{"ok":true,"date":"2028-03-20","dateKey":"03-20","liturgicalDay":"Feria of Lent","rank":"Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"In the Catholic Church every care must be taken that we may hold fast to that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.","author":"St. Vincent of Lerins","source":"Commonitorium","category":"Truth: Christ and His Church"},"season":"Lent","novenas":[{"title":"Novena for the Annunciation","feast":"Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary","day":5,"totalDays":9,"startIsoDate":"2028-03-16","feastIsoDate":"2028-03-25","intention":"Prepare to honor the Incarnation, Our Lady's fiat, and the obedience by which the Word was received.","prayer":null,"practice":"Pray the Hail Mary slowly and carry its fiat into every known call to obedience.","sources":[]}],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Feria of Lent - 2028-03-20","previewText":"Feria of Lent. Revelation Was Entrusted to the Church. Resist private judgment when it sets itself above the Church's received doctrine.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nFeria of Lent\n2028-03-20 - Lent - Feria - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nCompunction: sorrow for sin that pierces the heart and moves a person toward repentance rather than despair.\nProper Mass or prayers: the texts assigned specifically to a particular feast or day, rather than texts shared with many celebrations.\nFeria: a weekday without a higher feast of its own; its prayers usually follow the current liturgical season.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nHumiliation, opposition, and penance do not mean that God has ceased to govern. Our Lord redeemed the world through His obedient suffering on the Cross. When Catholics accept unavoidable trials without sin, perform penance, and continue obeying the truth, those sufferings can humble pride and deepen fidelity rather than lead to despair. Receive from Jesus through Mary only so that you may belong and return more completely to Jesus. Ask Jesus for mercy through His Mother and offer yourself as an instrument by which His charity may reach the persons entrusted to you.\n\n\"She is His mysterious canal; she is His aqueduct, through which He makes His mercies flow gently and abundantly.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 24\n\nChrist is the source; Mary is the canal. The distinction is essential. She neither originates grace nor replaces Our Lord's sacrifice, Church, or sacraments. Everything she gives is His, and her whole maternal action carries souls toward union with Him.\n\nAn aqueduct receives in order to convey. Imitate that self-forgetful service. Whatever truth, time, strength, material good, consolation, or spiritual help God sends should not stagnate in self-possession. Let it pass through your duties into prayer, charity, reparation, and service of souls.\n\nPRACTICE\nOffer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"In the Catholic Church every care must be taken that we may hold fast to that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.\"\nSt. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium\n\nNOVENA IN PROGRESS\nNovena for the Annunciation - Day 5 of 9\nPreparing for Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 2028-03-25.\nPrepare to honor the Incarnation, Our Lady's fiat, and the obedience by which the Word was received.\n\nPray the Hail Mary slowly and carry its fiat into every known call to obedience.\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - March 20\nIn Judea, St. Joachim, father of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, whose festival is kept on the 16th of August. — In Asia, the birthday of St. Archippus, fellow-laborer of the blessed apostle Paul, who mentions him in his epistles to Philemon, and to the Colossians. — In Syria, the holy martyrs Paul, Cyril, Eugenius, and four others. — The same day, the Saints Photina, a Samaritan, and her sons Joseph and Victor; also, Sebastian, military officer, Anatolius, and Photius; Photides, Parasceves and Cyriaca, sisters, who were all martyred for confessing Christ. — At Amisus, in Paphlagonia, seven holy women, Alexandra, Claudia, Euphrasia, Matrona, Juliana, Euphemia, and Theodosia, who were put to death for the confession of the faith. They were followed by Derphuta and her sister. — At Apollonia, the bishop St. Mcetas, who breathed his last in exile, where he had been sent for upholding the worship of holy images. — In the monastery of Fontanelle, St. Wulfran, bishop of Sens, who after having resigned his bishopric and performed miracles, departed out of this life. — In England, the demise of St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who from his childhood to his death was renowned for good works and miracles. — At Siena, in Tuscany, blessed Ambrose of the Order of Preachers, celebrated for sanctity, eloquence, and miracles.\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nThe Lenten Feria\nThe Church's daily school of penance.\nThe Lenten feria is not empty time between Sundays. In the Roman rite, Lent gives proper Masses to the ferias, forming the faithful by daily penance, prayer, almsgiving, and conversion.\nThese weekdays teach that penance is not a mood but a discipline. The Church trains the whole man: appetite, speech, memory, habits, and the will turned back to God.\nDo not despise the ordinary Lenten weekday. Small faithful penance is one of the roads by which exile becomes pilgrimage.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nThe daily discipline of the forty days.\nMatins - Feria of Lent\n- The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired.\n- Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.\nUse the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Feria of Lent 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 daily discipline of the forty days.. Its first point is this: The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.\nThe practical instruction is: Use the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities. 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\nRevelation Was Entrusted to the Church\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Tradition are received within the Church, whose divinely assisted teaching office guards the deposit of faith. 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. Private reading must remain subject to the faith once delivered, because the Scriptures belong to the Church that received, preserved, and interprets them.\nThe grace to be practiced is Daily penance and conversion, 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 generosity by receiving God's gifts gratefully and placing them at the service of His glory and your neighbor's salvation.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist private judgment when it sets itself above the Church's received doctrine. 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 daily penance and conversion 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. Renounce possessiveness over gifts, time, spiritual consolations, and the fruit of good works. Use all your duties, prayers, resources, and opportunities as channels of truth and charity without seeking ownership of the good accomplished.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of apostolic; the witness placed beside it is St. Irenaeus.\nYour resolution before God: Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.\nCarry this word: Reparation answers public offense with hidden love.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"All that is in this world is vanity, but to love God and only to serve Him.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 1, p. 9\nCreated things are good when they lead the soul to God and become dangerous when they claim the heart. Put the day's lesser goods beneath the one necessary end.\n\nVanity does not always announce itself through great ambition. It often appears as a small comfort you believe you cannot surrender, an opinion you must defend, or praise you continue to replay. Ask God to show you the attachment that is quietly asking to be treated as necessary.\nToday's Practice: Renounce needless comforts whenever they compete with prayer, duty, or charity, and offer the sacrifices to God through Mary.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nAsk whether grace ended in self-satisfaction or flowed onward into obedience, reparation, intercession, and works of mercy.\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, where Thou art forgotten, mocked, or coldly received, let me answer with prayer, penance, reverence, and love for Thy Sacred Heart.\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\nSt. Irenaeus and Apostolic Tradition: https://cityofgodinexile.com/champions-of-orthodoxy/st-irenaeus-and-apostolic-tradition-against-the-innovators?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2028-03-20&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2028-03-20&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 of Lent - 2028-03-20\n \n \n
\n Feria of Lent. Revelation Was Entrusted to the Church. Resist private judgment when it sets itself above the Church's received doctrine.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Feria of Lent

