{"ok":true,"date":"2026-02-28","dateKey":"02-28","liturgicalDay":"Lenten Ember Day","rank":"Non-privileged Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?","author":"St. Paul","source":"Acts 9:6, Douay-Rheims","category":"Confidence and Daily Self-Denial"},"season":"Lent","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Lenten Ember Day - 2026-02-28","previewText":"Lenten Ember Day. Unity Without Truth Is Not Catholic Unity. Resist false ecumenism and every peace that asks doctrine to step aside.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nTHE DAILY PILGRIMAGE\n\"Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.\" - Proverbs 8:32\n\"Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom. [...] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.\" - Luke 12:32-34\nLenten Ember Day\n2026-02-28 - Lent - Non-privileged Feria - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nMystical Body of Christ: the Church understood as a living body whose head is Christ and whose baptized members are united to Him and to one another by grace.\nEcclesiastical or ecclesial: belonging or relating to the Church; the words refer to her life, law, worship, ministers, or common mission.\nClergy or cleric: the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nHumiliation, opposition, and penance do not mean that God has ceased to govern. Our Lord redeemed the world through His obedient suffering on the Cross. When Catholics accept unavoidable trials without sin, perform penance, and continue obeying the truth, those sufferings can humble pride and deepen fidelity rather than lead to despair. Enter St. Louis de Montfort's examination of false and true devotion without exempting your preferred practices from judgment. Ask the Holy Ghost for an honest examination of your Marian devotion and readiness both to avoid falsehood and embrace complete truth.\n\n\"It is, then, very important first of all to know false devotions to our Blessed Lady in order to avoid them; and the true devotion in order to embrace it.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 91\n\nAvoidance and embrace belong together. Merely criticizing abuses does not establish devotion; multiplying practices does not prove them sound. The Catholic soul must reject false forms and choose the devotion most agreeable to Our Lady, glorious to God, and sanctifying to the soul.\n\nDo not conduct the examination only upon other people. Ask which defects live in you: pride that criticizes, fear that withholds honor, exteriority without conversion, presumption in sin, inconstancy, hypocrisy, or interest in favors more than holiness. Name the disease and practice the contrary virtue throughout the whole day.\n\nPRACTICE\nEnd the day with thanksgiving, examination, contrition, and a firm purpose for tomorrow.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?\"\nSt. Paul, Acts 9:6, Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - February 28\nAt Rome, the birthday of the holy martyrs Maca rius, Rufinus, Justus, and Theophilus. — At Alex andria, the passion of the Saints Cserealis, Pupulus, Caius, and Serapion. — In the same city, in the reign of the emperor Valerian, the commemoration of the holy priests, deacons, and other Christians in great number, who encountered death most willingly by nursing the victims of a most deadly pestilence then raging. They have been generally revered as martyrs by the pious faithful. — In the territory of Lyons, on Mount Jura, the demise of St. Romanus, abbot, who was the first to lead the eremitical life there. His reputation for virtues and miracles brought under his guidance numerous monks. — At Pavia, the translation, from the island of Sardinia, of the bod of St. Augustine, bishop, by Luitprand, king of the Lombards.\n\nTODAY'S SAINT OR FEAST\nThe Lenten Ember Day\nThe season sanctified by fasting, prayer, and ordination.\nThe Lenten Ember Days belong to the Church's quarterly sanctification of the seasons, joining fasting and prayer to the needs of the clergy and the whole Christian people.\nIn Lent the Ember discipline presses more deeply: the faithful ask God to purify the Church, strengthen sacred ministers, and make penance fruitful rather than theatrical.\nLet the Ember day widen your Lent. Your penance is not merely personal improvement; it is prayer with the Church for the Church.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nFasting with the Church for the Church.\nMatins - Lenten Ember Day\n- The Lenten Ember Days join the penitential season to the Church's prayer for sacred ministers and the sanctification of the Christian people.\n- Their witness teaches that fasting is ecclesial. The faithful do penance not as isolated souls, but as members of the Mystical Body pleading for purity and holy order.\nOffer penance for the Church, her ministers, and those who hunger for valid sacraments.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Lenten Ember Day is part of the Church's daily teaching. It should not be read as a list of isolated facts. In the Divine Office, Scripture, the lives of the saints, doctrine, and the Church's prayer are placed together so that the mind learns what the Church remembers and the heart learns how a Catholic ought to judge and live.\nToday's witness is gathered under Fasting with the Church for the Church.. Its first point is this: The Lenten Ember Days join the penitential season to the Church's prayer for sacred ministers and the sanctification of the Christian people. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness teaches that fasting is ecclesial. The faithful do penance not as isolated souls, but as members of the Mystical Body pleading for purity and holy order.\nThe practical instruction is: Offer penance for the Church, her ministers, and those who hunger for valid sacraments. Ask what truth is being guarded, what virtue is being praised, and what danger or forgetfulness is being corrected. In this way the Breviary becomes instruction for the present day rather than information that is quickly passed over.\n- What truth does this Breviary witness teach or defend?\n- What virtue does the Church place before me through it?\n- What judgment or action should change because I have received this lesson?\n\nFROM MATINS\nThe solitary whose virtue gathered a disciplined household for God.