St. Mary Magdalen

Today is the day we honor Mary Magdalene, the repentant sinner. Although she is just an honorable mention these days, she is one of the most influential persons of the New Testament. St. Bridget of Sweden stated that Our Lord told her: "Three saints have been more pleasing to me than all others: Mary my Mother, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalen." The Fathers of the Church tell us that Magdalen is a type of the Gentile Church, called from the depth of sin to perfect holiness; and indeed, better than any other, she personifies both the wanderings and the love of the human race, espoused by the Word of God.

'And behold a woman that was in the city, a sinner, when she knew that He sat at meal in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment; and standing behind at His feet, she began to wash His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment.' "Who is this woman? Without a doubt it is the Church, answers St. Peter Chrysologus, 'the Church, weighed down and stained with sins committed in the city of this world. At the news that Christ has appeared in Judea, that He is to be seen at the banquet of the Pasch, where He bestows His mysteries and reveals the divine Sacrament, and makes known the secret of salvation, suddenly she darts forward; despising the endeavors of the Scribes to prevent her entrance, she confronts the princes of the Synagogue; burning with desire she penetrates into the sanctuary, where she finds Him whom she seeks, betrayed by Jewish perfidy even at the banquet of love; not the passion, nor the Cross, nor the tomb can check her faith, or prevent her from bringing her perfumes to Christ.'

Our beloved Abbot Gueranger continues:
...Mingling the perfume of her conversion with her tears of repentance, she anoints the feet of her Lord, honoring in them His humanity. Her faith, whereby she is justified, grows equally with her love; soon the Head of the Spouse--that is, His divinity--receives from her the homage of the full measure of pure and precious spikenard--to wit, consummate holiness, whose heroism goes so far as to break the vessel of mortal flesh by the martyrdom of love, if not by that of tortures.

St. Jerome and St. Cyril, along with St. Bede, state that "what Magdalen once did, remains the type of what the whole Church does, and of what every perfect soul must ever do." Also, notice that she wants Him for What and Who He is, and not just for what He can do for her.

It was Mary Magdalen who stood with Our Lady and Saint John at the foot of the cross, representative of the many who have loved much because much has been forgiven them.


St. Albert the Great assures us that, '...in the world of grace as well as in the material creation, God has made two great lights--two Marys, the Mother of our Lord and the sister of Lazarus: the greater, which is the Blessed Virgin, to rule the day of innocence; the lesser, which is Mary the penitent beneath the feet of that glorious Virgin, to rule the night by enlightening repentant sinners. As the moon by its phases points out the feast days on earth, so Magdalen in heaven gives the signal of joy to the angels of God over one sinner doing penance. Does she not also share with the Immaculate One the name of Mary, Star of the Sea, as the Churches of Gaul sang in the Middle Ages, recalling how, though one was a Queen and the other a handmaid, both were causes of joy to the Church: the one being the gate of salvation, the other the messenger of the Resurrection.' (Remember, she was the first who saw Him after His death. At least in scripture, because I think His Mother saw Him first.)

St. Mary Magdalen, pray for us sinners. We need all the help we can get.

Retirement humor

Why I Like Retirement ! (and, I've liked it for ten years now)

Question: How many days in a week?
Answer: 6 Saturdays, 1 Sunday

Question: When is a retiree's bedtime?
Answer: Two hours after he falls asleep on the couch.

Question: How many retirees to change a light bulb?
Answer: Only one, but it might take all day.

Question: What's the biggest gripe of retirees?
Answer: There is not enough time to get everything done.

Question: Why don't retirees mind being called Seniors?
Answer: The term comes with a 10% discount. And, you get a discount on the golf course.

Question: Among retirees, what is considered formal attire?
Answer: Tied shoes.

Question: Why do retirees count pennies?
Answer: They are the only ones who have the time.

Question: What is the common term for someone who enjoys work and
refuses to retire?
Answer: NUTS!

Question: Why are retirees so slow to clean out the basement, attic or
garage?
Answer: They know that as soon as they do, one of their adult kids will
want to store stuff there.

Question: What do retirees call a long lunch?
Answer: Normal ...........

Question: What is the best way to describe retirement?
Answer: The never ending Coffee Break.

Question: What's the biggest advantage of going back to school as a
retiree?
Answer: If you cut classes, no one calls your parents.

