May the Lord….make you overflow with love for one another and for all……….1 Thes 3:12
REFLECTION – “The means for attaining perfect love is to accomplish frequent acts of love.
Fire is kindled by the wood that we cast into it and love is enkindled by acts of love.”……..St Alphonsus Liguori
PRAYER – Loving Father, grant me the grace to strive after perfect love. Help me to bring forth frequent acts of love so that I may grow in this greatest of virtues, even if, like St Sebastian, through my love for others, I should suffer and die for You. St Sebastian Pray for us, amen!
For St John Paul, conversion means returning to God “through evaluating earthly realities in the unfailing light of His truth.” The proof of St Paul’s conversion is his profession: “For me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21). Conversion is a conversion to the will and design of God: It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
Let us Pray:
Glorious St Paul,
your conversion is a powerful witness to the world
that God loves us and does not give up on us,
no matter how far we stray.
Help me to live a life of ongoing conversion.
True conversion means converting my life to the
design of God, the plan He has for me right now.
Pray that I will love God’s will and providence for me.
May I learn to truly surrender myself to wisdom and tenderness of God.
Pray that I may love God’s will and providence for me.
In this confidence, I entrust to you, St Paul,
these, my intentions
(mention your request)
I ask this through Christ, Our Lord, amen.
St Paul Pray for us!
Above all, let your love for one another be intense because love covers a multitude of sins…………….1 Peter 4:8
REFLECTION – “Your eyes, O Lord, have a true view of people. This is what they really are and nothing more.”…………..St Francis de Sales
PRAYER – All-knowing Lord, let me realise that my real self is only what I am in Your eyes. All my weaknesses and sins You know but true too, You know the love I bear for You and for Your children. Grant me Your grace to love more and more, so that I may become a saint and join St Margaret in heaven, she who is a true example of immense love. St Margaret of Hungary pray for us, amen.
In an age that smiles and jeers at the notion of devils and angels, a person known for having power over evil spirits must at least make us pause. And in a day when people speak of life as a “rat race,” one who devotes a whole life to solitude and prayer points to an essential of the Christian life in all ages. Anthony’s hermit life reminds us of the absoluteness of our break with sin and the totality of our commitment to Christ. Even in God’s good world, there is another world whose false values constantly tempt us.
Our most powerful protection IS the Sign of the Cross.
“Let us not then be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the Cross our seal made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in everything; over the bread we eat and the cups we drink; in our comings in and goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we awake; when we are in the way and when we are still. Great is that preservative; it is without price, for the poor’s sake; without toil, for the sick, since also its grace is from God. It is the Sign of the faithful and the dread of evils; for He has triumphed over them in it, having made a shew of them openly; for when they see the Cross, they are reminded of the Crucified; they are afraid of Him, Who hath bruised the heads of the dragon. Despise not the Seal, because of the freeness of the Gift; but for this rather honour thy Benefactor.”……….. St. Cyril of Jerusalem
“The illusions of this world soon vanish,
especially if a man arms himself with
the Sign of the Cross. The devils tremble
at the Sign of the Cross of our Lord,
by which He triumphed over and
disarmed them.”
What can a man offer in exchange for his very life?……..Mt 16:26
REFLECTION – Everything of this world is sold at its price or exchanged for another equivalently priced. But the promise of life eternal is purchased at a bargain price!……St Anthony Abbot (Saint of the Day)
PRAYER – Lord of all, help me to be willing to pay the price of receiving eternal life. Let me offer myself to You in all that I do and say each day. St Anthony Abbot, Pray for us, amen.
There are many ways of “being poor” and in today’s world, the more we have, the poorer we can be. Our Lady of Banneux is a most worthy intercessor to pray on our behalf to our God of such loving mercy, for all the needs of the poor of the world, for so many who are rich in goods but poor in spirit.
As St John Paul said on a visit to Banneux – “The poor today – and there are many ways of being poor! – feel at home in Banneux. They come here to find comfort, courage, hope, union with God in their affliction. I encourage the pilgrims who come here to pray to her, who, always and everywhere in the Church, reflects the face of the Mercy of God.”