\nMartyrology - Martyrology Notice - St. Romanus, Abbot\nRoman Martyrology\n\"His reputation for virtues and miracles brought under his guidance numerous monks.\"\n- The Martyrology remembers St. Romanus as the first to lead the eremitical life on Mount Jura and as an abbot whose virtues drew numerous monks beneath his guidance.\n- Solitude did not become self-rule. Prayer, discipline, and perseverance prepared Romanus to govern a stable religious household ordered toward God.\n- The monastic witness reaches ordinary Catholic life: freedom from impulse requires a rule of prayer, custody of speech and appetite, faithful labor, and obedience to duty.\nAsk St. Romanus for stability under God. Renew the whole rule of prayer and duty entrusted to you, especially where hidden obedience has been weakened by restlessness.\nTHE PILGRIM'S SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE\nUnity Without Truth Is Not Catholic Unity\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Catholic unity is unity in the faith, sacraments, worship, and lawful order of the Church. It is not agreement to ignore contradiction. Do not hurry past it as though doctrine belonged only to books and controversies. A revealed truth is also a light by which the soul must judge its loyalties, its fears, its habits, and the duties immediately before it. The Church unites by truth and grace; she cannot found unity on silence about error.\nThe grace to be practiced is Ecclesial penance and prayer for sacred ministers, drawn from today's saintly witness. Ask God for more than the natural appearance of this virtue. Temperament may make an action seem easy for a time, but supernatural virtue remains faithful because God is worthy of obedience, even when feeling offers no assistance and no one notices the cost. Practice comprehensive discernment by rejecting every false form and cultivating all the doctrinal, interior, exterior, and moral marks of truth.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist false ecumenism and every peace that asks doctrine to step aside. Do not study this danger only in other people. Look quietly for the door by which it seeks entrance into your own soul - perhaps through delay, curiosity, resentment, human respect, attachment to comfort, or the desire to control the outcome. Dying to self today means choosing ecclesial penance and prayer for sacred ministers when pride, comfort, fear, resentment, or human respect asks for control.\nDo the faithful act and entrust its fruit to divine Providence, God's wise and loving governance of all things. Place effort and outcome into Our Lady's hands so that the whole offering may be presented to her Divine Son. Confidence in God is not passivity: obey, pray, work, and accept that visible success, consolation, or immediate relief may not be given. God remains faithful when the duty is hidden and the outcome uncertain. Therefore, perform the duty that belongs to you, use the lawful means God has provided, and then surrender the fruit. Permit the teaching to judge you before applying it to others, accepting correction without defensiveness, excuses, or selective hearing. Remove every false element from devotion and strengthen its full fruits in faith, prayer, repentance, virtue, duty, sacrifice, and charity.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of one; the witness placed beside it is Pope Pius XI.\nYour resolution before God: End the day with thanksgiving, examination, contrition, and a firm purpose for tomorrow.\nCarry this word: The day must end beneath truth.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"Ask not who said this, but take heed what is said.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 5, p. 14\nTruth does not become true through fashion, applause, or a celebrated name. Test what you hear by revelation and the perennial teaching of the Church.\n\nYet Thomas à Kempis also rebukes the curiosity that collects authorities without receiving their doctrine. Listen for the truth God is giving through a trustworthy witness, and then permit that truth to correct you. A holy author's name should not become decoration around an unchanged life.\nToday's Practice: Reject claims based on novelty or popularity and ask what the Church has always taught.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nReview which false tendency appeared today and whether you actively practiced its contrary rather than merely recognizing it.\n- For what grace or mercy should I thank God today?\n- What sin, fault, neglected duty, or resistance to grace must I confess?\n- What definite amendment will I carry into tomorrow?\nPRAYER\nO Lord, bring this day to judgment before Thy mercy. Show me where I obeyed, where I resisted, where I loved, and where I must begin again.\nDAILY RULE FOR THE PILGRIM\nA brief rule to keep every day:\nBegin with morning prayer\nAdore the Blessed Trinity and offer the whole day to Jesus through Mary before other duties claim the mind.\nKeep the Angelus\nPause morning, noon, and evening to remember the Incarnation.\nSeek Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament\nAttend Holy Mass when duty permits; otherwise make a Spiritual Communion and renew desire for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.\nReturn to Jesus and Mary\nUse frequent holy aspirations during work, waiting, suffering, and temptation.\nPray the Rosary\nKeep the mysteries of Christ before the mind with Our Lady and learn to imitate what they contain.\nEnd with night prayer and examen\nGive thanks, confess faults, forgive injuries, make a practical amendment, and entrust the night to Our Lady.\nCONTINUE STUDY\nUnity Without Obedience and Indifferentism: https://cityofgodinexile.com/authority-and-revolt/unity-without-obedience-the-condemned-religion-of-indifferentism?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2026-02-28&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2026-02-28&entered=1\nBrowse the Formation Index: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch/formation?entered=1","html":"\n\n \n \n \n City of God in Exile: Lenten Ember Day - 2026-02-28\n \n \n
\n Lenten Ember Day. Unity Without Truth Is Not Catholic Unity. Resist false ecumenism and every peace that asks doctrine to step aside.\n
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\n \"City\n
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City of God in Exile

