{"ok":true,"date":"2027-03-31","dateKey":"03-31","liturgicalDay":"Wednesday within the Octave of Easter","rank":"Semi-Double within a Privileged Octave of the First Order","color":"white","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Because it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy.","author":"Holy Scripture","source":"1 Peter 1:16, Original Douay-Rheims","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#be-ye-holy","category":"Confidence and Daily Self-Denial"},"season":"Eastertide","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[{"liturgicalDay":"Within the Privileged Octave of Easter","rank":"Privileged Octave of the First Order","color":"white","sourceNotes":["St. Andrew Daily Missal, Division of the Ecclesiastical Year, p. ix."]}],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Wednesday within the Octave of Easter - 2027-03-31","previewText":"Wednesday within the Octave of Easter. Truth and Charity Cannot Be Divided. Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nWednesday within the Octave of Easter\n2027-03-31 - Eastertide - Semi-Double within a Privileged Octave of the First Order - white\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nOctave: an eight-day extension of a major feast, allowing the Church to continue praying over the same mystery.\nApostolic: belonging to the faith, mission, teaching, or authority handed down from Christ through the apostles.\nDivine Providence: God's wise and loving governance of creation, by which He directs all things without destroying human freedom.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nChrist is risen, has ascended in His glorified humanity, and reigns in Heaven. The Church and her members still suffer on earth, but their trials do not overturn His victory. Christian hope is therefore more than an encouraging feeling: it trusts Christ's promise of resurrection and eternal life and gives the faithful a reason to persevere in obedience today. With Our Lady, ask to be hidden from vanity and humbled into truth. Ask for grace to accept the place Providence gives today without inward theatre or complaint.\n\n\"He heard her prayers when she begged to be hidden, to be humbled and to be treated as in all respects poor and of no account.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 3\n\nThis prayer of Our Lady is severe only to the part of us that desires religious importance. She does not ask to be separated from God, but to be freed from the false greatness that would draw the heart toward itself. Her littleness makes room for the mighty works of the Lord because she does not seize them as material for self-exaltation.\n\nDo not manufacture humiliation or permit injustice when duty requires a response. But when Providence allows you to be overlooked, misunderstood, or assigned an ordinary place, watch the inward protest. There you may offer Mary something real: the claim of self-love to be accounted greater than God has presently appointed.\n\nOCTAVE CONTEXT\nWithin the Privileged Octave of Easter - Privileged Octave of the First Order\n\nPRACTICE\nBegin ordinary labor with deliberate recollection and return to God whenever distraction scatters the mind.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Because it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy.\"\nHoly Scripture, 1 Peter 1:16, Original Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - March 31\nAt Thecua, in Palestine, the holy prophet Amos, whom the priest Amasias frequently scourged, and whose temples Ozias, that priest's son, pierced with an iron spike. Being carried half dead to his native place, he expired there and was buried with his forefathers. — In Africa, the holy martyrs Theodulus, Anesius, Felix, Cornelia, and their companions. — In Persia, during the reign of king Isdegerdes, St. Benjamin, deacon. Because he would not cease to preach the word of God, sharp-pointed reeds were forced under his nails, a thorny stake driven through his entrails; and thus he consummated his martyrdom. — At Rome, the holy virgin Balbina, daughter of the blessed martyr Quirinus, who was baptized by pope St. Alexander, and after overcoming the world, was buried on the Appian road at her father's side.\n\nGOSPEL OF THE DAY\nCast the net on the right side.\nWednesday within the Octave of Easter - John 21:1-14\n\"Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find.\"\nBring your empty net to Christ. Easter hope does not deny failure; it places failure beneath His word.\n\nTHE CHURCH'S READING OF THE GOSPEL\nWhat This Gospel Teaches\nThe risen Lord gives fruitfulness after the apostles' night of empty labor.\nThe miraculous catch teaches that the Church's mission depends on Christ's command, not on human effort detached from Him.\nError corrected: The activism that keeps casting nets without listening for Christ's command.\n- Where does this error tempt me in practice?\n- What act does this Gospel require of me today?\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nWednesday within the Octave of Easter\nThe risen Lord commands the net to be cast.\nEaster Wednesday keeps the Resurrection before the faithful through the miraculous catch of fishes after a night of fruitless labor.\nThe risen Lord stands on the shore, commands the net to be cast on the right side, and gives abundance where human effort had found nothing.\nLet Easter Wednesday correct discouragement. The empty net is not final when the risen Lord gives the command.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nThe net filled at the word of the risen Lord.\nMatins - Wednesday within the Octave of Easter\n- The Easter Wednesday office keeps the Church before the risen Lord on the shore and the miraculous catch after fruitless toil.\n- Its witness teaches that apostolic labor is fruitful only under Christ's command, and that the risen Lord governs the mission of His Church.\nCast the net at His word. In exile, fruitfulness belongs to obedience before it belongs to effort.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Wednesday within the Octave of Easter 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 The net filled at the word of the risen Lord.. Its first point is this: The Easter Wednesday office keeps the Church before the risen Lord on the shore and the miraculous catch after fruitless toil. Its next point develops the lesson: Its witness teaches that apostolic labor is fruitful only under Christ's command, and that the risen Lord governs the mission of His Church.\nThe practical instruction is: Cast the net at His word. In exile, fruitfulness belongs to obedience before it belongs to effort. 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\nTruth and Charity Cannot Be Divided\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Charity loves the real good of the soul, and therefore cannot ask truth to be hidden, softened into falsehood, or traded for comfort. 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 saints defended truth sharply when souls were endangered, yet their severity was ordered to salvation, not pride.\nThe grace to be practiced is Obedient apostolic labor, 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. Humility receives truth about oneself from God and does not require either praise or false self-contempt.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger. 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 obedient apostolic labor 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. When overlooked, remain charitable and exact in duty instead of withdrawing your good will. Let useful acts remain unannounced whenever charity does not require them to be known.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Bernard of Clairvaux.\nYour resolution before God: Begin ordinary labor with deliberate recollection and return to God whenever distraction scatters the mind.\nCarry this word: The faithful soul receives the day before it spends it.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"It is good that we have sometime griefs and adversities, for they drive a man to behold himself, and to see that he is here but as in an exile, and be learned thereby to know that he ought not to put his trust in any worldly thing.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 12, p. 20\nAdversity is not good because pain is pleasant or because every injustice should be left unopposed. It becomes profitable when Providence uses it to break an illusion: that earthly comfort is secure, that human approval can sustain the soul, or that personal strength is sufficient.\n\nWhen something unsettles you today, do not look only for the quickest escape. Ask what false support has been exposed. Then fulfill the duty the situation requires and place the shaken part of the heart more firmly in God, who alone cannot be taken from you.\nToday's Practice: When disappointments arrive, ask what earthly trusts they expose before seeking consolation.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nExamine the moments when being of little account disturbed your peace more than offending God would have done.\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, place this day beneath Thy Providence. Keep my mind in truth, my heart in charity, and my work in obedience until evening.\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\nSpeaking the Truth in Charity: https://cityofgodinexile.com/scripture-treasury/ephesians-4-15-speaking-the-truth-in-charity-doctrinal-clarity-and-pastoral-mercy?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2027-03-31&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2027-03-31&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: Wednesday within the Octave of Easter - 2027-03-31\n \n \n
\n Wednesday within the Octave of Easter. Truth and Charity Cannot Be Divided. Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Wednesday within the Octave of Easter