Then will I go to the altar of God, the God of my gladness and youth……….Ps 43:4
REFLECTION – “We must strive to place ourselves completely in God’s hands. Then He will cause us to feel the effects of His goodness and protection – which are, at times extraordinary.”………St John Baptist de la Salle
PRAYER – Holy Lord God, let me live constantly in Your presence. Grant that I may possess a spirit of joy and gladness because of the firm knowledge that You are always with me and in You and through You and with You, the extraordinary is commonplace! St Felix of Nola, you did no immense deed but in 1800 years we have not forgotten your extraordinary love. Please pray for us, amen.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence rely not….Prv 3:5
REFLECTION – “In our attempt to penetrate God’s truth, we are held within the bonds of ignorance, by the weakness of our minds.
We comprehend Divine ideas by earnest attention to God’s teaching and by obedience to the faith, which carries us beyond mere human apprehension.”……St Hilary of Poitiers (Saint of the Day)
PRAYER – All-knowing God, grant me the grace to come to a better understanding of Your truths. Let me not only believe them but also carry them out daily in my life. St Hilary of Poitiers, Pray for us, amen!
“The privilege of our Church is such that
it is never stronger than when it is attacked,
never better known than when it is accused,
never more powerful than when it appears forsaken.” (Treatise on the Trinity)
“When we are overcome by some evil will,
should we not tremble before the presence
of the choirs of angels that surround us?”
“The perfection of learning is to know God
in such a way that, though you realise
He is knowable, yet you know Him as indescribable.”
“No matter how sinful one may have been,
if he has devotion to Mary,
it is impossible that he be lost.”
Saint of the Day – 13 January – St Hilary of Poitiers (c315-c368) Bishop/Confessor “”Hammer of the Arians” and “Athanasius of the West” – DOCTOR of the CHURCH. His name “Hilary” His name comes from the Latin word for happy or cheerful. His optional memorial in the General Roman Calendar is 13 January. In the past, when this date was occupied by the Octave of the Epiphany, his feast day was moved to 14 January.
Hilary was born to pagan parents of Poitiers, France, in 315. After training in the classics and philosophy, Hilary married. He and his wife had one daughter, Afra. All who knew Hilary said he was a friendly, charitable, gentle man. Hilary’s studies led him to read Scripture. He became convinced that there was only one God, whose Son became man and died and rose to save all people. This led him to be baptised along with his wife and daughter.
This gentle and courteous man, became a staunch defender of the divinity of Christ. He was devoted to writing some of the greatest theology on the Trinity and was, like his Master, in being labeled a “disturber of the peace.” In a very troubled period in the Church, his holiness was lived out in both scholarship and controversy.
The people of Poitiers chose Hilary to be their bishop in 353. As Bishop, he was soon taken up with battling what became the scourge of the fourth century, Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ.
The heresy spread rapidly. Saint Jerome said “The world groaned and marveled to find that it was Arian.” When Emperor Constantius ordered all the bishops of the West to sign a condemnation of Athanasius, the great defender of the faith in the East, Hilary refused and was banished from France to far off Phrygia. There, too, his pastoral solicitude led him to work tirelessly for the re-establishment of the Church’s unity, based on the correct faith, as formulated by the Council of Nicea. To this end, he began writing his most important and most famous dogmatic work: “De Trinitatae” (On the Trinity). Eventually he was called the “Athanasius of the West” and the “Hammer of the Arians.”
During the years of his exile, Hilary also wrote the “Book of the Synod,” in which, for his brother bishops of Gaul, he reproduces and comments on the confessions of faith and other documents of the synods which met in the East around the middle of the 4th century. Always firm in his opposition to radical Arians, St. Hilary showed a conciliatory spirit with those who accepted that the Son was similar to the Father in essence, naturally trying to lead them toward the fullness of faith, which says that there is not only a similarity but a true equality of the Father and the Son in their divinity.