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“Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.”

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Proverbs 8:32

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Lenten Ember Day

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2026-02-28 - Lent - Non-privileged Feria - violet

\n
\n
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“Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom. […] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Luke 12:32–34
\n \n
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Plain-Language Guide for Today

\n
\n
Mystical Body of Christ
\n
the Church understood as a living body whose head is Christ and whose baptized members are united to Him and to one another by grace.
\n
Ecclesiastical or ecclesial
\n
belonging or relating to the Church; the words refer to her life, law, worship, ministers, or common mission.
\n
Clergy or cleric
\n
the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.
\n
\n \n
\n

Today in the Roman Year

\n

Humiliation, opposition, and penance do not mean that God has ceased to govern. Our Lord redeemed the world through His obedient suffering on the Cross. When Catholics accept unavoidable trials without sin, perform penance, and continue obeying the truth, those sufferings can humble pride and deepen fidelity rather than lead to despair.

Enter St. Louis de Montfort's examination of false and true devotion without exempting your preferred practices from judgment.

Ask the Holy Ghost for an honest examination of your Marian devotion and readiness both to avoid falsehood and embrace complete truth.

“It is, then, very important first of all to know false devotions to our Blessed Lady in order to avoid them; and the true devotion in order to embrace it.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 91

Avoidance and embrace belong together. Merely criticizing abuses does not establish devotion; multiplying practices does not prove them sound. The Catholic soul must reject false forms and choose the devotion most agreeable to Our Lady, glorious to God, and sanctifying to the soul.

Do not conduct the examination only upon other people. Ask which defects live in you: pride that criticizes, fear that withholds honor, exteriority without conversion, presumption in sin, inconstancy, hypocrisy, or interest in favors more than holiness. Name the disease and practice the contrary virtue throughout the whole day.

