{"ok":true,"date":"2028-04-10","dateKey":"04-10","liturgicalDay":"Monday of Holy Week","rank":"Feria of the First Class","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Receive ye discipline, and not money: choose doctrine rather than gold. For wisdom is better than all most precious riches: and whatsoever is to be desired cannot be compared to it.","author":"Holy Scripture","source":"Proverbs 8:10–11, Original Douay-Rheims","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#wisdom-above-riches","category":"Wisdom and Holy Fear"},"season":"Passiontide","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Monday of Holy Week - 2028-04-10","previewText":"Monday of Holy Week. Justification Requires True Conversion. Resist false mercy, which comforts the sinner while leaving the wound unhealed.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nMonday of Holy Week\n2028-04-10 - Passiontide - Feria of the First Class - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nPassion of Christ: the sufferings and death Jesus freely accepted for our salvation, from His agony in Gethsemane through His Crucifixion.\nPenance: repentance expressed through prayer, self-denial, reparation, and a real turning away from sin.\nHoly Week: the final week before Easter, when the Church follows Christ from His entrance into Jerusalem through His Passion, death, and burial.\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 with Our Lady the order God freely chose for the works of grace. Adore God's sovereign freedom and ask Our Lady to obtain a docile acceptance of everything He has revealed and appointed.\n\n\"Nevertheless I say that, things being supposed as they are now, God having willed to commence and to complete His greatest works by the most holy Virgin, since He created her, we may well think He will not change His conduct in the eternal ages; for He is God, and He changes not either in His sentiments or in His conduct.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 15\n\nSt. Louis de Montfort has just confessed God's absolute independence. He now turns from what God could have done to what God freely willed to do. Devotion rests upon that divine choice, not upon an imagined necessity in God or an independent power in Mary.\n\nReceive God's order instead of designing a more convenient religion for yourself. The same humility that accepts the Incarnation through Mary must also accept Christ's doctrine, commandments, Church, sacraments, Cross, and means of grace without revision by private preference.\n\nPRACTICE\nRead John 12:1-9. Give Christ unhurried prayer and generous love that costs time, comfort, or money without seeking notice.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Receive ye discipline, and not money: choose doctrine rather than gold. For wisdom is better than all most precious riches: and whatsoever is to be desired cannot be compared to it.\"\nHoly Scripture, Proverbs 8:10–11, Original Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - April 10\nThe prophet Ezechiel, who was put to death in Babylon by the Judge of the people of Israel, because he reproved him for worshipping idols. He was buried in the sepulchre of Sem and Arphaxad, Abraham's ancestors. To his tomb many were wont to resort for the purpose of prayer. — At Rome, the birthday of many holy martyrs, whom pope St. Alexander baptized whilst he was detained in prison. The prefect Aurelian had them all put in an old ship, taken to the deep sea, and plunged into it with stones tied to their necks. — At Alexandria, the holy martyrs Apollonius, priest, and five others, who, in the persecution of Maximian, were drowned in the sea. — In Africa, under the emperor Decius and the prefect Fortunian, the holy martyrs Terentius, African, Pompey, and their companions, who were scourged, racked, and subjected to other torments. Their martyrdom ended by decapitation. — The same day, St. Macarius, bishop of Antioch, celebrated for virtues and miracles. — At Valladolid, in Spain, St. Michael of the Saints, confessor, of the Order of Discalced Trinitarians for the Redemption of Captives, a man remarkable for integrity of life, for the penitential spirit, and for great love of God. Pius IX. solemnly canonized him on Whitsunday, 1862, and ordered his festival to be kept on the 5th of\n\nGOSPEL OF THE DAY\nShe hath wrought a good work upon me.\nMonday of Holy Week - John 12:1-9\n\"Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of my burial.\"\nGive Our Lord time that cannot be recovered and love that costs something. Then serve the poor for His sake rather than using them as an excuse to avoid Him.\n\nTHE CHURCH'S READING OF THE GOSPEL\nWhat This Gospel Teaches\nMary of Bethany gives costly honor to Christ while His burial draws near.\nJudas uses an apparently charitable objection to hide greed. The Gospel teaches that good language does not make a selfish motive holy.\nChrist's defense of Mary does not oppose care for the poor; it reveals the unique hour of His Passion and the duty to love Him above every created good.\nError corrected: The false practicality that calls devotion waste while disguising selfish motives.\n- Where does this error tempt me in practice?\n- What act does this Gospel require of me today?\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nMonday of Holy Week\nMary anoints Our Lord before His burial.\nOn Monday of Holy Week, the Gospel returns to Bethany, where Mary pours costly ointment upon the feet of Jesus and wipes them with her hair.\nOur Lord receives her act as preparation for His burial. Her generous love stands opposite Judas's dishonest complaint, which uses concern for the poor to hide greed.\nStay at Bethany with Mary. Give Our Lord the attention, repentance, and love that Judas measures only by usefulness and price.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nCostly love offered before the burial.\nMatins - Monday of Holy Week\n- The office leads the Church more deeply into the Passion, while the Mass Gospel shows Mary of Bethany anointing Our Lord before His burial.\n- Her generous devotion exposes Judas's false economy: he speaks about the poor while concealing greed, but she recognizes that the hour to honor Christ is passing.\nDo not call love of Christ waste. Give Him attentive prayer, honest repentance, and devoted fidelity even when it costs you something.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Monday of Holy Week 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 Costly love offered before the burial.. Its first point is this: The office leads the Church more deeply into the Passion, while the Mass Gospel shows Mary of Bethany anointing Our Lord before His burial. Its next point develops the lesson: Her generous devotion exposes Judas's false economy: he speaks about the poor while concealing greed, but she recognizes that the hour to honor Christ is passing.\nThe practical instruction is: Do not call love of Christ waste. Give Him attentive prayer, honest repentance, and devoted fidelity even when it costs you something. 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\nJustification Requires True Conversion\nThe Church places this truth before you today: The sinner is not healed by excuse or affirmation, but by grace, repentance, faith, hope, charity, and the turning of the soul toward God. 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. Catholic mercy restores the sinner to truth; it never names sin as holiness or treats amendment as optional.\nThe grace to be practiced is Generous love for Christ before His Passion, 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 receiving God's order whole rather than accepting only the parts agreeable to temperament.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist false mercy, which comforts the sinner while leaving the wound unhealed. 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 generous love for Christ before His Passion 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. When obedience contradicts preference, surrender the desire to make God's way answer to your own design. Order all your prayers, duties, relationships, and sacrifices according to God's commandments and the obligations of your state in life.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is Council of Trent.\nYour resolution before God: Read John 12:1-9. Give Christ unhurried prayer and generous love that costs time, comfort, or money without seeking notice.\nCarry this word: There is no holiness where heresy is treated as harmless.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"Take the cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and thou shalt go into the life everlasting.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book II, chapter 12, p. 72\nThe cross is not an interruption of the pilgrimage; united to Christ, it is the road. Stand beneath it with Our Lady instead of fleeing into resentment.\n\nYou are not asked to enjoy pain or pretend that evil is good. You are asked not to lose the good that grace can draw from what Providence permits. Carry the unavoidable burden without adding the heavier cross of rebellion, and offer its hidden weight for a soul in danger.\nToday's Practice: Receive today's unavoidable crosses and offer them through Mary for souls in need.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nExamine where private preference tried to replace God's revealed order, and renew your submission through Mary to Jesus Christ.\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, give me hatred of error without hatred of souls. Let charity make me clearer, humbler, more patient, and more willing to defend what saves.\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\nGrace, Conversion, and Final Perseverance: https://cityofgodinexile.com/mercy-and-salvation/grace-conversion-and-final-perseverance?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2028-04-10&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2028-04-10&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: Monday of Holy Week - 2028-04-10\n \n \n
\n Monday of Holy Week. Justification Requires True Conversion. Resist false mercy, which comforts the sinner while leaving the wound unhealed.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Monday of Holy Week

