{"ok":true,"date":"2028-03-22","dateKey":"03-22","liturgicalDay":"Feria of Lent","rank":"Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.","author":"St. Stephen","source":"Acts 7:60, Douay-Rheims","category":"The Love of God"},"season":"Lent","novenas":[{"title":"Novena for the Annunciation","feast":"Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary","day":7,"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 - 2028-03-22","previewText":"Feria of Lent. Outside the Church There Is No Salvation. Resist indifferentism, which treats contradictory religions as though they were equally pleasing to God.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nFeria of Lent\n2028-03-22 - 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. Invite the Holy Ghost to find in your soul a sincere union with His faithful Spouse and a generous readiness for His grace. Invoke the Holy Ghost and renew your consecration to Jesus through Mary with a firm purpose to cooperate with grace all day.\n\n\"When the Holy Ghost, her Spouse, has found Mary in a soul, He flies there. He enters there in His fulness; He communicates Himself to that soul abundantly, and to the full extent to which she makes room for her Spouse.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 36\n\nThe Holy Ghost is God, the uncreated source of sanctifying grace; Our Lady is His immaculate creature and faithful Spouse. St. Louis de Montfort's language magnifies the divine choice by which the Holy Ghost formed Christ in Mary and continues to form the likeness of Christ in souls united to her.\n\nMaking room is not a technique that obliges God. It is the removal of resistance: mortal sin, attachment to venial sin, neglect of prayer, contempt for doctrine, refusal of duty, and distrust of grace. Ask Mary to teach you her fiat, then cooperate with every actual grace throughout the entire day.\n\nPRACTICE\nStand with difficult Catholic truths today even when silence would be easier.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.\"\nSt. Stephen, Acts 7:60, Douay-Rheims\n\nNOVENA IN PROGRESS\nNovena for the Annunciation - Day 7 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 22\nAt Narbonne, in France, the birthday of the bishop St. Paul, a disciple of the Apostles. He is said to have been the proconsul Sergius Paulus, who was baptized by the blessed apostle Paul, and left at Narbonne, where he was raised to the episcopal dignity when the apostle went to Spain. Having zealously discharged the office of preaching and performed miracles, he departed for heaven. — At Terracina, St. Epaphroditus, a disciple of the Apostles, who was consecrated bishop of that city by the blessed apostle Peter. — In Africa, the holy martyrs Saturninus and nine others. — The same day, the birthday of the Saints Callinica and Basilissa, martyrs. — An Ancyra, under Julian the Apostate, St. Basil, priest and martyr, who gave up his soul to God after having endured grievous torments. — At Carthage, St. Octavian, archdeacon, and many thousands of martyrs, who were slain by the Vandals for the Catholic faith. — In the same place, St. Deogratias, bishop of Carthage, who ransomed many captives taken from that city by the Vandals, and performed other good works, after which he went to rest in the Lord. — At Osimo, in the March of Ancona, St. Benvenutus, bishop. — In Sweden, St. Catharine, virgin, daughter of St. Bridget. — At Rome, St. Lea, a widow, whose virtues and happy death are related by St. Jerome. — At Genoa, St. Catharine, a widow, celebrated for her contempt of the world and her love of God.\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\nOutside the Church There Is No Salvation\nThe Church places this truth before you today: All salvation comes through Christ and His Church; no soul is saved by false religion, indifferentism, or separation loved as separation. 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 doctrine does not deny God's mercy. It denies that error, schism, or religious indifference can be treated as paths equal to the Church founded by Christ.\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 docility by promptly following every known duty and every holy inspiration consistent with the Faith and your state of life.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist indifferentism, which treats contradictory religions as though they were equally pleasing to God. 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. Let contradiction reveal and enlarge the places where self-will has left too little room for the action of grace. Remove the deliberate distractions, sinful occasions, resentments, and delays that hinder recollection and faithful obedience.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of one; the witness placed beside it is Pope Pius IX.\nYour resolution before God: Stand with difficult Catholic truths today even when silence would be easier.\nCarry this word: The faithful remain at the Cross when the multitude walks past it.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"We be all frail: but thou shalt judge no man more frail than thyself.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 2, p. 11\nCatholic judgment rejects error without forgetting one's own need of mercy. Let vigilance begin with the disorder nearest at hand: your own.\n\nYou need not call falsehood harmless in order to be humble. Humility simply refuses to use another person's fault as shelter from repentance. Condemn what God condemns, pray for the soul in danger, and then ask whether the same root - pride, fear, sensuality, or human respect - has found a quieter form in you.\nToday's Practice: When another's fault irritates you, pray for that soul and examine the same root in yourself.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nThank the Holy Ghost for His inspirations, repent of every resistance, and ask Our Lady to prepare a more generous welcome tomorrow.\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, keep me near Thy Cross when comfort, acceptance, and ease invite me elsewhere. Let fidelity be stronger than the desire to belong.\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\nWhy Sincerity Cannot Replace the One True Church: https://cityofgodinexile.com/how-the-true-church-is-known/why-sincerity-cannot-replace-the-one-true-church?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2028-03-22&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2028-03-22&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 - 2028-03-22\n \n \n
\n Feria of Lent. Outside the Church There Is No Salvation. Resist indifferentism, which treats contradictory religions as though they were equally pleasing to God.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Feria of Lent

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2028-03-22 - 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.

