{"ok":true,"date":"2027-12-17","dateKey":"12-17","liturgicalDay":"Advent Ember Day","rank":"Non-privileged Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"They shall put you out of the synagogues.","author":"Our Lord Jesus Christ","source":"John 16:2, Douay-Rheims","category":"Truth: Christ and His Church"},"season":"Advent","novenas":[{"title":"Christmas Novena","feast":"Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ","day":2,"totalDays":9,"startIsoDate":"2027-12-16","feastIsoDate":"2027-12-25","intention":"Prepare the soul and household to receive the King in humility, adoration, and Catholic faith.","prayer":null,"practice":"Keep silence and simplicity wherever they prepare the soul and household for the Christ Child.","sources":[]}],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Advent Ember Day - 2027-12-17","previewText":"Advent Ember Day. Christ Is King Over Public Life. Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nAdvent Ember Day\n2027-12-17 - Advent - Non-privileged Feria - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nClergy or cleric: the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.\nOrdination: the sacrament by which a baptized man is made a deacon, priest, or bishop and receives the grace and authority needed for that ministry.\nEmber Day: one of the traditional seasonal fast days—Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday—offered in thanksgiving, penance, and prayer for the Church's ministers.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nThe Church begins the great O Antiphons by calling upon eternal Wisdom, who reaches from end to end and orders all things sweetly. The world calls self-direction freedom, but the soul becomes peaceful only when Christ orders its loves beneath His law. Ask Him to show you the next step of prudence and then obey it. Ask the Holy Ghost to produce the likeness of Jesus Christ in your soul through His faithful Spouse. Invoke the Holy Ghost and ask Him to reproduce in you the dispositions He formed so perfectly in Our Lady.\n\n\"This is the reason why He, the Holy Ghost, the more He finds Mary, His dear and indissoluble Spouse, in any soul, becomes the more active and mighty in producing Jesus Christ in that soul, and that soul in Jesus Christ.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 20\n\nThe Holy Ghost alone is the divine Sanctifier. Our Lady is wholly His creature and faithful Spouse. Her presence in a soul means that her faith, humility, purity, obedience, prayer, and charity are welcomed there; these dispositions make room for His work rather than resisting it through pride and self-will.\n\nDo not ask merely for Marian feelings. Ask for Marian dispositions throughout the day. The true measure is whether Christ is being formed: whether His truth governs the mind, His commandments govern the will, His charity governs conduct, and His Cross governs the use of suffering.\n\nPRACTICE\nBegin putting every disordered duty, possession, or use of time already known to you into a clear and Godward order.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"They shall put you out of the synagogues.\"\nOur Lord Jesus Christ, John 16:2, Douay-Rheims\n\nNOVENA IN PROGRESS\nChristmas Novena - Day 2 of 9\nPreparing for Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ on 2027-12-25.\nPrepare the soul and household to receive the King in humility, adoration, and Catholic faith.\n\nKeep silence and simplicity wherever they prepare the soul and household for the Christ Child.\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - December 17\nAt Eleutheropolis, in Palestine, the holy martyrs Florian, Calanicus and their fifty-eight companions, who were massacred by the Saracens for the faith of Christ, in the time of the emperor Heraclius. — At Marseilles, in France, blessed Lazarus, bishop, who was raised from the dead by our Lord, as we read in the Gospel. — At Rome, St. John de Matha, founder of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives. His festival is observed on the 8th of February, according to the decree of Innocent XI. — In the monastery of Fulda, the holy abbot Sturmius, abbot and apostle of Saxony, who was ranked among the saints by Innocent II., in the second Council of Lateran. — At Bigarden, near Brussels, St. Vivina, virgin, whose eminent sanctity is attested by frequent miracles. — At Constantinople, St. Olympiades, widow. — At Andenne, at the Seven Churches, St. Begga, widow, sister of St. Gertrude. — The same day, the translation of St. Ignatius, bishop and martyr, who, the third after the blessed apostle Peter, governed the Church of Antioch. His body was conveyed from Rome, where he had suffered under Trajan, to Antioch, and deposited in the church cemetery beyond the gate of Daphnis. St. John Chrysostom, on that solemn occasion, delivered a discourse to his people. But afterwards his relics were carried back to Rome, and placed with the highest reverence in the church of St. Clement, together with the body of that blessed pope and martyr.\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nThe Advent Ember Day\nThe winter fast of expectation and ordination prayer.\nThe Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of expectation with fasting, prayer, and supplication for the Church's ministers.\nThey teach that preparation for Christmas must include purification. The Church asks the Lord of the harvest for holy laborers and asks that her own children be made ready for the coming King.\nLet the Ember fast make Advent serious without making it gloomy. The King is near, and the Church prepares with prayer.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nThe fast of expectation.\nMatins - Advent Ember Day\n- The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers.\n- Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.\nPrepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Advent Ember Day 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 fast of expectation.. Its first point is this: The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.\nThe practical instruction is: Prepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits. 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\nChrist Is King Over Public Life\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Our Lord's kingship is not confined to private devotion. Men, families, laws, and nations are subject to His authority. 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's Catholicity includes the public claim of Christ over all peoples, not merely the private consolation of believers.\nThe grace to be practiced is Purified expectation and prayer for the Church, 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 docility by promptly following grace and rejecting the resistance of pride, impurity, resentment, and self-will.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ. 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 purified expectation and prayer for the Church 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. Allow contradiction and sacrifice to uncover what in you still resists conformity to Jesus Christ. Perform every duty with Mary's faith, recollection, obedience, purity of intention, and charity so that Christ may govern the whole day.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of catholic; the witness placed beside it is Pope Pius XI.\nYour resolution before God: Begin putting every disordered duty, possession, or use of time already known to you into a clear and Godward order.\nCarry this word: Divine Wisdom does not flatter disorder; He restores all things to their right end.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"My son, be waking and diligent in the service of God, and think oft wherefore thou art come, and why thou hast forsaken the world.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 25, p. 45\nFervor is not religious excitement. It is the awakened will that remembers its end and returns to duty when nature grows sluggish. You were created to know, love, and serve God and thereby attain eternal life; every lesser purpose must remain beneath this one.\n\nRecall why you began to seek a more faithful Catholic life. Then ask what has cooled: prayer postponed, sacrifice avoided, truth softened, or daily duty performed without love. Do not attempt to recover everything through emotion. Renew the next act, and let diligence carry the soul where feeling does not.\nToday's Practice: Renew aloud the purpose of your life before God, then complete the duty you have most resisted.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nExamine which dispositions resembled Mary and which resisted the Holy Ghost's work of forming Christ in you.\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 eternal Wisdom, come and teach me the way of prudence; order my mind, affections, and duties beneath Thy reign.\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\nAuthority and the Kingship of Christ: https://cityofgodinexile.com/authority-and-revolt/authority-the-modernist-revolt-against-the-kingship-of-christ?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2027-12-17&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2027-12-17&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: Advent Ember Day - 2027-12-17\n \n \n
\n Advent Ember Day. Christ Is King Over Public Life. Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ.\n
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\n \"City\n
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City of God in Exile