This also seems characteristic: His conciliatory spirit tries to understand those who still have not yet arrived to the fullness of the truth and helps them, with great theological intelligence to reach the fullness of faith in the true divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In 360 or 361, Hilary was finally able to return from exile to his homeland and immediately resumed the pastoral work in his Church but the influence of his teaching extended, in fact, well beyond its borders. A synod celebrated in Paris in 360 or 361 took up again the language used by the Council of Nicea. Some ancient authors think that this anti-Arian development of the bishops of Gaul was due, in large part, to the strength and meekness of the bishop of Poitiers.
During the last years of his life, he wrote “Treatises on the Psalms,” a commentary on 58 psalms, interpreted according to the principle highlighted in the introduction to the work: “There is no doubt that all the things said in the Psalms must be understood according to the Gospel proclamation, so that, independently of the voice with which the prophetic spirit has spoken, everything refers to the knowledge of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, incarnation, passion and kingdom, and the glory and power of our resurrection” (“Instructio Psalmorum,” 5).
In all of the Psalms, he sees this transparency of Christ’s mystery and of his body, which is the Church. On various occasions, Hilary met with St. Martin, the future bishop of Tours founded a monastery near Poitiers, which still exists today. Hilary died in 367. His feast day is celebrated on Jan. 13. In 1851, Blessed Pius IX proclaimed him a doctor of the Church.
St Hilary confers minor Orders on St Martin of Tours
May the Lord ….make you overflow with love for one another and for all……..1 Thes 3:12
REFLECTION – “It seems to me that we do not pay enough attention to prayer, for unless it arises from the heart which ought to be its centre, it is no more than a fruitless dream. Prayer ought to carry over into our thoughts, our words and our actions…..It is true that all I have ever desired most deeply and what I still most ardently wish is that the great precept of the love of God above all things and of the neighbour as oneself be written in every heart.”……..St Marguerite Bourgeoys (Saint of the Day)
PRAYER – Loving Father, grant me the grace to strive after perfect love. Help me to bring forth frequent acts of love for my neighbour and in this, to grow each day in love for You.St Marguerite Bourgeoys Pray for us, amen.
If you lavish your food on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom shall become like midday; then the LORD will guide you always and satisfy your thirst in parched places, HE will give strength to your bones and you shall be like a watered garden, like a flowing spring whose waters never fail…….Isaiah 58:10-11
REFLECTION – “Love is the bond of life, the mother of the poor and the teacher of the rich.
It is the nurse of orphans, the attendant of the elderly, the treasure of the indigent and the common port of all the afflicted.”……..St Gregory of Nyssa.
PRAYER – O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through His poverty might be rich, deliver us from an inordinate love of this world, that we, inspired, by the devotion of Your servant St Theodosius the Cenobiarch, may serve You with singleness of heart and attain to the riches of the age to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. St Theodosius the Cenobiarch. Pray for us! Amen
Goodbye Christmastide: 9 January 2017 The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
“Dearly Beloved, each word and deed of Our Saviour Jesus Christ is for us a lesson in virtue and piety. For this end also did He assumed our nature, so that every man and every woman, contemplating as in a picture the practice of all virtue and piety, might strive with all their hearts to imitate His example. For this He bore our body, so that as far as we could we might repeat within us the manner of His life. And so, therefore, when you hear mention of some word or deed of His, take care not to receive it simply as something that incidentally happened but raise your mind upwards towards the sublimity of what He is teaching and strive to see what has been mystically handed down to us”
“O Lord, wishing to fulfill all things
that You ordained before the ages,
You received the servants of Your mystery,
from among the Angels, Gabriel,
from among Men, the Virgin,
from among the Heavens, the Star
and from among the Waters, the Jordan,
in which You washed away the sin of the world,
O our Saviour, glory to You.”
…..and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. …………..Mt 2:11
REFLECTION – If we approach with faith, we too will see Jesus….; for the Eucharistic table takes the place of the crib.
Here the Body of the Lord is present, wrapped not in swaddling clothes but in the rays of the Holy Spirit……………..St John Chrysostum
PRAYER – Lord, God, teach me to see the living presence of Your Divine Son in the Eucharist. Make my faith so vivid that I will gladly come to encounter Jesus in every Mass.
Holy Christ Child, intercede for us, amen.
