{"ok":true,"date":"2027-02-19","dateKey":"02-19","liturgicalDay":"Lenten Ember Day","rank":"Non-privileged Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.","author":"St. Jude","source":"Jude 1:3, Douay-Rheims","category":"Truth: Christ and His Church"},"season":"Lent","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Lenten Ember Day - 2027-02-19","previewText":"Lenten Ember Day. Doctrine Develops Without Becoming Another Doctrine. Resist the modernist notion that dogma may change its meaning according to the religious needs of an age.","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\n2027-02-19 - 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. Approach the divine Majesty with humility, accepting the mediators and intercessors God has mercifully provided rather than leaning upon self. Approach God through the merits of Jesus Christ, in union with His Church, and with humble recourse to Our Lady and the Saints.\n\n\"It is more perfect, because it is more humble, not to approach God of ourselves, without taking a mediator.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 83\n\nGod is not inaccessible or unwilling to hear; He Himself provides access through Jesus Christ and invites the intercession of His heavenly friends. The humility taught here rejects self-sufficiency—the idea that our works, preparations, or worth can place the divine Majesty in our debt. Every approach rests upon mercy and received grace.\n\nCreated intercessors do not compete with Christ's unique mediation of redemption. Their prayer depends upon His merits and belongs to the communion of His Mystical Body. Receive this order gratefully: go to the Father through the Son, pray in union with the Church, and ask Our Lady and the Saints to recommend your poverty before God.\n\nPRACTICE\nOffer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.\"\nSt. Jude, Jude 1:3, Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - February 19\nI T Rome, the birthday of St. Gabinus, priest and martyr, brother of the blessed pope.Caius. Being loaded with chains and kept a long time in prison by Diocletian, he obtained the joys of heaven by a precious death. — In Africa, the holy martyrs Publius, Julian, Marcellus, and others. — In Palestine, the commemoration of the holy monks and other martyrs, who were barbarously massacred for the faith of Christ by the Saracens, under their leader Almondhar. — At Jerusalem, St. Zambdas, bishop. — At Soli, St. Auxibius, bishop. — At Benevento, St. Barbatus, a bishop illustrious for sanctity, who converted the Lombards and their chief to the faith of Christ. — At Milan, St. Mansuetus, bishop and confessor.\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\nTHE PILGRIM'S SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE\nDoctrine Develops Without Becoming Another Doctrine\nThe Church places this truth before you today: True growth in Catholic doctrine preserves the same meaning and the same judgment; it unfolds what was received, without changing the faith into a novelty. 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. Unity of faith is protected when later expression remains identical in substance with what the Church has always taught.\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 humble dependence by abandoning every claim based on your works while using confidently all the intercessory helps God provides.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist the modernist notion that dogma may change its meaning according to the religious needs of an age. 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. Accept the poverty of needing mercy and mediation rather than constructing spiritual confidence from achievement, knowledge, or reputation. Begin every prayer and duty through Christ, ask heavenly intercession, cooperate with grace, and return all merit and glory to God.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of one; the witness placed beside it is St. Vincent of Lerins.\nYour resolution before God: Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.\nCarry this word: Reparation answers public offense with hidden love.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"The most noble and the most perfect victory is for a man to have the victory of himself.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book III, chapter 53, p. 159\nVictory over others can feed pride; victory over self-will makes room for Christ. Ask for the grace to conquer the fault that most often conquers you.\n\nChoose the fault by its frequency, not by how dramatic it appears. The repeated impatient tone, indulgent thought, delayed prayer, or unnecessary complaint may govern more of life than a rare great trial. Meet it today at its first small demand, while grace makes refusal possible.\nToday's Practice: Choose the harder faithful act once, quietly and at once.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nExamine self-reliance, presumption, and neglect of intercession, then place the entire day beneath Christ's merits through Mary's hands.\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, where Thou art forgotten, mocked, or coldly received, let me answer with prayer, penance, reverence, and love for Thy Sacred Heart.\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\nSt. Vincent of Lerins and Catholic Continuity: https://cityofgodinexile.com/champions-of-orthodoxy/st-vincent-of-lerins-and-the-rule-of-catholic-continuity?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2027-02-19&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2027-02-19&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 - 2027-02-19\n \n \n
\n Lenten Ember Day. Doctrine Develops Without Becoming Another Doctrine. Resist the modernist notion that dogma may change its meaning according to the religious needs of an age.\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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2027-02-19 - Lent - Non-privileged Feria - violet

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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
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Plain-Language Guide for Today

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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.
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Today in the Roman Year

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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.

