{"ok":true,"date":"2027-04-26","dateKey":"04-26","liturgicalDay":"Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs","rank":"Semi-Double","color":"red","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"And in all seducing of iniquity to them that perish; for that they have not received the charity of the truth that they might be saved.","author":"Holy Scripture","source":"2 Thessalonians 2:10, Original Douay-Rheims","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#love-the-truth","category":"Truth: Christ and His Church"},"season":"Eastertide","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs - 2027-04-26","previewText":"Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs. Valid Sacraments Are a Grave Priority. Resist home-alone despair when it becomes settled indifference to seeking valid sacraments.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nSs. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs\n2027-04-26 - Eastertide - Semi-Double - 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.\nMartyr: a Christian who was killed rather than deny Christ or abandon the Faith.\nApostolic: belonging to the faith, mission, teaching, or authority handed down from Christ through the apostles.\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. Invite Our Lady to establish within you the dispositions of the predestinate and to drive out the habits of Esau. Ask Our Lady to dwell in your soul and to order your memory, understanding, will, imagination, passions, senses, and works toward Jesus.\n\n\"God the Father wishes to have children by Mary till the consummation of the world; and He has said to her these words, In Jacob inhabita—‘Dwell in Jacob,’—that is to say, Make your dwelling and residence in My predestinated children, figured by Jacob, and not in the reprobate children of the devil, figured by Esau.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 29\n\nThe language of Jacob and Esau is a summons to conversion, not permission to presume that a devotional label guarantees salvation. A soul in which Mary dwells must welcome what she loves: Jesus Christ, the Catholic Faith, purity, humility, obedience, prayer, sacrifice, and perseverance.\n\nPrepare an interior dwelling for her by expelling mortal sin, rejecting heresy, repairing scandal, and cleansing daily conduct of deliberate compromise. If you fall, return through contrition and the means appointed by Christ. Let the whole household of the soul come under her maternal order.\n\nPRACTICE\nName the graces God has preserved for you in exile and thank Him for them plainly.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"And in all seducing of iniquity to them that perish; for that they have not received the charity of the truth that they might be saved.\"\nHoly Scripture, 2 Thessalonians 2:10, Original Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - April 26\nAt Rome, the birthday of blessed Cletns, pope who governed the Church the second after the apostle St. Peter, and was crowned with martyrdom in the persecution of Domitian. — In the same city, in the time of Maximian, St. Marcellinus, pope and martyr, who was beheaded for the faith of Christ, with Claudius, Cyrinus, and Antoninus. So great was the persecution at this time that within a month seventeen thousand Christians were crowned with martyrdom. — At Amasea, in Pontus, St. Basileus, bishop and martyr, whose illustrious martyrdom occurred under the emperor Licinius. His body was thrown into the sea; but being found by Elpidiphorus, through the revelation of an angel, it was honorably entombed. — At Braga, in Portugal, St. Peter, martyr, the first bishop of that city. — At Venice, St. Clarence, bishop and confessor. — At Verona, St. Lucidius, bishop. — In the monastery of Centula, St. Richarius, priest and confessor. — At Troyes, St. Exuperantia, virgin.\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nSs. Cletus and Marcellinus\nPopes and martyrs, witnesses of Roman continuity.\nSs. Cletus and Marcellinus are honored as popes and martyrs, remembered by the Roman Church as shepherds who bore witness unto blood.\nTheir feast teaches that the Church's visible continuity is not decorative history. Christ preserves His Church through apostolic office, doctrine, sacramental order, and martyr fidelity.\nAsk these martyrs for clear eyes. True continuity is not only outward survival; it is fidelity to what Christ gave His Church.\nFROM MATINS\nThe Roman succession ordered in peace and tested in persecution.\nMatins - Second Nocturn - Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs\nRoman Breviary, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine\n\"He brought it into an excellent state of order.\"\n- The Breviary remembers St. Cletus governing the Roman Church after St. Peter, ordaining ministers, ordering ecclesiastical life, and receiving martyrdom under Domitian.\n- St. Marcellinus governed amid Diocletian's savage persecution, suffered false accusations concerning idolatry, and answered slander by confession of faith unto death.\n- Even the recovery and honorable burial of the martyrs' bodies appears as obedience within the communion of the Roman Church, where memory, hierarchy, and witness remain joined.\nAsk the martyr popes for fidelity under confusion. Do not let accusation replace evidence, or persecution dissolve order; keep the faith, honor the dead, and preserve the Church's received discipline.\nTHE PILGRIM'S SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE\nValid Sacraments Are a Grave Priority\nThe Church places this truth before you today: The faithful must seek valid sacraments with prudence, sacrifice, and holy seriousness, without inventing sacraments or despising them. 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. Families often move for work, schools, or safety. The sacraments are a higher good, and should weigh heavily in practical decisions when God makes such a move possible.\nThe grace to be practiced is Discernment of true apostolic continuity, 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 interior order by rejecting every deliberate occasion of sin and governing the whole day according to faith and duty.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist home-alone despair when it becomes settled indifference to seeking valid sacraments. 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 discernment of true apostolic continuity 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 painful removal of attachments, habits, entertainments, and compromises that cannot remain in Mary's household. Make your home, speech, labor, recreation, prayer, and relationships fitting for the presence of the Mother of Jesus.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Charles Borromeo.\nYour resolution before God: Name the graces God has preserved for you in exile and thank Him for them plainly.\nCarry this word: The soul in exile is not abandoned.\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 what welcomed Our Lady's dispositions and what made the soul resemble Esau rather than Jacob.\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, when confusion, scarcity, or loneliness presses upon me, keep me from despair. Thou hast not abandoned the faithful who cling to truth.\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\nHow to Judge a Traditionalist Chapel: https://cityofgodinexile.com/the-counterfeit/how-to-judge-a-traditionalist-chapel?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2027-04-26&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2027-04-26&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: Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs - 2027-04-26\n \n \n
\n Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs. Valid Sacraments Are a Grave Priority. Resist home-alone despair when it becomes settled indifference to seeking valid sacraments.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs

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2027-04-26 - Eastertide - Semi-Double - 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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Martyr
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a Christian who was killed rather than deny Christ or abandon the Faith.
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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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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.

