{"ok":true,"date":"2027-09-25","dateKey":"09-25","liturgicalDay":"Feria in Time after Pentecost","rank":"Feria","color":"green","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":"Time after Pentecost","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Feria in Time after Pentecost - 2027-09-25","previewText":"Feria in Time after Pentecost. Grace Heals and Elevates Nature. Resist naturalism, which treats human improvement as though it could take the place of supernatural life.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nFeria in Time after Pentecost\n2027-09-25 - Time after Pentecost - Feria - green\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nFeria in Time after Pentecost is the principal observance today. The Gospel panel comes from the traditional Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary kept alongside this simple feast; it adds a Marian lesson without replacing the day's principal observance.\nFeria: a weekday without a higher feast of its own; its prayers usually follow the current liturgical season.\nVirgin: in a saint's title, a woman honored for consecrating her chastity and whole life to Christ.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nAt Pentecost the Holy Ghost strengthened the apostles to preach Christ publicly and carry the Gospel to the nations. His work is not private excitement separated from doctrine, worship, and the authority Christ established. The faithful should ask Him for zeal that makes them more obedient to revealed truth, more constant in charity, and more courageous in Catholic witness. Through Mary, receive the day from Jesus Christ and return it to Him. Place every prayer, work, joy, suffering, and temptation into the hands of Our Lady, asking her to present the whole day to her Divine Son.\n\n\"It was through the most holy Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that He has to reign in the world.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 1\n\nGod did not choose Our Lady because He needed assistance from a creature. He chose her freely, and by that choice He teaches us something about His own order: the Word came to us in humility, hidden beneath a Mother's heart, and He wills that pride should not prescribe the road by which grace reaches a soul.\n\nYou may desire the reign of Christ while still guarding some chamber of life for self-will. Bring that guarded place into the light today. Ask Mary to receive it, not as its final end, but as the Mother appointed to form in you a more obedient welcome for her Divine Son.\n\nPRACTICE\nImitate the concrete virtues shown by today's saint, beginning in the hidden circumstances of your own state in life.\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 - September 25\nAt Emmaus, the birthday of blessed Cleophas, disciple of Christ. It is related that he was killed by the Jews, for the confession of our Lord, in the same house in which he had entertained Him, and where he was honorably buried. — At Rome, under the emperor Antoninus, St. Herculanus, soldier and martyr, who, being converted to Christ by the miracles wrought during the martyrdom of the, blessed bishop Alexander, was put to the sword, after enduring many torments. — At Amiens, in France, in the persecution of Diocletian, blessed Firmin, bishop. Under the governor Rictiovarus, after various torments, he suffered martyrdom by being beheaded. — At Damascus, the holy martyr Paul, Tata, his wife, and Sabinian, Maximus, Rufus, and Eugenius, their sons. Accused of professing the Christian religion, they were scourged, and tortured in other ways, until they gave up their souls to God. — In Asia, the holy martyrs Bardomian, Eucarpus, and twenty-six others. — The same day, St. Anathalon, bishop, who was a disciple of the blessed apostle Barnabas, and succeeded him in the See of Milan. — At Lyons, the decease of St. Lupus, at one time an anchoret, but later a bishop. — At Auxerre, St. Anacharius, bishop and confessor. — At Blois, St. Solemnius, bishop of Chartres, renowned for miracles. — The same day, St. Principius, bishop of Soissons, brother of the blessed bishop Remigius. — At Anagni, the holy virgins Aurelia and Neomisia. — At San Severino, the decease of St. Pacificus of St. Severin, confessor, of the Order of the Reformed Minorites of the Observance of St. Francis, illustrious by his extraordinary patience and love of solitude. He was placed in the calendar of saints by pope Gregory XVI.\n\nGOSPEL OF THE DAY\nBlessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.\nSaturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Luke 11:27-28\n\"Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.\"\nGive Saturday to Our Lady in some concrete way. Let her teach you to hear, keep, and remain faithful in the ordinary hours.\n\nTHE CHURCH'S READING OF THE GOSPEL\nWhat This Gospel Teaches\nOur Lord praises the deepest Marian blessedness: hearing the word of God and keeping it.\nTrue devotion to Our Lady is obedient, doctrinal, and practical; it forms souls who receive Christ faithfully.\nError corrected: The sentimental devotion that honors Our Lady with words while neglecting obedience to the word of God.\n- Where does this error tempt me in practice?\n- What act does this Gospel require of me today?\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nThe Blessed Virgin Mary\nThe faithful Virgin kept before the Church on Saturday.\nThe Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary keeps Our Lady before the faithful during ordinary weeks, teaching that Christian perseverance remains Marian: humble, obedient, recollected, and near Christ.\nThis observance does not turn attention away from Our Lord. It shows the soul how to receive Him: hearing the word of God, keeping it, and remaining faithful when the week has been ordinary.\nLet Saturday become a small Marian gate in the week. In exile, ordinary days need a motherly refuge as much as feast days do.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nBlessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.\nMatins - Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary\n- The Saturday remembrance of the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches the Church to pass through her ferial weeks with Marian fidelity.\n- Our Lady's blessedness is not sentimental admiration alone; it is hearing, keeping, pondering, and obeying the word of God.\nKeep the ordinary day under Mary's mantle. Fidelity is often preserved by quiet obedience before it becomes visible courage.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary 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 Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.. Its first point is this: The Saturday remembrance of the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches the Church to pass through her ferial weeks with Marian fidelity. Its next point develops the lesson: Our Lady's blessedness is not sentimental admiration alone; it is hearing, keeping, pondering, and obeying the word of God.\nThe practical instruction is: Keep the ordinary day under Mary's mantle. Fidelity is often preserved by quiet obedience before it becomes visible courage. 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\nGrace Heals and Elevates Nature\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Man is not saved by natural goodness, sentiment, or progress. He needs sanctifying grace, the merits of Christ, and persevering conversion. Do not hurry past it as though doctrine belonged only to books and controversies. A revealed truth is also a light by which the soul must judge its loyalties, its fears, its habits, and the duties immediately before it. The Church is holy because Christ is holy, because she possesses holy doctrine and sacraments, and because she forms saints by grace.\nThe grace to be practiced is Marian recollection and obedient hearing, 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. Ask Our Lady to form this virtue in you by teaching you her humility: she received every gift from God and returned all glory to Him.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist naturalism, which treats human improvement as though it could take the place of supernatural life. 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 marian recollection and obedient hearing 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. Do not carry the cross alone or waste it in complaint. Stand beneath it with Our Lady and remain faithful to Jesus. Offer this duty through Mary, without seeking notice, so that it may belong more perfectly to Jesus Christ.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Thomas Aquinas.\nYour resolution before God: Imitate the concrete virtues shown by today's saint, beginning in the hidden circumstances of your own state in life.\nCarry this word: The saints are living teachers of doctrine and virtue.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"By resisting of passions, then, is gotten the very true peace of heart, and not by following them.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 6, p. 15\nPeace is not surrender to every feeling. It is order beneath God, won by grace when appetite is made to obey truth and duty.\n\nA passion grows louder when it expects immediate obedience. Do not be alarmed merely because anger, fear, discouragement, or desire speaks forcefully. Place a little silence between the movement and your consent, call upon Jesus and Mary, and choose what remains right.\nToday's Practice: Delay impulsive responses and choose the calmer acts required by truth and duty.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nReturn the completed day into Our Lady's hands. Ask her to obtain pardon for its faults and to preserve whatever grace bore fruit.\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, let the saints of this day teach me how doctrine becomes life, how virtue endures trial, and how fidelity resists the errors of its age.\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\nWhat Is Grace?: https://cityofgodinexile.com/catechism-foundations/what-is-grace?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2027-09-25&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2027-09-25&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: Feria in Time after Pentecost - 2027-09-25\n \n \n
\n Feria in Time after Pentecost. Grace Heals and Elevates Nature. Resist naturalism, which treats human improvement as though it could take the place of supernatural life.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Feria in Time after Pentecost