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2027-03-31 - Eastertide - Semi-Double within a Privileged Octave of the First Order - white

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“Walk whilst you have the light, that the darkness overtake you not.”
John 12:35
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Plain-Language Guide for Today

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Octave
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an eight-day extension of a major feast, allowing the Church to continue praying over the same mystery.
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Apostolic
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belonging to the faith, mission, teaching, or authority handed down from Christ through the apostles.
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Divine Providence
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God's wise and loving governance of creation, by which He directs all things without destroying human freedom.
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Today in the Roman Year

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Christ is risen, has ascended in His glorified humanity, and reigns in Heaven. The Church and her members still suffer on earth, but their trials do not overturn His victory. Christian hope is therefore more than an encouraging feeling: it trusts Christ's promise of resurrection and eternal life and gives the faithful a reason to persevere in obedience today.

With Our Lady, ask to be hidden from vanity and humbled into truth.

Ask for grace to accept the place Providence gives today without inward theatre or complaint.

“He heard her prayers when she begged to be hidden, to be humbled and to be treated as in all respects poor and of no account.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 3

This prayer of Our Lady is severe only to the part of us that desires religious importance. She does not ask to be separated from God, but to be freed from the false greatness that would draw the heart toward itself. Her littleness makes room for the mighty works of the Lord because she does not seize them as material for self-exaltation.

Do not manufacture humiliation or permit injustice when duty requires a response. But when Providence allows you to be overlooked, misunderstood, or assigned an ordinary place, watch the inward protest. There you may offer Mary something real: the claim of self-love to be accounted greater than God has presently appointed.

Begin ordinary labor with deliberate recollection and return to God whenever distraction scatters the mind.

