{"ok":true,"date":"2027-04-25","dateKey":"04-25","liturgicalDay":"St. Mark, Evangelist","rank":"Double of the Second Class","color":"red","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.","author":"Our Lord Jesus Christ","source":"Mark 16:15, Douay-Rheims"},"season":"Eastertide","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: St. Mark, Evangelist - 2027-04-25","previewText":"St. Mark, Evangelist. The Cross Is Daily. Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nSt. Mark, Evangelist\n2027-04-25 - Eastertide - Double of the Second Class - red\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nEcclesiastical or ecclesial: belonging or relating to the Church; the words refer to her life, law, worship, ministers, or common mission.\nApostolic: belonging to the faith, mission, teaching, or authority handed down from Christ through the apostles.\nEvangelist: one of the four inspired authors of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.\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. Look upon Our Lady's heavenly exaltation as God's recompense for the humility with which she descended beneath every creature. Honor Our Lady as Queen beneath Christ the King and ask for the profound humility that submits every power to God.\n\n\"Mary commands in the heavens the Angels and the Blessed. As a recompense for her profound humility, God has given her the power and permission to fill with Saints the empty thrones from which the apostate angels fell by pride.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 28\n\nMary's queenship is received, not self-created. God exalts the humble Virgin who called herself His handmaid, while the proud angels lost their thrones through revolt. Her authority manifests His victory and remains wholly subject to the King from whom it comes.\n\nThe road toward the vacant thrones is therefore not ambition but humility under grace. Renounce the desire to govern what God has not entrusted to you. Rule your passions, obey His law, serve souls, accept obscurity, and allow Our Lady to conduct you by the low road her Son chose.\n\nPRACTICE\nShow reverence for the Holy Sacrifice in thought, word, and conduct, and pray for souls misled by false worship.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.\"\nOur Lord Jesus Christ, Mark 16:15, Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - April 25\nAt Alexandria, the birthday of blessed Mark, evangelist, disciple and interpreter of the apostle St. Peter. He wrote his gospel at the request of the faithful of Rome, and taking it with him, proceeded to Egypt and founded a church at Alexandria, where he was the first to announce Christ. Afterwards, being arrested for the faith, he was bound, dragged over stones and endured great afflictions. Finally he was confined to prison, where, being comforted by the visit of an angel, and even by an apparition of our Lord himself, he was called to the heavenly kingdom in the eighth year of the reign of Nero. — At Rome, the great Litanies in the church of St. Peter. — At Syracuse, the holy martyrs Evodius, Hermogenes, and Callistus. — At Antioch, St. Stephen, bishop and martyr, who suffered much from the heretics opposed to the Council of Chalcedon, and was precipitated into the river Orontes, in the time APEIL. 117 of the emperor Zeno. — In the same city, the Saints Philo and Agathopodes, deacons. — At Alexandria, the bishop St. Anian, disciple of blessed Mark, and his successor in the episcopate. With a great renown for virtue, he rested in the Lord. — At Lobbes, the birthday of St. ErmiDus, bishop and confessor.\n\nGOSPEL OF THE DAY\nPreach the Gospel to every creature.\nSt. Mark, Evangelist - Mark 16:15-20\n\"Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.\"\nAsk St. Mark for a faithful tongue and a disciplined pen. The truth need not be noisy to be brave.\n\nTHE CHURCH'S READING OF THE GOSPEL\nWhat This Gospel Teaches\nThe Gospel is not private possession but apostolic mission.\nChrist confirms the preaching of His Church by His authority from heaven.\nSt. Mark reminds the faithful that written truth is a mercy. The Gospel gives the soul something firm to receive, keep, and hand on.\nError corrected: The silence that treats revealed truth as private preference.\n- Where does this error tempt me in practice?\n- What act does this Gospel require of me today?\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nSt. Mark\nEvangelist and herald of the Gospel.\nSt. Mark is honored as an evangelist, preserving and preaching the Gospel of Christ for the Church.\nHis feast teaches that the Gospel is not private possession or religious mood, but apostolic testimony entrusted to the Church.\nAsk St. Mark for a faithful tongue and a disciplined pen. The truth need not be noisy to be brave.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nThe Gospel entrusted to those Christ sent to preach and establish His Church.\nMatins - St. Mark\n- The Breviary honors St. Mark as evangelist and herald of the Gospel.\n- His witness teaches that the word of Christ is to be preached, written, guarded, and handed on as apostolic truth.\nUse speech and writing for the faith. The Gospel is not private feeling, but public testimony for salvation.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for St. Mark 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 Gospel entrusted to those Christ sent to preach and establish His Church.. Its first point is this: The Breviary honors St. Mark as evangelist and herald of the Gospel. Its next point develops the lesson: His witness teaches that the word of Christ is to be preached, written, guarded, and handed on as apostolic truth.\nThe practical instruction is: Use speech and writing for the faith. The Gospel is not private feeling, but public testimony for salvation. 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\nPeter's interpreter carries the Gospel to Alexandria.\nMatins - Second Nocturn - St. Mark, Evangelist\nSt. Jerome, Priest\n\"He wrote the shortest of the Gospels.\"\n- The Breviary receives St. Mark as the disciple and interpreter of St. Peter, writing from what he had heard Peter teach.\n- St. Peter approved Mark's Gospel and gave it to the Church to be read by his authority. This connects the written Gospel with the preaching and testimony Peter had received directly from Christ.\n- Mark carried the Gospel into Egypt, founded the Church of Alexandria, and formed Christians whose common life recalled the first charity of Jerusalem.\nReceive the Gospel as apostolic testimony, not private literature. St. Mark teaches that Scripture is handed down in the Church, preached, approved, read, and lived.\nTHE PILGRIM'S SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE\nThe Cross Is Daily\nThe Church places this truth before you today: The disciple of Christ must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Our Lord in obedience, penance, and perseverance. 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. Holiness is formed in ordinary fidelity before it is tested in public suffering.\nThe grace to be practiced is Disciplined witness to the Gospel, 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 humility in thought, speech, correction, service, prayer, and the faithful use of whatever authority you possess.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial. 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 disciplined witness to the Gospel 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. Receive being overlooked, contradicted, or assigned lowly work without feeding resentment or seeking revenge. Exercise responsibilities as a stewardship from God, serve those beneath your care, and obey every rightful authority in all lawful things.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Bede the Venerable.\nYour resolution before God: Show reverence for the Holy Sacrifice in thought, word, and conduct, and pray for souls misled by false worship.\nCarry this word: False worship wounds souls because worship forms belief.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"If we would every year overcome one vice, we should anon come to perfection.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 11, p. 20\nÀ Kempis does not flatter the soul with the promise of instant perfection. He asks for patient warfare against a definite vice. Much spiritual discouragement comes from trying vaguely to become holy while refusing to name the repeated fault through which self-will governs ordinary life.\n\nChoose the vice by its actual frequency, not by how dramatic its name appears. It may be complaint, delay, curiosity, harsh judgment, vanity, impurity of thought, or refusal of prayer. Place it before God without excuse, ask Our Lady for the contrary virtue, and begin with its next small occasion.\nToday's Practice: Name your recurring vice and write down the contrary acts you will make whenever it appears.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nSearch for the pride that sought notice, control, exemption, or superiority, and place it beneath the feet of the humble Queen.\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, give me holy fear before Thy altar. Preserve me from casualness, invention, and every worship that weakens faith in Thy sacrifice.\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\nTake Up Thy Cross Daily: https://cityofgodinexile.com/scripture-treasury/luke-9-23-deny-thyself-take-up-thy-cross-daily-and-the-standard-of-christ?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2027-04-25&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2027-04-25&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: St. Mark, Evangelist - 2027-04-25\n \n \n
\n St. Mark, Evangelist. The Cross Is Daily. Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial.\n
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City of God in Exile