Question: Why does a retiree often say he doesn't miss work, but misses
the people he used to work with?
Answer: He is too polite to tell the whole truth.

And, my very favorite....

QUESTION: What do you do all week?
Answer: Monday through Friday, NOTHING..... Saturday & Sunday, I rest.



SERENITY

Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman:
The reporter asked, 'What is the best thing about being 104?'
Her reply, "No peer pressure"


The nice thing about being senile is
you can hide your own Easter eggs and have fun finding them.


I've sure gotten old!
I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement,
new knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes.
I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than
a jet engine, take 40 different medications that
make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts.
Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation;
hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. I'm 85 or 92
can't remember. Have lost all my friends. But,
thank God, I still have my driver's license.



I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape,
so I got my doctor's permission to join a fitness
club and start exercising. I decided to take an
aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted,
gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for
an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on,
the class was over.


My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.


Know how to prevent sagging?
Just eat till the wrinkles fill out.


It's scary when you start making the same noises
as your coffee maker.



About half the stuff in my shopping cart says,
'For fast relief.'



Always Remember This:
You don't stop laughing because you grow old,
You grow old because you stop laughing!


THE SENILITY PRAYER :
Grant me the senility to
forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do,
and the eyesight to tell the difference.


Now, I think you're supposed to share this with
maybe 10 others. Oh heck, give it to a bunch of
your friends if you can remember who they are!

Another thing to remember: Your older friends can be told your secrets, since they probably won't remember them either.

Ginkgo Biloba, or something like that, is to be taken to help with memory. But, you have to remember to take it, if possible.

St. Jerome AEmilian

SAINT JEROME EMILIAN
Founder of the Somascans
(1481-1537)
Patron Saint of:

Orphans, abandoned children

This day we honor a saint who was dedicated to helping the 'little ones', orphans and the less fortunate than most. We should always keep them in mind, because these days they don't seem to have a chance, especially if there is no one to help and teach them. I want to start with some preaching from the 'Golden Mouth' of St. John Chrysostom:

"The soul of the child is free from all passions. He bears no ill-will towards them that have done him harm, but goes to them as friends, just as if they had done nothing. And though he be often beaten by his mother, yet he always seeks her and loves her more than anyone else. If you show him a queen in her royal crown, he prefers his mother clad in rags, and would rather see her unadorned than the queen in magnificent attire; for he does not appreciate according to riches or poverty, but by love. He seeks not for more than is necessary, and as soon as he has had sufficient milk he quits the breast. He is not oppressed with the same sorrows as we, nor troubled with care for money and the like; neither is he rejoiced by our transitory pleasures, nor affected by corporal beauty. Therefore our Lord said: "...Of such is the kingdom of heaven, wishing us to do of our own free will what children do by nature.


Saint Jerome Emiliani, born in 1481, was a member of one of the Christian patrician families of Venice, and in early life a soldier. Showing in his youth much inclination to virtue, he studied the humanities with success until the age of fifteen, when the clash of arms interrupted his peaceful pursuits and his practice of virtue. And then, only his ambition for honors placed limits to his disorders; it was necessary to live honorably in order to receive promotions. He was appointed governor of a fortress in the mountains of Treviso, and while defending his post with outstanding bravery, was made prisoner by the enemy. In the misery of his dungeon he invoked amid tears the great Mother of God, recognizing that his chastisement was just. He promised, nonetheless, if She would set him free, to lead a new and better life, more worthy of his Christian heritage, and to make known Her benefits in every possible way. Our Lady mercifully appeared to him at once, gave him the keys he needed, and commanded him to fulfill faithfully what he had promised. She led him out through the ranks of his enemies to the gate of the city. He went to Her Church at Treviso and dedicated himself to the service of the One who had delivered him, proclaiming Her mercies to all listeners. He consigned to writing, and had notarized, an account of his deliverance.

On reaching his home in Venice he undertook a life of active charity, causing admiration in all who had known him as a worldling. His special love was for the deserted orphan children whom he found wandering in the streets during a famine and an epidemic in 1528. Already he had converted his house into a hospital, selling even its furnishings to clothe and feed the poor folk who came in great numbers to him, when they heard he had procured wheat from other regions. He acquired a house for the children, and after recovering miraculously from the illness which he had contracted during the epidemic, he himself taught them the Christian truths. Soon the accounts of his pious orphanage brought visitors, and financial aid sufficient to sustain the enterprise. He was then entrusted with the Venitian Hospital for the Incurables. When he needed some particular grace, he had four orphans under eight years of age pray with him, and the grace never failed to arrive. In Venice he was aided in his Hospital by his friends, Saint Cajetan of Thienna and Saint Peter Caraffa of Naples.

