{"ok":true,"date":"2027-10-24","dateKey":"10-24","liturgicalDay":"23rd Sunday after Pentecost","rank":"Semi-Double Sunday","color":"green","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"If you love me, keep my commandments.","author":"Holy Scripture","source":"John 14:15, Original Douay-Rheims","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#love-proven-by-obedience","category":"The Love of God"},"season":"Time after Pentecost","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: 23rd Sunday after Pentecost - 2027-10-24","previewText":"23rd Sunday after Pentecost. Hold the Traditions. Resist innovation that claims continuity while contradicting what was handed down.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\n23rd Sunday after Pentecost\n2027-10-24 - Time after Pentecost - Semi-Double Sunday - green\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\n23rd Sunday after Pentecost is the principal observance today. The calendar also preserves St. Raphael, Archangel on this date. The Breviary witness panel below comes from that secondary observance. That material adds another traditional lesson for the date; it does not replace the principal observance.\nGentiles: in this biblical setting, the peoples and nations outside Israel; their call shows that Christ came as Savior for every nation.\nChastity: the virtue that orders sexuality according to one's state of life and treats the body as belonging to God.\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\nSt. Raphael accompanied Tobias through danger, corrected disorder, brought healing, and returned thanksgiving to God. Divine guidance does not spare the pilgrim every trial; it leads him through trial according to Providence. Entrust today's road to God and accept the help He gives through angels, parents, priests, and lawful counsel. Ask for a love of Our Lady that grows deeper rather than merely more talkative. Tell Our Lady simply that you desire to serve her Divine Son under her direction, not merely to feel devotion.\n\n\"Of Mary there is never enough.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 10\n\nThis famous saying must not be understood as permission for exaggeration, invention, or devotion separated from doctrine. St. Louis de Montfort immediately speaks of praising, honoring, loving, and serving Mary as we ought. The little word serving protects the whole sentence from sentimentality.\n\nThere is never enough true devotion because there is never enough surrender to Jesus Christ. The soul can always receive His Mother more faithfully, imitate her more exactly, pray with greater recollection, and surrender another reserve of self-will. Ask not for more emotion today, but for more faithful service.\n\nPRACTICE\nBefore correcting anyone, ask whether your words seek victory for truth or satisfaction for self.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"If you love me, keep my commandments.\"\nHoly Scripture, John 14:15, Original Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - October 24\nAt Venosa, in Basilicata, the birthday of the holy martyrs Felix, African bishop, Audactus and Januarius, priests, Fortunatus and Septimus, lectors. In the time of Diocletian, after having been a long time loaded with fetters, and imprisoned in Africa and Sicily by the governor Magdellian, as Felix refused absolutely to deliver the sacred books, according to the emperor's edict, they finally closed their lives by being beheaded. — At Nagran, in Arabia Felix, the passion of the Saint Aretas and his companions, to the number of three hundred and forty, in the time of the emperor Justin, under the Jewish tyrant Dunaan. After them was burned alive a Christian woman, whose son, five years old, confessed Christ lisping, and as he could neither by caresses nor threats be stopped, he rushed into the fire in which his mother was burning. — At Cologne, St. Evergistus, bishop and martyr. — At Constantinople, St. Proclus, bishop. — In Bretagne, the departure from this life of St. Maglorious, bishop, whose body rests at Paris. — In Campania, St. Mark, solitary, whose renowned actions have been recorded by St. Gregory.\n\nGOSPEL OF THE DAY\nOnly believe.\n23rd Sunday after Pentecost - Matthew 9:18-26\n\"The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.\"\nTouch the hem if that is all you can do. A timid act of faith is still faith when it reaches toward Jesus.\n\nTHE CHURCH'S READING OF THE GOSPEL\nWhat This Gospel Teaches\nChrist heals the woman with the issue of blood and raises the ruler's daughter.\nFaith reaches for the hem of His garment and trusts Him beyond visible death.\nError corrected: The crowd's unbelief that laughs at hope before God has acted.\n- Where does this error tempt me in practice?\n- What act does this Gospel require of me today?\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nSt. Raphael the Archangel\nHeavenly guide, healer, and companion under divine providence.\nSt. Raphael is honored as an archangel associated with guidance and healing in the book of Tobias.\nHis feast teaches that God governs the journey of His servants, often through hidden assistance that becomes clear only in obedience.\nAsk St. Raphael to guide the road, not merely shorten it. God often heals the pilgrim while leading him faithfully through the journey.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nHeavenly guidance and healing on the road.\nMatins - St. Raphael\n- The Breviary remembrance of St. Raphael turns the faithful toward angelic guidance, healing, and providential companionship.\n- His witness teaches that God often leads by hidden helps, revealed fully only to the obedient and grateful soul.\nAsk for guidance without demanding control. St. Raphael teaches the pilgrim to walk chastely, trust providence, and give thanks for unseen mercy.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for St. Raphael 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 Heavenly guidance and healing on the road.. Its first point is this: The Breviary remembrance of St. Raphael turns the faithful toward angelic guidance, healing, and providential companionship. Its next point develops the lesson: His witness teaches that God often leads by hidden helps, revealed fully only to the obedient and grateful soul.\nThe practical instruction is: Ask for guidance without demanding control. St. Raphael teaches the pilgrim to walk chastely, trust providence, and give thanks for unseen mercy. 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\nThe daughter delayed and the Gentile soul healed on the way.\nMatins - Third Nocturn - 23rd Sunday after Pentecost\nSt. Jerome, Priest\n\"The Lord healed one, even while He was on the road to heal another.\"\n- The Breviary reads the woman with the issue of blood as a figure of the Gentiles receiving mercy while Israel's restoration is delayed.\n- St. Jerome sees the Lord's mercy on the road as a sign that the Gentiles are not excluded from healing.\n- Faith touches Christ even from behind, and grace turns hidden misery into public healing.\nDo not measure mercy by visible privilege. The soul that seems outside may touch Christ by faith and be healed while history waits.\nTHE PILGRIM'S SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE\nHold the Traditions\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Apostolic tradition is not nostalgia. It is the handing down of what the Church received from Christ and the Apostles. 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. Tradition protects the faithful from the tyranny of the present moment and from teachers who mistake novelty for life.\nThe grace to be practiced is Trust in providential guidance, 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 constancy by keeping your Marian prayers with attention when novelty and feeling are absent.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist innovation that claims continuity while contradicting what was handed down. 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 trust in providential guidance 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. Let dryness purify devotion from the demand to be consoled; remain faithful because God is worthy. Perform all your duties faithfully, correcting with special care the duty you habitually perform carelessly, as a servant of Jesus and Mary.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of apostolic; the witness placed beside it is St. Paul.\nYour resolution before God: Before correcting anyone, ask whether your words seek victory for truth or satisfaction for self.\nCarry this word: Correction must be medicinal, not vain.\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\nMeasure devotion by obedience, purity, prayer, and charity rather than by the feelings the day provided.\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, govern my speech when error must be named. Let me correct with charity, courage, and sobriety, never with bitterness or theatrical anger.\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\nHold the Traditions and Refuse the Innovators: https://cityofgodinexile.com/scripture-treasury/2-thessalonians-2-14-15-hold-the-traditions-and-refuse-the-innovators?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2027-10-24&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2027-10-24&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: 23rd Sunday after Pentecost - 2027-10-24\n \n \n
\n 23rd Sunday after Pentecost. Hold the Traditions. Resist innovation that claims continuity while contradicting what was handed down.\n
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City of God in Exile