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Advent Ember Day

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2027-12-17 - Advent - Non-privileged Feria - violet

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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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Clergy or cleric
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the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.
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Ordination
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the sacrament by which a baptized man is made a deacon, priest, or bishop and receives the grace and authority needed for that ministry.
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Ember Day
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one of the traditional seasonal fast days—Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday—offered in thanksgiving, penance, and prayer for the Church's ministers.
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Today in the Roman Year

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The Church begins the great O Antiphons by calling upon eternal Wisdom, who reaches from end to end and orders all things sweetly. The world calls self-direction freedom, but the soul becomes peaceful only when Christ orders its loves beneath His law. Ask Him to show you the next step of prudence and then obey it.

Ask the Holy Ghost to produce the likeness of Jesus Christ in your soul through His faithful Spouse.

Invoke the Holy Ghost and ask Him to reproduce in you the dispositions He formed so perfectly in Our Lady.

“This is the reason why He, the Holy Ghost, the more He finds Mary, His dear and indissoluble Spouse, in any soul, becomes the more active and mighty in producing Jesus Christ in that soul, and that soul in Jesus Christ.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 20

The Holy Ghost alone is the divine Sanctifier. Our Lady is wholly His creature and faithful Spouse. Her presence in a soul means that her faith, humility, purity, obedience, prayer, and charity are welcomed there; these dispositions make room for His work rather than resisting it through pride and self-will.

Do not ask merely for Marian feelings. Ask for Marian dispositions throughout the day. The true measure is whether Christ is being formed: whether His truth governs the mind, His commandments govern the will, His charity governs conduct, and His Cross governs the use of suffering.