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2027-09-25 - Time after Pentecost - Feria - green

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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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Feria in Time after Pentecost is the principal observance today. The Gospel panel comes from the traditional Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary kept alongside this simple feast; it adds a Marian lesson without replacing the day's principal observance.

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Feria
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a weekday without a higher feast of its own; its prayers usually follow the current liturgical season.
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Virgin
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in a saint's title, a woman honored for consecrating her chastity and whole life to Christ.
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Today in the Roman Year

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At Pentecost the Holy Ghost strengthened the apostles to preach Christ publicly and carry the Gospel to the nations. His work is not private excitement separated from doctrine, worship, and the authority Christ established. The faithful should ask Him for zeal that makes them more obedient to revealed truth, more constant in charity, and more courageous in Catholic witness.

Through Mary, receive the day from Jesus Christ and return it to Him.

Place every prayer, work, joy, suffering, and temptation into the hands of Our Lady, asking her to present the whole day to her Divine Son.

“It was through the most holy Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that He has to reign in the world.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 1

God did not choose Our Lady because He needed assistance from a creature. He chose her freely, and by that choice He teaches us something about His own order: the Word came to us in humility, hidden beneath a Mother's heart, and He wills that pride should not prescribe the road by which grace reaches a soul.

You may desire the reign of Christ while still guarding some chamber of life for self-will. Bring that guarded place into the light today. Ask Mary to receive it, not as its final end, but as the Mother appointed to form in you a more obedient welcome for her Divine Son.

Imitate the concrete virtues shown by today's saint, beginning in the hidden circumstances of your own state in life.

