens we have carried along the way!  What peace, what calm, what sweetness our soul receives and enjoys once we have come home to port and have found the slain Lamb whom we had sought on the cross and who is now our table, our food, and our servant!  And we find that the divine Being is a bed where we now rest and sleep - I mean we have finally put an end to the perverse law that had been in constant rebellion against our Creator while we were journeying.  So let's happily and joyfully, with flaming, blazing desire take up the true standard of the most holy cross, never fearing that we will not be able to persevere in the life we have begun.  Let us rather say, "Through Christ crucified I will be able to do and endure all things, even to the point of death."

Saint Catherine of Siena

-Saint Catherine of Siena (1380), Doctor of the Church, was a Dominican, a stigmatist, and a papal counselor.  

The Kingdom of God Among Us

In proportion as the mind is absorbed in the thought and care of the things of this world do we lose the fervor of our devotion, and drift away from the things of heaven.

The greater, on the other hand, our diligence in withdrawing our powers from the memory, love, and thought of that which is inferior in order to fix them upon that which is above, the more perfect will be our prayer, the purer our contemplation.  The soul cannot give itself perfectly at the same time to two objects as contrary on to another as light to darkness; for he who lives united to God dwells in the light, he who clings to this world lives in darkness.

The highest perfection, therefore, of man in this life lies in this:  that he is so united to God that his soul with all its powers and faculties becomes immersed in him and is on spirit with him.  Then it remembers nothing but God, nor does it relish or understand any thing but him.  Then all its affections, united in the delights of love, repose sweetly in the enjoyment of their Creator.

The image of God which is imprinted upon the soul is found in the three powers of the reason, memory, and will.  But since these do not perfectly bear the divine likeness, they have not the same resemblance to God as in the first days of man's creation.  

God is the "form" of the soul upon which he must impress his own image, as the seal on the wax or the stamp on the object it marks.

This can only be fully accomplished when the reason is wholly illuminated according to its capacity by the knowledge of God the Sovereign Truth; the will entirely devoted to the love of the Supreme Good; the memory absorbed in the contemplation and enjoyment of eternal happiness, and in the sweet repose of so great a state.  

As the perfect possession of this state constitutes the glory of the blessed in heaven, it is clear that in its commencement consists the perfection of this life.  

Saint Albert the Great

-Saint Albert the Great (1280) was a German Dominican priest and the teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas.  He is the patron of scientists.  

God's Servants

Regardless of how difficult a project is, I place it in the adorable Heart of Jesus.  Then I can securely rest in peace, even when far away, knowing well that he knows what to do and brings to completion every work that I desire for his glory.  In the field, I shall work with all my might, but when obedience takes me away from one assignment to go to another where the harvest is ripe, I shall leave the first.  Loving my beloved Jesus, I shall trust him to give sufficient help and enthusiasm to our dear sisters to succeed in accomplishing everything.

Oh, the law of divine love is so excellent and amiable, and God himself has given it to his creatures.  Without Jesus, the world is mud and affliction of spirit; Jesus without the world is a precious treasure.  Blessed is the soul who trusts in Jesus because he is lavish in his promises and generous in giving his graces and treasures.  Oh, yes, my daughters, the precept to love Jesus is an inestimable privilege.  However, we cannot love him if we are not loved first by him.  In giving us this law, he also gives us the grace to love him.  

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

-Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1917) was born in Lombardy, Italy, and worked in the United States caring for the Italian immigrants.  She was the first American citizen to be canonized.

Life in Heaven

After the resurrection, when our bodies will be reunited to our souls, they will be incorruptible; and the carnal passions which disturb us now will not be present in those bodies; we shall enjoy a peaceful equilibrium in which the prudence of the flesh will not make war upon the soul; and there will no longer be that internal warfare wherein sinful passions fight against the law of the mind, conquering the soul and taking it captive by sin.  Our nature then will be purified of all these tendencies, and one spirit will be in both, I mean in the flesh and in the spirit, and every corporeal affection will be banished from our natures.  In much the same way the Word in the Canticle bids us, even though we live in the flesh, not to turn our thoughts to it but to look merely to the spirit, and to turn all the expressions of love that we find here as pure and immaculate offerings to the good Lord who surpasses all understanding, in whom alone is all that is sweet, lovely, and desirable.  For any enjoyment of him only increases our desire for a greater share in his goodness.  Such was Moses' love, such was Isaias', and such was John's when he called him the bridegroom:  "He that has the bride is the bridegroom:  but the friend of the bridegroom rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom's voice" (Jn 3: 29).  So too Peter, when asked whether he loved the Lord, answered with all sincerity:  "You know that I love you" (Jn 21: 15).  It was the same with the other apostles.  So it was with Paul, who first persecuted Christ and then loved him, even though he had not seen him, and wrote:  "I have espoused you that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor 2: 2).  

Saint Gregory of Nyssa

-Saint Gregory of Nyssa (395) is a Father of the Church who wrote many theological treatises against heresy.