He founded a hospital in Verona and an orphanage in Padua. At Bergamo, which had been struck by a pestilence and famine, he went out with the reapers he could assemble, and cut wheat in the hottest season of the Italian summer. At their head, he sang Christian hymns in his rich voice, engaging the others to follow his example. There he founded two orphanages and succeeded in closing a number of houses of ill repute; he gave their inhabitants whom he converted a rule of life and procured a residence for them. The bishop was aiding him constantly; and he sent him out to other villages and hamlets to teach the children Christian doctrine. Multiple conversions resulted in all directions. Two holy priests joined him in Bergamo, soon followed by other noble gentlemen. This was the origin of the Congregation of Regular Clerics, called the Somascans because of their residence at Somasca, situated between Milan and Bergamo. The Congregation was approved in 1540 by Pope Paul III, and the Order spread in Italy. Saint Jerome died in 1537 at the age of 56, from the illness he contracted while caring for the sick during an epidemic in the region of Bergamo.

He made himself all to all, refusing no labor, and helping the peasants in the fields, and, while doing this, giving them a catechism.

Very often in our lives it seems to take some kind of “imprisonment” to free us from the shackles of our self-centeredness. When we’re “caught” in some situation we don’t want to be in, we finally come to know the liberating power of Another, Our Saviour. Only then can we become another for “the imprisoned” and “the orphaned” all around us.

Let us all try to learn from Saint Jerome to exert ourselves in behalf of the many hundreds of children whose souls are perishing around us, for want of someone to show them the way to heaven.

8th Sunday after Pentecost

This Sunday is the 8th Sunday after Pentecost. We will hear about being a good and faithful steward of our assets. I always think about the poor widow, who gave a small pittance, but it was a big portion of what she owned. And, Jesus commented that this woman was richer than all the others who pitched into the alms box. We WILL be held accountable for what we do with what we have. Some people, even family members, decide that they don't want to know more about the Faith, because they don't think they will be held accountable for what they don't know. This isn't a very good excuse. God will, in turn, demand of them why they didn't want to know about Him. We are all held accountable for our actions. And, we will be held accountable all by ourselves; mommy and daddy will not be there to soothe things over.

St. Vincent de Paul, whose post follows this, offers his opinion:

"What is done for charity's sake is done for God. It is not enough for us that we love God ourselves; our neighbor also must love him; neither can we love our neighbor as ourselves unless we procure for him the good we are bound to desire for ourselves--viz., divine love, which unites us to our Sovereign Good. We must love our neighbor as the image of God and the object of His love, and must try to make men love their Creator in return, and love one another also with mutual charity for the love of God, Who so loved them as to deliver His own Son to death for them. But let us, I beg of you, look upon this Divine Savior as a perfect pattern of the charity we must bear to our neighbor."


Now, I'm going to let our beloved Abbot Gueranger explain it. He does a far better job at than I do. He's commenting on the readings from St. Paul to the Romans, which we have been hearing the last few weeks:

'...man, unaided by grace, is incapable of producing perfect justice and absolute good. Experience has proved it, the fathers will, later on, unanimously assert it, and the Church, in her Councils, will define it. True, by the mere powers of his fallen nature, man may come to the knowledge of some truths, and to the practice of some virtues; but, without grace, he can never know, and still less observe, the precepts of even the natural law, if they are taken as a whole.

From Jesus and Jesus alone, comes all justice. Not only is supernatural grace in the sinner's soul, wholly from Him; but even that natural justice, of which men are so proud, and which they say is quite enough without anything else, soon leaves one who does not cling to Christ by Faith and love. Our modern world has a pompous phrase about 'the independence of the human mind'; let those who pretend to acknowledge no other but that, go one with their boasting of being moral and honest men; but, as to us Christians, we believe what our mother the Church teaches us; and, agreeably to such teaching, we believe that 'a moral and honest man'; that is to say, a man who lives up to all the duties which nature puts upon him, can only be such here below by a special aid of our Redeemer and Saviour Christ Jesus. With St. Paul, therefore, let us be proud of the Gospel; for, as he calls it, it is the power of God, not only to justify the ungodly, but also to enrich souls, that thirst after what is right, with an active and perfect justice. 'The just man liveth by faith' says St. Paul; and according to the growth of his faith, so is his growth in justice. Without faith if Christ, the pretension to reach perfection in good, by one's own power and works, produces nothing but the stagnation of pride and the wrath of God.'