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23rd Sunday after Pentecost

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2027-10-24 - Time after Pentecost - Semi-Double Sunday - 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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23rd Sunday after Pentecost is the principal observance today. The calendar also preserves St. Raphael, Archangel on this date. The Breviary witness panel below comes from that secondary observance. That material adds another traditional lesson for the date; it does not replace the principal observance.

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Gentiles
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in this biblical setting, the peoples and nations outside Israel; their call shows that Christ came as Savior for every nation.
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Chastity
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the virtue that orders sexuality according to one's state of life and treats the body as belonging to God.
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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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St. Raphael accompanied Tobias through danger, corrected disorder, brought healing, and returned thanksgiving to God. Divine guidance does not spare the pilgrim every trial; it leads him through trial according to Providence. Entrust today's road to God and accept the help He gives through angels, parents, priests, and lawful counsel.

Ask for a love of Our Lady that grows deeper rather than merely more talkative.

Tell Our Lady simply that you desire to serve her Divine Son under her direction, not merely to feel devotion.

“Of Mary there is never enough.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 10

This famous saying must not be understood as permission for exaggeration, invention, or devotion separated from doctrine. St. Louis de Montfort immediately speaks of praising, honoring, loving, and serving Mary as we ought. The little word serving protects the whole sentence from sentimentality.

There is never enough true devotion because there is never enough surrender to Jesus Christ. The soul can always receive His Mother more faithfully, imitate her more exactly, pray with greater recollection, and surrender another reserve of self-will. Ask not for more emotion today, but for more faithful service.

Before correcting anyone, ask whether your words seek victory for truth or satisfaction for self.