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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 - September 25

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At Emmaus, the birthday of blessed Cleophas, disciple of Christ. It is related that he was killed by the Jews, for the confession of our Lord, in the same house in which he had entertained Him, and where he was honorably buried. — At Rome, under the emperor Antoninus, St. Herculanus, soldier and martyr, who, being converted to Christ by the miracles wrought during the martyrdom of the, blessed bishop Alexander, was put to the sword, after enduring many torments. — At Amiens, in France, in the persecution of Diocletian, blessed Firmin, bishop. Under the governor Rictiovarus, after various torments, he suffered martyrdom by being beheaded. — At Damascus, the holy martyr Paul, Tata, his wife, and Sabinian, Maximus, Rufus, and Eugenius, their sons. Accused of professing the Christian religion, they were scourged, and tortured in other ways, until they gave up their souls to God. — In Asia, the holy martyrs Bardomian, Eucarpus, and twenty-six others. — The same day, St. Anathalon, bishop, who was a disciple of the blessed apostle Barnabas, and succeeded him in the See of Milan. — At Lyons, the decease of St. Lupus, at one time an anchoret, but later a bishop. — At Auxerre, St. Anacharius, bishop and confessor. — At Blois, St. Solemnius, bishop of Chartres, renowned for miracles. — The same day, St. Principius, bishop of Soissons, brother of the blessed bishop Remigius. — At Anagni, the holy virgins Aurelia and Neomisia. — At San Severino, the decease of St. Pacificus of St. Severin, confessor, of the Order of the Reformed Minorites of the Observance of St. Francis, illustrious by his extraordinary patience and love of solitude. He was placed in the calendar of saints by pope Gregory XVI.

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Gospel of the Day

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Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.

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Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary - Luke 11:27-28

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“Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.”
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Give Saturday to Our Lady in some concrete way. Let her teach you to hear, keep, and remain faithful in the ordinary hours.

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The Church's Reading of the Gospel

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What This Gospel Teaches

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Our Lord praises the deepest Marian blessedness: hearing the word of God and keeping it.

True devotion to Our Lady is obedient, doctrinal, and practical; it forms souls who receive Christ faithfully.

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Error corrected: The sentimental devotion that honors Our Lady with words while neglecting obedience to the word of God.

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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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The Blessed Virgin Mary

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The faithful Virgin kept before the Church on Saturday.

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The Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary keeps Our Lady before the faithful during ordinary weeks, teaching that Christian perseverance remains Marian: humble, obedient, recollected, and near Christ.

This observance does not turn attention away from Our Lord. It shows the soul how to receive Him: hearing the word of God, keeping it, and remaining faithful when the week has been ordinary.

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Let Saturday become a small Marian gate in the week. In exile, ordinary days need a motherly refuge as much as feast days do.

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Breviary Witness

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Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.

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Matins - Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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  • The Saturday remembrance of the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches the Church to pass through her ferial weeks with Marian fidelity.
  • Our Lady's blessedness is not sentimental admiration alone; it is hearing, keeping, pondering, and obeying the word of God.
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Keep the ordinary day under Mary's mantle. Fidelity is often preserved by quiet obedience before it becomes visible courage.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Saturday Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary 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 Blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.. Its first point is this: The Saturday remembrance of the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches the Church to pass through her ferial weeks with Marian fidelity. Its next point develops the lesson: Our Lady's blessedness is not sentimental admiration alone; it is hearing, keeping, pondering, and obeying the word of God.

The practical instruction is: Keep the ordinary day under Mary's mantle. Fidelity is often preserved by quiet obedience before it becomes visible courage. 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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Grace Heals and Elevates Nature

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The Church places this truth before you today: Man is not saved by natural goodness, sentiment, or progress. He needs sanctifying grace, the merits of Christ, and persevering conversion. Do not hurry past it as though doctrine belonged only to books and controversies. A revealed truth is also a light by which the soul must judge its loyalties, its fears, its habits, and the duties immediately before it. The Church is holy because Christ is holy, because she possesses holy doctrine and sacraments, and because she forms saints by grace.

The grace to be practiced is Marian recollection and obedient hearing, 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. Ask Our Lady to form this virtue in you by teaching you her humility: she received every gift from God and returned all glory to Him.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist naturalism, which treats human improvement as though it could take the place of supernatural life. 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 marian recollection and obedient hearing 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. Do not carry the cross alone or waste it in complaint. Stand beneath it with Our Lady and remain faithful to Jesus. Offer this duty through Mary, without seeking notice, so that it may belong more perfectly to Jesus Christ.

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

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Your Resolution Before God

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Imitate the concrete virtues shown by today's saint, beginning in the hidden circumstances of your own state in life.

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The saints are living teachers of doctrine and virtue.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“By resisting of passions, then, is gotten the very true peace of heart, and not by following them.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 6, p. 15

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Peace is not surrender to every feeling. It is order beneath God, won by grace when appetite is made to obey truth and duty.

A passion grows louder when it expects immediate obedience. Do not be alarmed merely because anger, fear, discouragement, or desire speaks forcefully. Place a little silence between the movement and your consent, call upon Jesus and Mary, and choose what remains right.

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Today's Practice

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Delay impulsive responses and choose the calmer acts required by truth and duty.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Return the completed day into Our Lady's hands. Ask her to obtain pardon for its faults and to preserve whatever grace bore fruit.

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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, let the saints of this day teach me how doctrine becomes life, how virtue endures trial, and how fidelity resists the errors of its age.

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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 What Is Grace?\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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