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2028-04-10 - Passiontide - Feria of the First Class - 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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Passion of Christ
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the sufferings and death Jesus freely accepted for our salvation, from His agony in Gethsemane through His Crucifixion.
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Penance
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repentance expressed through prayer, self-denial, reparation, and a real turning away from sin.
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Holy Week
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the final week before Easter, when the Church follows Christ from His entrance into Jerusalem through His Passion, death, and burial.
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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 with Our Lady the order God freely chose for the works of grace.

Adore God's sovereign freedom and ask Our Lady to obtain a docile acceptance of everything He has revealed and appointed.

“Nevertheless I say that, things being supposed as they are now, God having willed to commence and to complete His greatest works by the most holy Virgin, since He created her, we may well think He will not change His conduct in the eternal ages; for He is God, and He changes not either in His sentiments or in His conduct.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 15

St. Louis de Montfort has just confessed God's absolute independence. He now turns from what God could have done to what God freely willed to do. Devotion rests upon that divine choice, not upon an imagined necessity in God or an independent power in Mary.

Receive God's order instead of designing a more convenient religion for yourself. The same humility that accepts the Incarnation through Mary must also accept Christ's doctrine, commandments, Church, sacraments, Cross, and means of grace without revision by private preference.

Read John 12:1-9. Give Christ unhurried prayer and generous love that costs time, comfort, or money without seeking notice.