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Octave Context

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  • Within the Privileged Octave of Easter - Privileged Octave of the First Order
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Quote of the Day

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“Because it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy.”
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Holy Scripture, 1 Peter 1:16, Original Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - March 31

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At Thecua, in Palestine, the holy prophet Amos, whom the priest Amasias frequently scourged, and whose temples Ozias, that priest's son, pierced with an iron spike. Being carried half dead to his native place, he expired there and was buried with his forefathers. — In Africa, the holy martyrs Theodulus, Anesius, Felix, Cornelia, and their companions. — In Persia, during the reign of king Isdegerdes, St. Benjamin, deacon. Because he would not cease to preach the word of God, sharp-pointed reeds were forced under his nails, a thorny stake driven through his entrails; and thus he consummated his martyrdom. — At Rome, the holy virgin Balbina, daughter of the blessed martyr Quirinus, who was baptized by pope St. Alexander, and after overcoming the world, was buried on the Appian road at her father's side.

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Gospel of the Day

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Cast the net on the right side.

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Wednesday within the Octave of Easter - John 21:1-14

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“Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find.”
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Bring your empty net to Christ. Easter hope does not deny failure; it places failure beneath His word.

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The Church's Reading of the Gospel

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What This Gospel Teaches

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The risen Lord gives fruitfulness after the apostles' night of empty labor.

The miraculous catch teaches that the Church's mission depends on Christ's command, not on human effort detached from Him.

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Error corrected: The activism that keeps casting nets without listening for Christ's command.

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  • Where does this error tempt me in practice?
  • What act does this Gospel require of me today?
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Highlighted Saint

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Wednesday within the Octave of Easter

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The risen Lord commands the net to be cast.

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Easter Wednesday keeps the Resurrection before the faithful through the miraculous catch of fishes after a night of fruitless labor.

The risen Lord stands on the shore, commands the net to be cast on the right side, and gives abundance where human effort had found nothing.

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Let Easter Wednesday correct discouragement. The empty net is not final when the risen Lord gives the command.

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Breviary Witness

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The net filled at the word of the risen Lord.

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Matins - Wednesday within the Octave of Easter

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  • The Easter Wednesday office keeps the Church before the risen Lord on the shore and the miraculous catch after fruitless toil.
  • Its witness teaches that apostolic labor is fruitful only under Christ's command, and that the risen Lord governs the mission of His Church.
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Cast the net at His word. In exile, fruitfulness belongs to obedience before it belongs to effort.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Wednesday within the Octave of Easter 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 The net filled at the word of the risen Lord.. Its first point is this: The Easter Wednesday office keeps the Church before the risen Lord on the shore and the miraculous catch after fruitless toil. Its next point develops the lesson: Its witness teaches that apostolic labor is fruitful only under Christ's command, and that the risen Lord governs the mission of His Church.

The practical instruction is: Cast the net at His word. In exile, fruitfulness belongs to obedience before it belongs to effort. 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.

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  • 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?
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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

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Truth and Charity Cannot Be Divided

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The Church places this truth before you today: Charity loves the real good of the soul, and therefore cannot ask truth to be hidden, softened into falsehood, or traded for comfort. 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 saints defended truth sharply when souls were endangered, yet their severity was ordered to salvation, not pride.

The grace to be practiced is Obedient apostolic labor, 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. Humility receives truth about oneself from God and does not require either praise or false self-contempt.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger. 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 obedient apostolic labor 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. When overlooked, remain charitable and exact in duty instead of withdrawing your good will. Let useful acts remain unannounced whenever charity does not require them to be known.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

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Your Resolution Before God

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Begin ordinary labor with deliberate recollection and return to God whenever distraction scatters the mind.

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The faithful soul receives the day before it spends it.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“It is good that we have sometime griefs and adversities, for they drive a man to behold himself, and to see that he is here but as in an exile, and be learned thereby to know that he ought not to put his trust in any worldly thing.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 12, p. 20

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Adversity is not good because pain is pleasant or because every injustice should be left unopposed. It becomes profitable when Providence uses it to break an illusion: that earthly comfort is secure, that human approval can sustain the soul, or that personal strength is sufficient.

When something unsettles you today, do not look only for the quickest escape. Ask what false support has been exposed. Then fulfill the duty the situation requires and place the shaken part of the heart more firmly in God, who alone cannot be taken from you.

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Today's Practice

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When disappointments arrive, ask what earthly trusts they expose before seeking consolation.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Examine the moments when being of little account disturbed your peace more than offending God would have done.

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  • 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?
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Prayer

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O Lord, place this day beneath Thy Providence. Keep my mind in truth, my heart in charity, and my work in obedience until evening.

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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 Speaking the Truth in Charity\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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