GOSPEL (Luke XVI. 1-9.) At that time, Jesus spoke to his disciples this parable: There was a certain rich man who had a steward: and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said to him: How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for now thou canst be steward no longer. And the steward said within himself: What shall I do, because my lord taketh away from me my stewardship? To dig, I am not able: to beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do, that when I shall be removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. Therefore calling together every one of his lord's debtors, he said to the first: How much dost thou owe my lord? But he said: A hundred barrels of oil. And he said to him: Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty, Then he said to another: And how much dost thou owe? Who said: A hundred quarters of wheat. He said to him: Take thy bill, and write eighty. And the Lord commended the unjust steward, for as much as he had done wisely: for the children of this world are wiser in their generations than the children of light. And I say to you: Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.

God is represented by the rich man; the steward is man, to whom God has confided the various goods of soul and body, of grace and nature: faith, intellect, memory , free will; and five senses, health, strength of body, beauty, skill and power over others, time and opportunity for good, temporal riches, and other gifts. These various goods of soul and body God gives us not as our own, but on loan to us to be used for His honor and the salvation of man. He will therefore demand the strictest account of us if we use them for sin, luxury, seduction, or oppression of others.

More Gueranger:

'For the fool, as well as for the wise man, the day will come when his soul will be required of him; and when the rich man, as well as the poor, will be brought before his Maker, exactly as he was on the day of his first entrance into the world, and it will be said to him: "Give an account of thy stewardship!" At that dread hour, the rule observed for the judgment will be that which our Lord revealed to us during His mortal life; "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required; and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more." Woe to the steward who, disregarding the trust assigned to him, has done just what his own whim suggested with the goods of which he was only the dispenser! When the light of eternity shall be upon him, he will understand the error of his foolish pride. He will see the shameful injustice of a life which the world perhaps thought a very decent one, but which was spent without the slightest regard to God's intentions in giving him the riches of which he boasted. He will then be entirely deprived of them all; neither will it be then in his power to make a better use of them for the future---that is, a use more in accordance with the designs of God. It he might, at least, make some restitution for the goods he has abused! if he might sue for aid from those with whom he lived upon earth! But, NO! when time is over, labor is over too. He has nothing to show for all his riches; he is powerless; and when he goes before that dread tribunal, where every man is afraid that he cannot put his own accounts right, whom can he get to help him?'

We should remember these words spoken by our Lord: "Come to me, all ye who labor, and I will give you rest."


'Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service, you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.'


- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Not only are we incapable, of ourselves, of doing any good work, but, without the help of grace, we cannot even have a thought of supernatural good. Now, the surest means for obtaining the help that is so needed by us to acknowledge humbly before God that we depend entirely upon Him; it is what the Church does in the Collect for this Sunday:

Grant us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the spirit of always thinking what is right; and grant us mercifully the spirit of doing it: that we, who cannot subsist without Thee, may live according to Thee.



Strengthen me, O Lord, that I may not live according to the desires of the flesh; but resist them firmly by the power of Thy Spirit, that I may not die the eternal death.

St. Vincent de Paul

Not much happening today, other than all the troubles in the world. It is, however, the feast day of St. Vincent de Paul. Following is a short synopsis of his life. And, My wife and I have a relic of his, given to us by a very pious priest who actually still believed in intercession and miracles. We shall definitely ask his powerful intercession in our daily duties.


SAINT VINCENT de PAUL
Founder of the Lazarist Fathers
and the Daughters of Charity
(1576-1660)

Saint Vincent was born in 1576 near Dax, south of Bordeaux, of a poor family which survived by means of their labor. It seemed that "mercy was born with him." When sent by his father to the mill to procure flour, if he met a poor man coming home, he would open the sack and give him handfuls of flour when he had nothing else. His Christian father was not angry; seeing his good dispositions, he was sure his son should become a priest, and placed him as a boarding student with a group of religious priests in Dax. Vincent made rapid progress, and after seven years of studying theology at Toulouse and in Saragossa, Spain, was ordained a priest in 1600. He always concealed his learning and followed the counsel of Saint Paul who said, "I have wanted to know nothing in your midst but Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified." (Protestants definitely miss this point, since they have removed Him from their cross. They don't seem to understand that all time from the beginning is present at all time to Him, and that we must continue to remember His suffering always until our demise.)

