One Minute Reflection – 8 November – “Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory” – Readings: Jer 29:11-12; 29:14, Ps 84:2, Col 3:12-17,Matt 13:24-30
And the servants of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’
Matt 13:24-30
REFLECTION – It happened not long ago that a follower of Lucifer had a dispute with a son of the Church. His loquacity was odious and the language he employed most abusive. For he declared that the world belonged to the devil, and, as is commonly said by them at the present day, that the Church was turned into a brothel. His opponent on the other hand, with reason indeed, but without due regard to time and place, urged that Christ did not die in vain, and that it was for something more than a Sardinian cloak of skins that the Son of God came down from heaven. To be brief, the dispute was not settled when night interrupted the debate, and the lighting of the street-lamps gave the signal for the assembly to disperse. The combatants therefore withdrew, almost spitting in each other’s faces, an arrangement having been previously made by the audience for a meeting in a quiet porch at daybreak. Thither, accordingly, they all came, and it was resolved that the words of both speakers should be taken down by reporters.
2. When all were seated, Helladius the Luciferian said, I want an answer first to my question. Are the Arians Christians or not?
Orthodoxus. I answer with another question, Are all heretics Christians?
L. If you call a man a heretic you deny that he is a Christian.
O. No heretics, then, are Christians.
L. I told you so before.
O. If they are not Christ’s, they belong to the devil.
L. No one doubts that.
St Jerome
PRAYER – O Lord our God, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love and to be only good influences to our neighbour. May the prayers of the Blessed Virgin, all the Saints and Angels, ever intercede for the Church Militant and the Church Suffering, Amen.