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Quote of the Day

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“Receive ye discipline, and not money: choose doctrine rather than gold. For wisdom is better than all most precious riches: and whatsoever is to be desired cannot be compared to it.”
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Holy Scripture, Proverbs 8:10–11, Original Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - April 10

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The prophet Ezechiel, who was put to death in Babylon by the Judge of the people of Israel, because he reproved him for worshipping idols. He was buried in the sepulchre of Sem and Arphaxad, Abraham's ancestors. To his tomb many were wont to resort for the purpose of prayer. — At Rome, the birthday of many holy martyrs, whom pope St. Alexander baptized whilst he was detained in prison. The prefect Aurelian had them all put in an old ship, taken to the deep sea, and plunged into it with stones tied to their necks. — At Alexandria, the holy martyrs Apollonius, priest, and five others, who, in the persecution of Maximian, were drowned in the sea. — In Africa, under the emperor Decius and the prefect Fortunian, the holy martyrs Terentius, African, Pompey, and their companions, who were scourged, racked, and subjected to other torments. Their martyrdom ended by decapitation. — The same day, St. Macarius, bishop of Antioch, celebrated for virtues and miracles. — At Valladolid, in Spain, St. Michael of the Saints, confessor, of the Order of Discalced Trinitarians for the Redemption of Captives, a man remarkable for integrity of life, for the penitential spirit, and for great love of God. Pius IX. solemnly canonized him on Whitsunday, 1862, and ordered his festival to be kept on the 5th of

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Gospel of the Day

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She hath wrought a good work upon me.

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Monday of Holy Week - John 12:1-9

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“Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of my burial.”
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Give Our Lord time that cannot be recovered and love that costs something. Then serve the poor for His sake rather than using them as an excuse to avoid Him.

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The Church's Reading of the Gospel

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What This Gospel Teaches

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Mary of Bethany gives costly honor to Christ while His burial draws near.

Judas uses an apparently charitable objection to hide greed. The Gospel teaches that good language does not make a selfish motive holy.

Christ's defense of Mary does not oppose care for the poor; it reveals the unique hour of His Passion and the duty to love Him above every created good.

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Error corrected: The false practicality that calls devotion waste while disguising selfish motives.

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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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Monday of Holy Week

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Mary anoints Our Lord before His burial.

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On Monday of Holy Week, the Gospel returns to Bethany, where Mary pours costly ointment upon the feet of Jesus and wipes them with her hair.

Our Lord receives her act as preparation for His burial. Her generous love stands opposite Judas's dishonest complaint, which uses concern for the poor to hide greed.

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Stay at Bethany with Mary. Give Our Lord the attention, repentance, and love that Judas measures only by usefulness and price.

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Breviary Witness

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Costly love offered before the burial.

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Matins - Monday of Holy Week

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  • The office leads the Church more deeply into the Passion, while the Mass Gospel shows Mary of Bethany anointing Our Lord before His burial.
  • Her generous devotion exposes Judas's false economy: he speaks about the poor while concealing greed, but she recognizes that the hour to honor Christ is passing.
    • \n
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Do not call love of Christ waste. Give Him attentive prayer, honest repentance, and devoted fidelity even when it costs you something.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Monday of Holy Week 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 Costly love offered before the burial.. Its first point is this: The office leads the Church more deeply into the Passion, while the Mass Gospel shows Mary of Bethany anointing Our Lord before His burial. Its next point develops the lesson: Her generous devotion exposes Judas's false economy: he speaks about the poor while concealing greed, but she recognizes that the hour to honor Christ is passing.

The practical instruction is: Do not call love of Christ waste. Give Him attentive prayer, honest repentance, and devoted fidelity even when it costs you something. 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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Justification Requires True Conversion

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The Church places this truth before you today: The sinner is not healed by excuse or affirmation, but by grace, repentance, faith, hope, charity, and the turning of the soul toward God. 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. Catholic mercy restores the sinner to truth; it never names sin as holiness or treats amendment as optional.

The grace to be practiced is Generous love for Christ before His Passion, 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 receiving God's order whole rather than accepting only the parts agreeable to temperament.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist false mercy, which comforts the sinner while leaving the wound unhealed. 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 generous love for Christ before His Passion 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. When obedience contradicts preference, surrender the desire to make God's way answer to your own design. Order all your prayers, duties, relationships, and sacrifices according to God's commandments and the obligations of your state in life.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is Council of Trent.

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Your Resolution Before God

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Read John 12:1-9. Give Christ unhurried prayer and generous love that costs time, comfort, or money without seeking notice.

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There is no holiness where heresy is treated as harmless.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“Take the cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and thou shalt go into the life everlasting.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book II, chapter 12, p. 72

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The cross is not an interruption of the pilgrimage; united to Christ, it is the road. Stand beneath it with Our Lady instead of fleeing into resentment.

You are not asked to enjoy pain or pretend that evil is good. You are asked not to lose the good that grace can draw from what Providence permits. Carry the unavoidable burden without adding the heavier cross of rebellion, and offer its hidden weight for a soul in danger.

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Today's Practice

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Receive today's unavoidable crosses and offer them through Mary for souls in need.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Examine where private preference tried to replace God's revealed order, and renew your submission through Mary to Jesus Christ.

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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, give me hatred of error without hatred of souls. Let charity make me clearer, humbler, more patient, and more willing to defend what saves.

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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 Grace, Conversion, and Final Perseverance\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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