End the day with thanksgiving, examination, contrition, and a firm purpose for tomorrow.

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Quote of the Day

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“Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
\n

St. Paul, Acts 9:6, Douay-Rheims

\n
\n \n \n
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Roman Martyrology - February 28

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At Rome, the birthday of the holy martyrs Maca rius, Rufinus, Justus, and Theophilus. — At Alex andria, the passion of the Saints Cserealis, Pupulus, Caius, and Serapion. — In the same city, in the reign of the emperor Valerian, the commemoration of the holy priests, deacons, and other Christians in great number, who encountered death most willingly by nursing the victims of a most deadly pestilence then raging. They have been generally revered as martyrs by the pious faithful. — In the territory of Lyons, on Mount Jura, the demise of St. Romanus, abbot, who was the first to lead the eremitical life there. His reputation for virtues and miracles brought under his guidance numerous monks. — At Pavia, the translation, from the island of Sardinia, of the bod of St. Augustine, bishop, by Luitprand, king of the Lombards.

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Today's Saint or Feast

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The Lenten Ember Day

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The season sanctified by fasting, prayer, and ordination.

\n

The Lenten Ember Days belong to the Church's quarterly sanctification of the seasons, joining fasting and prayer to the needs of the clergy and the whole Christian people.

In Lent the Ember discipline presses more deeply: the faithful ask God to purify the Church, strengthen sacred ministers, and make penance fruitful rather than theatrical.

\n

Let the Ember day widen your Lent. Your penance is not merely personal improvement; it is prayer with the Church for the Church.

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Breviary Witness

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Fasting with the Church for the Church.

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Matins - Lenten Ember Day

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    \n
  • The Lenten Ember Days join the penitential season to the Church's prayer for sacred ministers and the sanctification of the Christian people.
  • Their witness teaches that fasting is ecclesial. The faithful do penance not as isolated souls, but as members of the Mystical Body pleading for purity and holy order.
    • \n
\n

Offer penance for the Church, her ministers, and those who hunger for valid sacraments.

\n

Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Lenten Ember Day is part of the Church's daily teaching. It should not be read as a list of isolated facts. In the Divine Office, Scripture, the lives of the saints, doctrine, and the Church's prayer are placed together so that the mind learns what the Church remembers and the heart learns how a Catholic ought to judge and live.

Today's witness is gathered under Fasting with the Church for the Church.. Its first point is this: The Lenten Ember Days join the penitential season to the Church's prayer for sacred ministers and the sanctification of the Christian people. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness teaches that fasting is ecclesial. The faithful do penance not as isolated souls, but as members of the Mystical Body pleading for purity and holy order.

The practical instruction is: Offer penance for the Church, her ministers, and those who hunger for valid sacraments. Ask what truth is being guarded, what virtue is being praised, and what danger or forgetfulness is being corrected. In this way the Breviary becomes instruction for the present day rather than information that is quickly passed over.

\n
    \n
  • What truth does this Breviary witness teach or defend?
  • What virtue does the Church place before me through it?
  • What judgment or action should change because I have received this lesson?
    • \n
\n
\n \n
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From Matins

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The solitary whose virtue gathered a disciplined household for God.

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Martyrology - Martyrology Notice - St. Romanus, Abbot

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Roman Martyrology, Notice for February 28

\n
“His reputation for virtues and miracles brought under his guidance numerous monks.”
\n \n
    \n
  • The Martyrology remembers St. Romanus as the first to lead the eremitical life on Mount Jura and as an abbot whose virtues drew numerous monks beneath his guidance.
  • Solitude did not become self-rule. Prayer, discipline, and perseverance prepared Romanus to govern a stable religious household ordered toward God.
  • The monastic witness reaches ordinary Catholic life: freedom from impulse requires a rule of prayer, custody of speech and appetite, faithful labor, and obedience to duty.
    • \n
\n

Ask St. Romanus for stability under God. Renew the whole rule of prayer and duty entrusted to you, especially where hidden obedience has been weakened by restlessness.