His charity embraced the poor, the young and the aged, the provinces desolated by civil war, Christians enslaved by the infidels. The poor man, ignorant and degraded, was to him the image of Him who became as "a leper and no man." "Turn the medal," he said, "and you will see Jesus Christ." He went through the streets of Paris at night, seeking the infants and children left there to die - three or four hundred every year. Once robbers rushed upon him, thinking he carried a treasure, but when he opened his cloak, they recognized him and his burden, an abandoned infant, and fell at his feet. Not only was Saint Vincent the providence of the poor, but also of the rich, for he taught them to undertake works of mercy. When in 1648 the work of the foundlings was in danger of failure for want of funds, he assembled the ladies of the Association of Charity, and said, "Compassion and charity have made you adopt these little creatures as your children. You have been their mothers according to grace, when their own mothers abandoned them. Will you now cease to be their mothers? Their life and death are in your hands. I shall take your votes; it is time to pronounce sentence." The tears of the assembly were his only answer, and the work was continued.

St. Vincent offers his opinion:

"What is done for charity's sake is done for God. It is not enough for us that we love God ourselves; our neighbor also must love him; neither can we love our neighbor as ourselves unless we procure for him the good we are bound to desire for ourselves--viz., divine love, which unites us to our Sovereign Good. We must love our neighbor as the image of God and the object of His love, and must try to make men love their Creator in return, and love one another also with mutual charity for the love of God, Who so loved them as to deliver His own Son to death for them. But let us, I beg of you, look upon this Divine Savior as a perfect pattern of the charity we must bear to our neighbor."

And again, who went through suffering, taking, through a fraudulent account, being able to take the place of a galley slave who was in chains. Remember, St. Vincent was a pitiless foe to heresy, and NOT just a patron saint to the poor. He would not rest until he had obtained either the banishment or the chastisement of the perpetrators of the heresy. He was one of the first to denounce and prosecute the pernicious error of Jansenism. Never, perhaps, were these words of Holy Scripture better verified: The simplicity of the just shall guide them; and the deceitfulness of the wicked shall destroy them. Though this sect expressed, later on, a supreme disdain for Monsieur Vincent, it had not always been of that mind. Vincent said to a friend: "I am most particularly obliged to bless and thank God, for not having suffered the first and principal professors of that doctrine, men of my acquaintance and friendship, to be able to draw me to their opinions. I cannot tell you what pains they took, and what reasons they propounded to me; I objected to them, amongst other things, the authority of the Council of Trent, which is clearly opposed to them; and seeing that they still continued, I, instead of answering them, quietly recited my Credo; and that is how I have remained firm in the Catholic Faith." (Something to always remember)

The Priests of the Mission or Lazarists, as they are called, and thousands of the Daughters of Charity still comfort the afflicted with the charity of their holy Founder. It has been said of him that no one has ever verified more perfectly than Saint Vincent, the words of Our Lord: "He who humbles himself shall be exalted, and he that exalts himself shall be humbled..." The more Vincent strove to abase himself in the eyes of all, the more God took pleasure in elevating him and bestowing His blessings on him and on all his works. He died in 1660, in an old age made truly golden by his unceasing good works.

Most people who profess piety ask advice of directors about their prayers and spiritual exercises. Many of these are 'legends in their own mind'. Few inquire whether they are not in danger of damnation from neglect of works of charity. But then, since we are told that everybody goes to heaven, why bother? Let us never forget the terrible foretold words of the Final Judge:

"Depart from me, workers of iniquity; I was hungry, and you did not feed Me; I was without shelter, you did not take Me in...; I was sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me, etc." (Cf. Matt. 26:31-46)

Our Lady on Saturday

Following is something I found concerning Our Blessed Mother, in her title of 'Refuge of Sinners'.