Invite Our Lady to establish within you the dispositions of the predestinate and to drive out the habits of Esau.

Ask Our Lady to dwell in your soul and to order your memory, understanding, will, imagination, passions, senses, and works toward Jesus.

“God the Father wishes to have children by Mary till the consummation of the world; and He has said to her these words, In Jacob inhabita—‘Dwell in Jacob,’—that is to say, Make your dwelling and residence in My predestinated children, figured by Jacob, and not in the reprobate children of the devil, figured by Esau.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 29

The language of Jacob and Esau is a summons to conversion, not permission to presume that a devotional label guarantees salvation. A soul in which Mary dwells must welcome what she loves: Jesus Christ, the Catholic Faith, purity, humility, obedience, prayer, sacrifice, and perseverance.

Prepare an interior dwelling for her by expelling mortal sin, rejecting heresy, repairing scandal, and cleansing daily conduct of deliberate compromise. If you fall, return through contrition and the means appointed by Christ. Let the whole household of the soul come under her maternal order.

Name the graces God has preserved for you in exile and thank Him for them plainly.

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Quote of the Day

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“And in all seducing of iniquity to them that perish; for that they have not received the charity of the truth that they might be saved.”
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Holy Scripture, 2 Thessalonians 2:10, Original Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - April 26

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At Rome, the birthday of blessed Cletns, pope who governed the Church the second after the apostle St. Peter, and was crowned with martyrdom in the persecution of Domitian. — In the same city, in the time of Maximian, St. Marcellinus, pope and martyr, who was beheaded for the faith of Christ, with Claudius, Cyrinus, and Antoninus. So great was the persecution at this time that within a month seventeen thousand Christians were crowned with martyrdom. — At Amasea, in Pontus, St. Basileus, bishop and martyr, whose illustrious martyrdom occurred under the emperor Licinius. His body was thrown into the sea; but being found by Elpidiphorus, through the revelation of an angel, it was honorably entombed. — At Braga, in Portugal, St. Peter, martyr, the first bishop of that city. — At Venice, St. Clarence, bishop and confessor. — At Verona, St. Lucidius, bishop. — In the monastery of Centula, St. Richarius, priest and confessor. — At Troyes, St. Exuperantia, virgin.

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Highlighted Saint

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Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus

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Popes and martyrs, witnesses of Roman continuity.

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Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus are honored as popes and martyrs, remembered by the Roman Church as shepherds who bore witness unto blood.

Their feast teaches that the Church's visible continuity is not decorative history. Christ preserves His Church through apostolic office, doctrine, sacramental order, and martyr fidelity.

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Ask these martyrs for clear eyes. True continuity is not only outward survival; it is fidelity to what Christ gave His Church.

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From Matins

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The Roman succession ordered in peace and tested in persecution.

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Matins - Second Nocturn - Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, Popes and Martyrs

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Roman Breviary, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine, Proper lessons for Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus and the Common of Martyrs

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“He brought it into an excellent state of order.”
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  • The Breviary remembers St. Cletus governing the Roman Church after St. Peter, ordaining ministers, ordering ecclesiastical life, and receiving martyrdom under Domitian.
  • St. Marcellinus governed amid Diocletian's savage persecution, suffered false accusations concerning idolatry, and answered slander by confession of faith unto death.
  • Even the recovery and honorable burial of the martyrs' bodies appears as obedience within the communion of the Roman Church, where memory, hierarchy, and witness remain joined.
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Ask the martyr popes for fidelity under confusion. Do not let accusation replace evidence, or persecution dissolve order; keep the faith, honor the dead, and preserve the Church's received discipline.

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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

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Valid Sacraments Are a Grave Priority

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The Church places this truth before you today: The faithful must seek valid sacraments with prudence, sacrifice, and holy seriousness, without inventing sacraments or despising them. 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. Families often move for work, schools, or safety. The sacraments are a higher good, and should weigh heavily in practical decisions when God makes such a move possible.

The grace to be practiced is Discernment of true apostolic continuity, 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 interior order by rejecting every deliberate occasion of sin and governing the whole day according to faith and duty.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist home-alone despair when it becomes settled indifference to seeking valid sacraments. 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 discernment of true apostolic continuity 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 painful removal of attachments, habits, entertainments, and compromises that cannot remain in Mary's household. Make your home, speech, labor, recreation, prayer, and relationships fitting for the presence of the Mother of Jesus.

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

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Your Resolution Before God

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Name the graces God has preserved for you in exile and thank Him for them plainly.

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The soul in exile is not abandoned.
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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 what welcomed Our Lady's dispositions and what made the soul resemble Esau rather than Jacob.

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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, when confusion, scarcity, or loneliness presses upon me, keep me from despair. Thou hast not abandoned the faithful who cling to truth.

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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 How to Judge a Traditionalist Chapel\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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