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St. Mark, Evangelist

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2027-04-25 - Eastertide - Double of the Second Class - red

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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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Ecclesiastical or ecclesial
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belonging or relating to the Church; the words refer to her life, law, worship, ministers, or common mission.
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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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Evangelist
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one of the four inspired authors of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
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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.

Look upon Our Lady's heavenly exaltation as God's recompense for the humility with which she descended beneath every creature.

Honor Our Lady as Queen beneath Christ the King and ask for the profound humility that submits every power to God.

“Mary commands in the heavens the Angels and the Blessed. As a recompense for her profound humility, God has given her the power and permission to fill with Saints the empty thrones from which the apostate angels fell by pride.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 28

Mary's queenship is received, not self-created. God exalts the humble Virgin who called herself His handmaid, while the proud angels lost their thrones through revolt. Her authority manifests His victory and remains wholly subject to the King from whom it comes.

The road toward the vacant thrones is therefore not ambition but humility under grace. Renounce the desire to govern what God has not entrusted to you. Rule your passions, obey His law, serve souls, accept obscurity, and allow Our Lady to conduct you by the low road her Son chose.

Show reverence for the Holy Sacrifice in thought, word, and conduct, and pray for souls misled by false worship.

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Quote of the Day

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“Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
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Our Lord Jesus Christ, Mark 16:15, Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - April 25

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At Alexandria, the birthday of blessed Mark, evangelist, disciple and interpreter of the apostle St. Peter. He wrote his gospel at the request of the faithful of Rome, and taking it with him, proceeded to Egypt and founded a church at Alexandria, where he was the first to announce Christ. Afterwards, being arrested for the faith, he was bound, dragged over stones and endured great afflictions. Finally he was confined to prison, where, being comforted by the visit of an angel, and even by an apparition of our Lord himself, he was called to the heavenly kingdom in the eighth year of the reign of Nero. — At Rome, the great Litanies in the church of St. Peter. — At Syracuse, the holy martyrs Evodius, Hermogenes, and Callistus. — At Antioch, St. Stephen, bishop and martyr, who suffered much from the heretics opposed to the Council of Chalcedon, and was precipitated into the river Orontes, in the time APEIL. 117 of the emperor Zeno. — In the same city, the Saints Philo and Agathopodes, deacons. — At Alexandria, the bishop St. Anian, disciple of blessed Mark, and his successor in the episcopate. With a great renown for virtue, he rested in the Lord. — At Lobbes, the birthday of St. ErmiDus, bishop and confessor.