“The preacher of God’s truth has told us that all who want to live righteously in Christ will suffer persecution. . . . the only exception to this general statement is, I think, the person who either neglects, or does not know how, to live temperately, justly and righteously in this world. May you never be numbered among those whose house is peaceful, quiet and free from care; those on whom the Lord’s chastisement does not descend; those who live out their days in prosperity and in the twinkling of an eye will go down to hell. Your purity of life, your devotion, deserve and call for a reward; because you are acceptable and pleasing to God your purity of life must be made purer still, by frequent buffetings, until you attain perfect sincerity of heart. If from time to time you feel the sword falling on you with double or treble force, this also should be seen as sheer joy and the mark of love. The two-edged sword consists in conflict without, fears within. It falls with double or treble force within, when the cunning spirit troubles the depths of your heart with guile and enticements. . . .The sword falls with double and treble force externally when, without cause, persecution breaks out from within the church, where wounds are more serious, especially when inflicted by friends. This is that enviable and blessed cross of Christ . . . the cross in which alone we must make our boast, as Paul, God’s chosen instrument, has told us.”
…….while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of our faith.
For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame
and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God………..Heb 12:2
REFLECTION – “Look then on Jesus, the author and preserver of faith: in complete sinlessness He suffered, and at the hands of those who were His own, and was numbered among the wicked. As you drink the cup of the Lord Jesus (how glorious it is!), give thanks to the Lord, the iver of all blessings.”………….St Raymond of Peñafort
PRAYER – O Lord, help me always to keep my eyes on You. Teach me too to endure and offer You all the sufferings and hardships of this earthly life, for Your greater Glory. St Raymond, your life is an example to us all of the practise of keeping our eyes on the Lord. Please pray for us, amen!
When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home…..Mt 1:24
REFLECTION – “When you invoke St Joseph, you don’t have to say much.
Say, “if you were in my place, St Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this on my behalf.”……..St André Bessette
PRAYER – Heavenly Father, You constantly provide us with examples of holy life. St André Bessette is a wonderful example of service, as was his hero, the foster Father of Your Divine Son, St Joseph. May both be intercessors and examples to me, to give to You my all. St André Bessette, Pray for us, amen!
“Everyone who breathes, high and low,
educated and ignorant, young and old,
man and woman, has a mission, has a work.
We are not sent into this world for nothing;
we are not born at random;
we are not here, that we may go to bed at night
and get up in the morning, toil for our bread,
eat and drink, laugh and joke,
sin when we have a mind
and reform when we are tired of sinning,
rear a family and die.
God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, . . .
FOR A PURPOSE.
He needs, He deigns to need, every one of us.
He has an end for each of us;
we are all equal in His sight and we are placed
in our different ranks and stations,
not to get what we can out of them for ourselves
but to labour in them for Him.
As Christ has His work, we too have ours;
as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also.”
“God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him……1 John 4:16
REFLECTION – “0 my God, I thank Thee for the love Thou hast planted in my heart. I will cultivate this precious flower. I will guard it night and day that nothing may injure it. Do Thou, 0 Lord, water it with the dew of Thy grace.”……..St John Neumann (Saint of the Day)
PRAYER – Heavenly Father, pour forth Your love into my heart and help me always to act in accord with it. Let me be ruled by Your love in all things so that I may experience it completely with You in heaven. St John Neumann, Pray for us, amen!
My God, how great Thou art,
how wonderful in all Thy works!
Teach me Thy will that I may begin
and end all my actions for Thy greater glory.
Speak to me, 0 my God, let me know Thy will,
for behold I am ready to fulfill Thy
every command. The difficult, the irksome,
I will patiently endure for love of Thee.
When the Shepherd appears
you will win for yourselves
the unfading crown of glory………1 Pt 5:4
REFLECTION – You are children of eternity. Your immortal crown awaits you and the best of Fathers waits there to reward your duty and love. You may indeed sow here in tears but you may be sure there to reap in joy……St Elizabeth Ann Seton (Saint of the Day)
PRAYER – Heavenly Father, thank You for making me a child of eternity. Help me to live each day in such a way that I may deserve to be a child of Yours forever. St Elizabeth Ann Seton Pray for us, amen.
AnaStpaul 
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