Invite the Holy Ghost to find in your soul a sincere union with His faithful Spouse and a generous readiness for His grace.

Invoke the Holy Ghost and renew your consecration to Jesus through Mary with a firm purpose to cooperate with grace all day.

“When the Holy Ghost, her Spouse, has found Mary in a soul, He flies there. He enters there in His fulness; He communicates Himself to that soul abundantly, and to the full extent to which she makes room for her Spouse.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 36

The Holy Ghost is God, the uncreated source of sanctifying grace; Our Lady is His immaculate creature and faithful Spouse. St. Louis de Montfort's language magnifies the divine choice by which the Holy Ghost formed Christ in Mary and continues to form the likeness of Christ in souls united to her.

Making room is not a technique that obliges God. It is the removal of resistance: mortal sin, attachment to venial sin, neglect of prayer, contempt for doctrine, refusal of duty, and distrust of grace. Ask Mary to teach you her fiat, then cooperate with every actual grace throughout the entire day.

Stand with difficult Catholic truths today even when silence would be easier.

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Quote of the Day

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“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
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St. Stephen, Acts 7:60, Douay-Rheims

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Novena in Progress

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Novena for the Annunciation - Day 7 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 22

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At Narbonne, in France, the birthday of the bishop St. Paul, a disciple of the Apostles. He is said to have been the proconsul Sergius Paulus, who was baptized by the blessed apostle Paul, and left at Narbonne, where he was raised to the episcopal dignity when the apostle went to Spain. Having zealously discharged the office of preaching and performed miracles, he departed for heaven. — At Terracina, St. Epaphroditus, a disciple of the Apostles, who was consecrated bishop of that city by the blessed apostle Peter. — In Africa, the holy martyrs Saturninus and nine others. — The same day, the birthday of the Saints Callinica and Basilissa, martyrs. — An Ancyra, under Julian the Apostate, St. Basil, priest and martyr, who gave up his soul to God after having endured grievous torments. — At Carthage, St. Octavian, archdeacon, and many thousands of martyrs, who were slain by the Vandals for the Catholic faith. — In the same place, St. Deogratias, bishop of Carthage, who ransomed many captives taken from that city by the Vandals, and performed other good works, after which he went to rest in the Lord. — At Osimo, in the March of Ancona, St. Benvenutus, bishop. — In Sweden, St. Catharine, virgin, daughter of St. Bridget. — At Rome, St. Lea, a widow, whose virtues and happy death are related by St. Jerome. — At Genoa, St. Catharine, a widow, celebrated for her contempt of the world and her love of God.

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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.
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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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Outside the Church There Is No Salvation

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The Church places this truth before you today: All salvation comes through Christ and His Church; no soul is saved by false religion, indifferentism, or separation loved as separation. 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 doctrine does not deny God's mercy. It denies that error, schism, or religious indifference can be treated as paths equal to the Church founded by Christ.

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 docility by promptly following every known duty and every holy inspiration consistent with the Faith and your state of life.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist indifferentism, which treats contradictory religions as though they were equally pleasing to God. 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. Let contradiction reveal and enlarge the places where self-will has left too little room for the action of grace. Remove the deliberate distractions, sinful occasions, resentments, and delays that hinder recollection and faithful obedience.

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

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Your Resolution Before God

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Stand with difficult Catholic truths today even when silence would be easier.

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The faithful remain at the Cross when the multitude walks past it.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“We be all frail: but thou shalt judge no man more frail than thyself.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 2, p. 11

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Catholic judgment rejects error without forgetting one's own need of mercy. Let vigilance begin with the disorder nearest at hand: your own.

You need not call falsehood harmless in order to be humble. Humility simply refuses to use another person's fault as shelter from repentance. Condemn what God condemns, pray for the soul in danger, and then ask whether the same root - pride, fear, sensuality, or human respect - has found a quieter form in you.

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Today's Practice

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When another's fault irritates you, pray for that soul and examine the same root in yourself.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Thank the Holy Ghost for His inspirations, repent of every resistance, and ask Our Lady to prepare a more generous welcome tomorrow.

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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, keep me near Thy Cross when comfort, acceptance, and ease invite me elsewhere. Let fidelity be stronger than the desire to belong.

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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 Why Sincerity Cannot Replace the One True Church\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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