Approach the divine Majesty with humility, accepting the mediators and intercessors God has mercifully provided rather than leaning upon self.

Approach God through the merits of Jesus Christ, in union with His Church, and with humble recourse to Our Lady and the Saints.

“It is more perfect, because it is more humble, not to approach God of ourselves, without taking a mediator.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 83

God is not inaccessible or unwilling to hear; He Himself provides access through Jesus Christ and invites the intercession of His heavenly friends. The humility taught here rejects self-sufficiency—the idea that our works, preparations, or worth can place the divine Majesty in our debt. Every approach rests upon mercy and received grace.

Created intercessors do not compete with Christ's unique mediation of redemption. Their prayer depends upon His merits and belongs to the communion of His Mystical Body. Receive this order gratefully: go to the Father through the Son, pray in union with the Church, and ask Our Lady and the Saints to recommend your poverty before God.

Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.

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Quote of the Day

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“Earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.”
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St. Jude, Jude 1:3, Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - February 19

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I T Rome, the birthday of St. Gabinus, priest and martyr, brother of the blessed pope.Caius. Being loaded with chains and kept a long time in prison by Diocletian, he obtained the joys of heaven by a precious death. — In Africa, the holy martyrs Publius, Julian, Marcellus, and others. — In Palestine, the commemoration of the holy monks and other martyrs, who were barbarously massacred for the faith of Christ by the Saracens, under their leader Almondhar. — At Jerusalem, St. Zambdas, bishop. — At Soli, St. Auxibius, bishop. — At Benevento, St. Barbatus, a bishop illustrious for sanctity, who converted the Lombards and their chief to the faith of Christ. — At Milan, St. Mansuetus, bishop and confessor.

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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.

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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.

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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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  • 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
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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
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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

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Doctrine Develops Without Becoming Another Doctrine

\n

The Church places this truth before you today: True growth in Catholic doctrine preserves the same meaning and the same judgment; it unfolds what was received, without changing the faith into a novelty. 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. Unity of faith is protected when later expression remains identical in substance with what the Church has always taught.

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 humble dependence by abandoning every claim based on your works while using confidently all the intercessory helps God provides.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist the modernist notion that dogma may change its meaning according to the religious needs of an age. 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. Accept the poverty of needing mercy and mediation rather than constructing spiritual confidence from achievement, knowledge, or reputation. Begin every prayer and duty through Christ, ask heavenly intercession, cooperate with grace, and return all merit and glory to God.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of one; the witness placed beside it is St. Vincent of Lerins.

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Your Resolution Before God

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Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.

\n
Reparation answers public offense with hidden love.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“The most noble and the most perfect victory is for a man to have the victory of himself.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book III, chapter 53, p. 159

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Victory over others can feed pride; victory over self-will makes room for Christ. Ask for the grace to conquer the fault that most often conquers you.

Choose the fault by its frequency, not by how dramatic it appears. The repeated impatient tone, indulgent thought, delayed prayer, or unnecessary complaint may govern more of life than a rare great trial. Meet it today at its first small demand, while grace makes refusal possible.

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Today's Practice

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Choose the harder faithful act once, quietly and at once.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Examine self-reliance, presumption, and neglect of intercession, then place the entire day beneath Christ's merits through Mary's hands.

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    \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
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Prayer

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O Lord, where Thou art forgotten, mocked, or coldly received, let me answer with prayer, penance, reverence, and love for Thy Sacred Heart.

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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

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

\n St. Vincent of Lerins and Catholic Continuity\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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