MARY, REFUGE OF SINNERS

by Very Rev. C.J. O'Connell, 1914

When sin entered the world, such a blight rested upon it, that God communed no longer with man as He was wont to do. There was no fit refuge for him. All was dark. Gloom brooded over the habitation the Creator was accustomed to visit before its defilement. In his transgression man closed his heart against his God, who could find no delight in a place defiled by sin, where He once loved to dwell.

For four thousand years, tears and lamentations marked man's pathway on earth. Deprived of God's presence, all was sorrow, and darkness covered the face of the earth. From time to time some slight hope entered into the heart of man, when, through the rifts in the clouds that overspread the world, a faint light from Heaven would come to him. At last the day dawned. From His throne, the Almighty beheld a refuge in the person of an humble virgin, where He could find once more an abode among men. He would descend in the person of His Divine Son into that refuge in which He took delight, become one of us and repair the wrong done by Adam, father of the human race. No stain of any kind could exist where He chose to find shelter. Whilst He had taken upon Himself the sins of all men, He could not associate with iniquity or seek a refuge where sin was ever known. He is one with His Heavenly Father, who is eternal holiness, to whom the very shadow of sin is repulsive.

In Mary, however, Mary, full of grace, Mary most pure, most chaste, Mary Immaculate, He found a suitable refuge, where He could enter without umbrage to His infinite majesty and sanctity. Midst the lilies of Mary's virginal womb the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. No sooner was Jesus the Saviour born of Mary, than the angels of God announced the glad tidings to man in the person of the shepherds out in the field tending their flocks, and bade them to go and find their Lord and God in the manger at Bethlehem. "And they came with haste: and they found Mary and Joseph and the Infant lying in the manger. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God, for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them" (Luke II. 16-20).

Protection and salvation had come to them through Mary, and they rejoiced with exceeding great joy that their Redeemer had found a refuge where He was free from the winds and gales of sin. The Magi, wise men from the East saw His star in the heavens and journeyed to Jerusalem to find Him, but no trace of Him could be found in that far-famed city. It was only when they reached the stable at Bethlehem that they found Him through Mary. "They found the Child with Mary, His Mother, and falling down they adored Him" (Matt. II. 4). The lowly and the great find Jesus through Mary, His only secure refuge.

Man had sinned in Adam, but he sighed for the promised Redeemer who came to him under the shelter of His Virgin Mother Mary. Only those who sought Him through Mary were blessed in finding Him, while all who looked for Him not in that secure refuge were left to their wicked pernicious ways. All men need Jesus and must seek Him, for all have sinned in their first parents. Those who have strayed further away from God by sin, require all the more the saving merits of the Redeemer to be cleansed of their iniquities and be restored to His grace and friendship.

The order of things established by Divine Providence has not changed. Hence, to avoid shipwreck on the boisterous sea of life, we must turn toward the star of the sea and direct our frail bark toward that secure refuge, where we will be safe from the billows of sin. We must turn toward Mary who sheltered Jesus and who is the refuge to which all sinners may look for safety and salvation in Christ Jesus, whom they will find through Mary, the secure refuge of sinners.

God honored her in the beginning, He still honors her. He lavished His graces upon her and she faithfully responded to all of them. All who are sin-burdened and far from their true home, should, like the soldier upon the battlefield, who, wounded and bleeding, thinks of his mother, remember their Mother Mary and seek her aid. She will be their secure refuge and under her benign protection, they will find their merciful Saviour, who, like the good shepherd, will place the lost and bruised sheep upon His shoulders and return it to the flock. The very angels will rejoice because he who was lost has returned, and found through Mary, a safe refuge for all time.



To Mary, Refuge of Sinners

Hail, most gracious Mother of mercy, hail, Mary, for whom we fondly yearn, through whom we obtain forgiveness! Who would not love thee? Thou art our light in uncertainty, our comfort in sorrow, our solace in the time of trial, our refuge from every peril and temptation. Thou art our sure hope of salvation, second only to thy only-begotten Son; blessed are they who love thee, our Lady! Incline, I beseech thee, thy ears of pity to the entreaties of this thy servant, a miserable sinner; dissipate the darkness of my sins by the bright beams of thy holiness, in order that I may be acceptable in thy sight.

Lighter note for the day

Lighter note for the day

Further proof that animals can also take 'selfies'. Or, can they? Or, did this dog 'photobomb' himself into the picture? They're such pranksters, you know.