\n
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\n \n
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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

\n

Unity Without Truth Is Not Catholic Unity

\n

The Church places this truth before you today: Catholic unity is unity in the faith, sacraments, worship, and lawful order of the Church. It is not agreement to ignore contradiction. Do not hurry past it as though doctrine belonged only to books and controversies. A revealed truth is also a light by which the soul must judge its loyalties, its fears, its habits, and the duties immediately before it. The Church unites by truth and grace; she cannot found unity on silence about error.

The grace to be practiced is Ecclesial penance and prayer for sacred ministers, drawn from today's saintly witness. Ask God for more than the natural appearance of this virtue. Temperament may make an action seem easy for a time, but supernatural virtue remains faithful because God is worthy of obedience, even when feeling offers no assistance and no one notices the cost. Practice comprehensive discernment by rejecting every false form and cultivating all the doctrinal, interior, exterior, and moral marks of truth.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist false ecumenism and every peace that asks doctrine to step aside. Do not study this danger only in other people. Look quietly for the door by which it seeks entrance into your own soul - perhaps through delay, curiosity, resentment, human respect, attachment to comfort, or the desire to control the outcome. Dying to self today means choosing ecclesial penance and prayer for sacred ministers when pride, comfort, fear, resentment, or human respect asks for control.

Do the faithful act and entrust its fruit to divine Providence, God's wise and loving governance of all things. Place effort and outcome into Our Lady's hands so that the whole offering may be presented to her Divine Son. Confidence in God is not passivity: obey, pray, work, and accept that visible success, consolation, or immediate relief may not be given. God remains faithful when the duty is hidden and the outcome uncertain. Therefore, perform the duty that belongs to you, use the lawful means God has provided, and then surrender the fruit. Permit the teaching to judge you before applying it to others, accepting correction without defensiveness, excuses, or selective hearing. Remove every false element from devotion and strengthen its full fruits in faith, prayer, repentance, virtue, duty, sacrifice, and charity.

\n

The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of one; the witness placed beside it is Pope Pius XI.

\n

Your Resolution Before God

\n

End the day with thanksgiving, examination, contrition, and a firm purpose for tomorrow.

\n
The day must end beneath truth.
\n
\n \n
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

\n
“Ask not who said this, but take heed what is said.”
\n

Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 5, p. 14

\n \n

Truth does not become true through fashion, applause, or a celebrated name. Test what you hear by revelation and the perennial teaching of the Church.

Yet Thomas à Kempis also rebukes the curiosity that collects authorities without receiving their doctrine. Listen for the truth God is giving through a trustworthy witness, and then permit that truth to correct you. A holy author's name should not become decoration around an unchanged life.

\n

Today's Practice

\n

Reject claims based on novelty or popularity and ask what the Church has always taught.

\n
\n \n
\n

Daily Examen

\n

Three questions before night prayer

\n

Review which false tendency appeared today and whether you actively practiced its contrary rather than merely recognizing it.

\n \n
    \n
  • For what grace or mercy should I thank God today?
  • What sin, fault, neglected duty, or resistance to grace must I confess?
  • What definite amendment will I carry into tomorrow?
    • \n
\n
\n \n
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Prayer

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O Lord, bring this day to judgment before Thy mercy. Show me where I obeyed, where I resisted, where I loved, and where I must begin again.

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Daily Rule for the Pilgrim

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A brief rule to keep every day:

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Begin with morning prayer

Adore the Blessed Trinity and offer the whole day to Jesus through Mary before other duties claim the mind.

Keep the Angelus

Pause morning, noon, and evening to remember the Incarnation.

Seek Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament

Attend Holy Mass when duty permits; otherwise make a Spiritual Communion and renew desire for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Return to Jesus and Mary

Use frequent holy aspirations during work, waiting, suffering, and temptation.

Pray the Rosary

Keep the mysteries of Christ before the mind with Our Lady and learn to imitate what they contain.

End with night prayer and examen

Give thanks, confess faults, forgive injuries, make a practical amendment, and entrust the night to Our Lady.

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Continue Study

\n

Carry today's lesson into a focused chapter from the library.

\n Unity Without Obedience and Indifferentism\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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\n \"The\n
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