Being Trustworthy in Small Matters

This ineffable restoration of our salvation, dearly beloved, leaves no place for pride or idleness.  We both have nothing beyond what we have received and are continuously warned against holding on to the gifts of God's grace without using them.  With all justice, then, the one who goes ahead of us with help also insists upon his conditions, and the one who leads us to glory urges us graciously to obedience.  As a result, the Lord rightly became the Way for us, since we cannot come to Christ except through Christ.

Whoever walks his path of patience and humility comes to Christ through Christ.  On this journey, the heat of labor is clearly not wanting, nor the gloom of sorrow, nor the tempest of fear.  On it are the treachery of wicked people, persecutions by the godless, threats from those in power, and insults from the proud.  Yet the Lord of Hosts and King of Glory endured all things in the form of our weakness and in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that, among the dangers of this life, we should not so much wish to flee by running away as to overcome by enduring.

Hence it is that our Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, transforming all the members of his body into himself, cried out amid the punishment of the cross (assuming the persona of those redeemed), saying what on one occasion he had uttered in the psalm:  "My God, my God, look at me.  Why have you abandoned me?"  This expression, dearly beloved, represents a teaching, not a complaint.  Since in Christ there is but one Person for God and man, he cannot be abandoned by someone from whom he cannot be separated.  He asks on our behalf...  The Redeemer's power would have brought nothing to humanity if our weakness had obtained what it sought.

Saint Leo the Great

-Saint Leo the Great (461) reigned as pope from 440 to 461.  He is a Doctor of the Church.

Search for the Lost Sheep

Seek me, Lord;  I need you.  Seek me, find me, lift me up, carry me.  You are expert at finding what you search for; and when you have found the stray you stoop down, lift him up, and place him on your own shoulders.  To you he is a burden of love, not an object of revulsion; it is no irksome task to you to bring justification to the human race.  Come then, Lord; I have gone astray, but I have not forgotten your commandments.  I still hold on to the hope of healing.  Come, Lord; none but you can bring back your erring sheep.  Those whom you leave behind will not be grieved, because the sinner's return will be a joy to them too.  Come, do your saving work on earth, and let there be joy in heaven.

Come in search of your sheep, not through the ministry of servants or hirelings, but in your own person.  Take my human nature, which fell in Adam.  Take my humanity, not from Sarah but from the spotless Virgin Mary, a Virgin preserved through your grace form many stains of sin.  Bear me on the cross where sinners find salvation, where alone there is rest for the weary, where alone there is life for the dying.  

Saint Ambrose

-Saint Ambrose (397) was one of the great figures of early Christianity.

The Kingdom and Christ's Humility

Jesus, whose greatness cannot be measured, is well compared to an apple tree, if we think only of his littleness, that is of his humility though that also never finds a measure.  The comparison holds because the apple tree, though very much inferior to the trees of the wood in height, is much more fruitful than they.  It is in this sense that the kingdom of heaven is compared to a grain of mustard seed, which is smaller than other seeds, but when sown, grows into a tree, "so that all the birds of the air come and sit in its branches."  Christ is the fruit-bearing tree and the mustard tree, since he refreshes us with life and pricks us with health, sweet to taste and pleasantly pungent.

"The apple tree" is "among the trees of the wood," for the trees even of paradise must draw life and nourishment from him, the one sole tree of life that was in the midst of paradise.  If it were not for him the trees of the wood would be parched trees.  From the countless multitude of angels and holy men, the Lord has planted a vast and very lovely paradise, a garden full of delight, but only for those who dwell there.  Yet if the tree of life that is Christ Jesus, were not to provide that multitude with the fruitfulness of his humility, then it would lose much of its loveliness and all of its fertility.

John of Ford

-John of Ford (1214) was the abbot of a Cistercian monastery in southwest England.

Christ's Mercy vs. Satan's Bondage

God's mercy must be loved and his justice feared by both the good and the wicked, lest either the good, loving the mercy of God, do not fear his justice and fall into the traps of the devil who seduces, or the wicked, considering only the severity of justice, do not seek the blessing of his mercy when they can find it in their life, and so hardened, not only reject the forgiveness of sins but also do not cease to multiply sins.  The devil frequently captures in this twofold trap those who are not careful so that, either dulled by the vain hope of a future forgiveness, they are unwilling to be converted by the fear of justice, or, in all ways despairing of forgiveness, they neglect their way of living and loosing the reins to wickedness, while they despair of forgiveness, they plunge headlong into hell.  And so that fervid enemy of the human race hurls some down because of reckless despair, but others he trips up with the deception of a false hope.  Wherefore blessed Paul in whom Christ spoke, writing to those who lived good lives, commends their obedience, so that he orders them to act cautiously, with fear and trembling, in their salutary acts.

Saint Fulgentius

-Saint Fulgentius (527) was the bishop of Ruspe and the founder of several monasteries in Africa.