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Quote of the Day

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“If you love me, keep my commandments.”
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Holy Scripture, John 14:15, Original Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - October 24

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At Venosa, in Basilicata, the birthday of the holy martyrs Felix, African bishop, Audactus and Januarius, priests, Fortunatus and Septimus, lectors. In the time of Diocletian, after having been a long time loaded with fetters, and imprisoned in Africa and Sicily by the governor Magdellian, as Felix refused absolutely to deliver the sacred books, according to the emperor's edict, they finally closed their lives by being beheaded. — At Nagran, in Arabia Felix, the passion of the Saint Aretas and his companions, to the number of three hundred and forty, in the time of the emperor Justin, under the Jewish tyrant Dunaan. After them was burned alive a Christian woman, whose son, five years old, confessed Christ lisping, and as he could neither by caresses nor threats be stopped, he rushed into the fire in which his mother was burning. — At Cologne, St. Evergistus, bishop and martyr. — At Constantinople, St. Proclus, bishop. — In Bretagne, the departure from this life of St. Maglorious, bishop, whose body rests at Paris. — In Campania, St. Mark, solitary, whose renowned actions have been recorded by St. Gregory.

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Gospel of the Day

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Only believe.

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23rd Sunday after Pentecost - Matthew 9:18-26

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“The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.”
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Touch the hem if that is all you can do. A timid act of faith is still faith when it reaches toward Jesus.

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The Church's Reading of the Gospel

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What This Gospel Teaches

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Christ heals the woman with the issue of blood and raises the ruler's daughter.

Faith reaches for the hem of His garment and trusts Him beyond visible death.

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Error corrected: The crowd's unbelief that laughs at hope before God has acted.

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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. Raphael the Archangel

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Heavenly guide, healer, and companion under divine providence.

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St. Raphael is honored as an archangel associated with guidance and healing in the book of Tobias.

His feast teaches that God governs the journey of His servants, often through hidden assistance that becomes clear only in obedience.

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Ask St. Raphael to guide the road, not merely shorten it. God often heals the pilgrim while leading him faithfully through the journey.

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Breviary Witness

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Heavenly guidance and healing on the road.

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Matins - St. Raphael

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  • The Breviary remembrance of St. Raphael turns the faithful toward angelic guidance, healing, and providential companionship.
  • His witness teaches that God often leads by hidden helps, revealed fully only to the obedient and grateful soul.
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Ask for guidance without demanding control. St. Raphael teaches the pilgrim to walk chastely, trust providence, and give thanks for unseen mercy.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for St. Raphael 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 Heavenly guidance and healing on the road.. Its first point is this: The Breviary remembrance of St. Raphael turns the faithful toward angelic guidance, healing, and providential companionship. Its next point develops the lesson: His witness teaches that God often leads by hidden helps, revealed fully only to the obedient and grateful soul.

The practical instruction is: Ask for guidance without demanding control. St. Raphael teaches the pilgrim to walk chastely, trust providence, and give thanks for unseen mercy. 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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The daughter delayed and the Gentile soul healed on the way.

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Matins - Third Nocturn - 23rd Sunday after Pentecost

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St. Jerome, Priest, Commentary on St. Matthew

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“The Lord healed one, even while He was on the road to heal another.”
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  • The Breviary reads the woman with the issue of blood as a figure of the Gentiles receiving mercy while Israel's restoration is delayed.
  • St. Jerome sees the Lord's mercy on the road as a sign that the Gentiles are not excluded from healing.
  • Faith touches Christ even from behind, and grace turns hidden misery into public healing.
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Do not measure mercy by visible privilege. The soul that seems outside may touch Christ by faith and be healed while history waits.

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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

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Hold the Traditions

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The Church places this truth before you today: Apostolic tradition is not nostalgia. It is the handing down of what the Church received from Christ and the Apostles. 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. Tradition protects the faithful from the tyranny of the present moment and from teachers who mistake novelty for life.

The grace to be practiced is Trust in providential guidance, 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 constancy by keeping your Marian prayers with attention when novelty and feeling are absent.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist innovation that claims continuity while contradicting what was handed down. 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 trust in providential guidance 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. Let dryness purify devotion from the demand to be consoled; remain faithful because God is worthy. Perform all your duties faithfully, correcting with special care the duty you habitually perform carelessly, as a servant of Jesus and Mary.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of apostolic; the witness placed beside it is St. Paul.

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Your Resolution Before God

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Before correcting anyone, ask whether your words seek victory for truth or satisfaction for self.

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Correction must be medicinal, not vain.
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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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Measure devotion by obedience, purity, prayer, and charity rather than by the feelings the day provided.

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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?
    • \n
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Prayer

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O Lord, govern my speech when error must be named. Let me correct with charity, courage, and sobriety, never with bitterness or theatrical anger.

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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 Hold the Traditions and Refuse the Innovators\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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