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2028-03-20 - Lent - 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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Compunction
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sorrow for sin that pierces the heart and moves a person toward repentance rather than despair.
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Proper Mass or prayers
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the texts assigned specifically to a particular feast or day, rather than texts shared with many celebrations.
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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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Today in the Roman Year

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Humiliation, opposition, and penance do not mean that God has ceased to govern. Our Lord redeemed the world through His obedient suffering on the Cross. When Catholics accept unavoidable trials without sin, perform penance, and continue obeying the truth, those sufferings can humble pride and deepen fidelity rather than lead to despair.

Receive from Jesus through Mary only so that you may belong and return more completely to Jesus.

Ask Jesus for mercy through His Mother and offer yourself as an instrument by which His charity may reach the persons entrusted to you.

“She is His mysterious canal; she is His aqueduct, through which He makes His mercies flow gently and abundantly.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 24

Christ is the source; Mary is the canal. The distinction is essential. She neither originates grace nor replaces Our Lord's sacrifice, Church, or sacraments. Everything she gives is His, and her whole maternal action carries souls toward union with Him.

An aqueduct receives in order to convey. Imitate that self-forgetful service. Whatever truth, time, strength, material good, consolation, or spiritual help God sends should not stagnate in self-possession. Let it pass through your duties into prayer, charity, reparation, and service of souls.

Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.