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Gospel of the Day

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Preach the Gospel to every creature.

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St. Mark, Evangelist - Mark 16:15-20

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“Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
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Ask St. Mark for a faithful tongue and a disciplined pen. The truth need not be noisy to be brave.

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The Church's Reading of the Gospel

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What This Gospel Teaches

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The Gospel is not private possession but apostolic mission.

Christ confirms the preaching of His Church by His authority from heaven.

St. Mark reminds the faithful that written truth is a mercy. The Gospel gives the soul something firm to receive, keep, and hand on.

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Error corrected: The silence that treats revealed truth as private preference.

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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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St. Mark

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Evangelist and herald of the Gospel.

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St. Mark is honored as an evangelist, preserving and preaching the Gospel of Christ for the Church.

His feast teaches that the Gospel is not private possession or religious mood, but apostolic testimony entrusted to the Church.

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Ask St. Mark for a faithful tongue and a disciplined pen. The truth need not be noisy to be brave.

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Breviary Witness

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The Gospel entrusted to those Christ sent to preach and establish His Church.

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Matins - St. Mark

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  • The Breviary honors St. Mark as evangelist and herald of the Gospel.
  • His witness teaches that the word of Christ is to be preached, written, guarded, and handed on as apostolic truth.
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Use speech and writing for the faith. The Gospel is not private feeling, but public testimony for salvation.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for St. Mark 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 Gospel entrusted to those Christ sent to preach and establish His Church.. Its first point is this: The Breviary honors St. Mark as evangelist and herald of the Gospel. Its next point develops the lesson: His witness teaches that the word of Christ is to be preached, written, guarded, and handed on as apostolic truth.

The practical instruction is: Use speech and writing for the faith. The Gospel is not private feeling, but public testimony for salvation. 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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From Matins

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Peter's interpreter carries the Gospel to Alexandria.

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Matins - Second Nocturn - St. Mark, Evangelist

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St. Jerome, Priest, On Ecclesiastical Writers

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“He wrote the shortest of the Gospels.”
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  • The Breviary receives St. Mark as the disciple and interpreter of St. Peter, writing from what he had heard Peter teach.
  • St. Peter approved Mark's Gospel and gave it to the Church to be read by his authority. This connects the written Gospel with the preaching and testimony Peter had received directly from Christ.
  • Mark carried the Gospel into Egypt, founded the Church of Alexandria, and formed Christians whose common life recalled the first charity of Jerusalem.
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Receive the Gospel as apostolic testimony, not private literature. St. Mark teaches that Scripture is handed down in the Church, preached, approved, read, and lived.

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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

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The Cross Is Daily

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The Church places this truth before you today: The disciple of Christ must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Our Lord in obedience, penance, and perseverance. 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. Holiness is formed in ordinary fidelity before it is tested in public suffering.

The grace to be practiced is Disciplined witness to the Gospel, 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 humility in thought, speech, correction, service, prayer, and the faithful use of whatever authority you possess.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial. 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 disciplined witness to the Gospel 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. Receive being overlooked, contradicted, or assigned lowly work without feeding resentment or seeking revenge. Exercise responsibilities as a stewardship from God, serve those beneath your care, and obey every rightful authority in all lawful things.

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

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Your Resolution Before God

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Show reverence for the Holy Sacrifice in thought, word, and conduct, and pray for souls misled by false worship.

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False worship wounds souls because worship forms belief.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“If we would every year overcome one vice, we should anon come to perfection.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 11, p. 20

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À Kempis does not flatter the soul with the promise of instant perfection. He asks for patient warfare against a definite vice. Much spiritual discouragement comes from trying vaguely to become holy while refusing to name the repeated fault through which self-will governs ordinary life.

Choose the vice by its actual frequency, not by how dramatic its name appears. It may be complaint, delay, curiosity, harsh judgment, vanity, impurity of thought, or refusal of prayer. Place it before God without excuse, ask Our Lady for the contrary virtue, and begin with its next small occasion.

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Today's Practice

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Name your recurring vice and write down the contrary acts you will make whenever it appears.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Search for the pride that sought notice, control, exemption, or superiority, and place it beneath the feet of the humble Queen.

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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, give me holy fear before Thy altar. Preserve me from casualness, invention, and every worship that weakens faith in Thy sacrifice.

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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 Take Up Thy Cross Daily\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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