Begin putting every disordered duty, possession, or use of time already known to you into a clear and Godward order.

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Quote of the Day

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“They shall put you out of the synagogues.”
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Our Lord Jesus Christ, John 16:2, Douay-Rheims

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Novena in Progress

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Christmas Novena - Day 2 of 9

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Preparing for Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ on 2027-12-25.

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Prepare the soul and household to receive the King in humility, adoration, and Catholic faith.

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Keep silence and simplicity wherever they prepare the soul and household for the Christ Child.

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Roman Martyrology - December 17

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At Eleutheropolis, in Palestine, the holy martyrs Florian, Calanicus and their fifty-eight companions, who were massacred by the Saracens for the faith of Christ, in the time of the emperor Heraclius. — At Marseilles, in France, blessed Lazarus, bishop, who was raised from the dead by our Lord, as we read in the Gospel. — At Rome, St. John de Matha, founder of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives. His festival is observed on the 8th of February, according to the decree of Innocent XI. — In the monastery of Fulda, the holy abbot Sturmius, abbot and apostle of Saxony, who was ranked among the saints by Innocent II., in the second Council of Lateran. — At Bigarden, near Brussels, St. Vivina, virgin, whose eminent sanctity is attested by frequent miracles. — At Constantinople, St. Olympiades, widow. — At Andenne, at the Seven Churches, St. Begga, widow, sister of St. Gertrude. — The same day, the translation of St. Ignatius, bishop and martyr, who, the third after the blessed apostle Peter, governed the Church of Antioch. His body was conveyed from Rome, where he had suffered under Trajan, to Antioch, and deposited in the church cemetery beyond the gate of Daphnis. St. John Chrysostom, on that solemn occasion, delivered a discourse to his people. But afterwards his relics were carried back to Rome, and placed with the highest reverence in the church of St. Clement, together with the body of that blessed pope and martyr.

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Highlighted Saint

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The Advent Ember Day

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The winter fast of expectation and ordination prayer.

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The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of expectation with fasting, prayer, and supplication for the Church's ministers.

They teach that preparation for Christmas must include purification. The Church asks the Lord of the harvest for holy laborers and asks that her own children be made ready for the coming King.

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Let the Ember fast make Advent serious without making it gloomy. The King is near, and the Church prepares with prayer.

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Breviary Witness

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The fast of expectation.

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Matins - Advent Ember Day

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  • The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers.
  • Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.
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Prepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Advent Ember Day 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 fast of expectation.. Its first point is this: The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.

The practical instruction is: Prepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits. 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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    \n
  • 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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Christ Is King Over Public Life

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The Church places this truth before you today: Our Lord's kingship is not confined to private devotion. Men, families, laws, and nations are subject to His authority. 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's Catholicity includes the public claim of Christ over all peoples, not merely the private consolation of believers.

The grace to be practiced is Purified expectation and prayer for the Church, 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 docility by promptly following grace and rejecting the resistance of pride, impurity, resentment, and self-will.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ. 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 purified expectation and prayer for the Church 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. Allow contradiction and sacrifice to uncover what in you still resists conformity to Jesus Christ. Perform every duty with Mary's faith, recollection, obedience, purity of intention, and charity so that Christ may govern the whole day.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of catholic; the witness placed beside it is Pope Pius XI.

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Your Resolution Before God

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Begin putting every disordered duty, possession, or use of time already known to you into a clear and Godward order.

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Divine Wisdom does not flatter disorder; He restores all things to their right end.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“My son, be waking and diligent in the service of God, and think oft wherefore thou art come, and why thou hast forsaken the world.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 25, p. 45

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Fervor is not religious excitement. It is the awakened will that remembers its end and returns to duty when nature grows sluggish. You were created to know, love, and serve God and thereby attain eternal life; every lesser purpose must remain beneath this one.

Recall why you began to seek a more faithful Catholic life. Then ask what has cooled: prayer postponed, sacrifice avoided, truth softened, or daily duty performed without love. Do not attempt to recover everything through emotion. Renew the next act, and let diligence carry the soul where feeling does not.

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Today's Practice

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Renew aloud the purpose of your life before God, then complete the duty you have most resisted.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Examine which dispositions resembled Mary and which resisted the Holy Ghost's work of forming Christ in you.

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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 eternal Wisdom, come and teach me the way of prudence; order my mind, affections, and duties beneath Thy reign.

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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 Authority and the Kingship of Christ\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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