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Quote of the Day

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“In the Catholic Church every care must be taken that we may hold fast to that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”
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St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium

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Novena in Progress

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Novena for the Annunciation - Day 5 of 9

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Preparing for Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 2028-03-25.

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Prepare to honor the Incarnation, Our Lady's fiat, and the obedience by which the Word was received.

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Pray the Hail Mary slowly and carry its fiat into every known call to obedience.

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Roman Martyrology - March 20

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In Judea, St. Joachim, father of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, whose festival is kept on the 16th of August. — In Asia, the birthday of St. Archippus, fellow-laborer of the blessed apostle Paul, who mentions him in his epistles to Philemon, and to the Colossians. — In Syria, the holy martyrs Paul, Cyril, Eugenius, and four others. — The same day, the Saints Photina, a Samaritan, and her sons Joseph and Victor; also, Sebastian, military officer, Anatolius, and Photius; Photides, Parasceves and Cyriaca, sisters, who were all martyred for confessing Christ. — At Amisus, in Paphlagonia, seven holy women, Alexandra, Claudia, Euphrasia, Matrona, Juliana, Euphemia, and Theodosia, who were put to death for the confession of the faith. They were followed by Derphuta and her sister. — At Apollonia, the bishop St. Mcetas, who breathed his last in exile, where he had been sent for upholding the worship of holy images. — In the monastery of Fontanelle, St. Wulfran, bishop of Sens, who after having resigned his bishopric and performed miracles, departed out of this life. — In England, the demise of St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who from his childhood to his death was renowned for good works and miracles. — At Siena, in Tuscany, blessed Ambrose of the Order of Preachers, celebrated for sanctity, eloquence, and miracles.

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Highlighted Saint

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The Lenten Feria

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The Church's daily school of penance.

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The Lenten feria is not empty time between Sundays. In the Roman rite, Lent gives proper Masses to the ferias, forming the faithful by daily penance, prayer, almsgiving, and conversion.

These weekdays teach that penance is not a mood but a discipline. The Church trains the whole man: appetite, speech, memory, habits, and the will turned back to God.

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Do not despise the ordinary Lenten weekday. Small faithful penance is one of the roads by which exile becomes pilgrimage.

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Breviary Witness

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The daily discipline of the forty days.

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Matins - Feria of Lent

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  • The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired.
  • Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.
    • \n
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Use the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Feria of Lent 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 daily discipline of the forty days.. Its first point is this: The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.

The practical instruction is: Use the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities. 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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Revelation Was Entrusted to the Church

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The Church places this truth before you today: Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Tradition are received within the Church, whose divinely assisted teaching office guards the deposit of faith. 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. Private reading must remain subject to the faith once delivered, because the Scriptures belong to the Church that received, preserved, and interprets them.

The grace to be practiced is Daily penance and conversion, 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 generosity by receiving God's gifts gratefully and placing them at the service of His glory and your neighbor's salvation.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist private judgment when it sets itself above the Church's received doctrine. 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 daily penance and conversion 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. Renounce possessiveness over gifts, time, spiritual consolations, and the fruit of good works. Use all your duties, prayers, resources, and opportunities as channels of truth and charity without seeking ownership of the good accomplished.

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

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Your Resolution Before God

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Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.

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Reparation answers public offense with hidden love.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“All that is in this world is vanity, but to love God and only to serve Him.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 1, p. 9

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Created things are good when they lead the soul to God and become dangerous when they claim the heart. Put the day's lesser goods beneath the one necessary end.

Vanity does not always announce itself through great ambition. It often appears as a small comfort you believe you cannot surrender, an opinion you must defend, or praise you continue to replay. Ask God to show you the attachment that is quietly asking to be treated as necessary.

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Today's Practice

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Renounce needless comforts whenever they compete with prayer, duty, or charity, and offer the sacrifices to God through Mary.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Ask whether grace ended in self-satisfaction or flowed onward into obedience, reparation, intercession, and works of mercy.

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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, where Thou art forgotten, mocked, or coldly received, let me answer with prayer, penance, reverence, and love for Thy Sacred Heart.

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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 St. Irenaeus and Apostolic Tradition\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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