{"ok":true,"date":"2028-11-04","dateKey":"11-04","liturgicalDay":"St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor","rank":"Double","color":"white","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Casting all your carefulness upon him, because he hath care of you.","author":"Holy Scripture","source":"1 Peter 5:7, Original Douay-Rheims","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#casting-all-your-care-upon-him","category":"Divine Providence"},"season":"Time after Pentecost","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[{"liturgicalDay":"Within the Common Octave of All Saints","rank":"Common Octave","color":"white","sourceNotes":["St. Andrew Daily Missal, Liturgical Calendar, p. xxv."]}],"subject":"City of God in Exile: St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor - 2028-11-04","previewText":"St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor. The Church Suffers Without Ceasing to Be the Church. Resist both triumphalist denial of crisis and despairing denial of Christ's indefectible Church.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nSt. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor\n2028-11-04 - Time after Pentecost - Double - white\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nCardinal: a senior cleric of the Roman Church who advises the pope and, under the Church's law, ordinarily helps elect a successor.\nEcclesiastical or ecclesial: belonging or relating to the Church; the words refer to her life, law, worship, ministers, or common mission.\nClergy or cleric: the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.\nThe full Breviary lessons preserve an older English translation. Read the modern explanation first; it identifies the people, event, and doctrine before the historical wording appears.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nSt. Charles Borromeo answered corruption not by weakening discipline, but by becoming more prayerful, penitential, learned, and fatherly. He reformed seminaries, clergy, worship, and care of souls because doctrine must become ordered Catholic life. Before demanding reform elsewhere, place every known disorder in your own soul beneath God's law. Approach with holy poverty the treasury God has placed in His Mother for the members of Christ. Confess your poverty before God and ask through Our Lady for every grace needed to keep His commandments and fulfill all your duties.\n\n\"God the Father made an assemblage of all the waters, and He named it the sea (mare). He has made an assemblage of all His graces, and He has called it Mary (Maria).\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 23\n\nThe image magnifies the abundance of God, not an independent abundance in a creature. Every grace belongs to Him and is purchased for us by Jesus Christ. Mary is called the treasury because God freely filled her and wills to employ her maternal intercession for Christ's members.\n\nCome as one who is poor and needs grace for everything: faith, repentance, purity, prayer, patience, courage, and perseverance. Spiritual poverty is not minimalism. Because the need is great, the petition should be persevering and the cooperation generous.\n\nOCTAVE CONTEXT\nWithin the Common Octave of All Saints - Common Octave\n\nPRACTICE\nCorrect your neglected spiritual duties before criticizing the failures of another.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Casting all your carefulness upon him, because he hath care of you.\"\nHoly Scripture, 1 Peter 5:7, Original Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - November 4\nAt Milan, St. Charles Borromeo, cardinal, and bishop of that city, who was ranked among the Saints by Paul V. on account of the holiness of his life and his renown for miracles. — At Bologna, the holy martyrs Vitalis and Agricola. The former was first the servant of the latter, and afterwards his partner and colleague in martyrdom. He was subjected by the persecutors to all kinds of torments, so that there was no part of his body without wounds. After having suffered with constancy, he yielded up his soul to God in prayer. Agricola was put to death by being fastened to a cross with many nails. St. Ambrose relates that being present at their translation, he took the martyr's nails, his glorious blood, and the wood of his cross, and deposited them under the consecrated altars. — The same day, the birthday of the Saints Philologus and Patrobas, disciples of the apostle St. Paul. — At Autun, St. Proculus, martyr. — In Vexin (in the North of France), St. Clarus, priest and martyr. — At Ephesus, St. Porphyry, martyr, under the emperor Aurelian. — At Myra, in Lycia, the holy martyrs Nicander, bishop, and Hermas, priest, under the governor Libanius. — The same day, the birthday of St. Pierius, priest of Alexandria, who, being deeply versed in the sacred Scriptures, leading a very pure life, and freed from all impediments in order to apply to Christian philosophy, taught the people with great renown, and published various treatises, under the emperors Carus and Diocletian, when Theonas governed the church of Alexandria. After the persecution, he spent the remainder of his life at Rome, where he rested in peace. — At Bhodez, in France, blessed Amantius, bishop, whose life was resplendent with sanctity and miracles. — In Bithynia, St. Joannicius, abbot. — In Hungary, at AlbaBegale, the demise of St. Emeric, confessor, son of St. Stephen, king of Hungary. — In the monastery of Cerfroid, in the diocese of Meaux, St. Felix de Valois, founder of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Bedemption of Captives. His feast is celebrated on the 20th of this month by order of Innocent XI. — At Treves, St. Modesta, virgin.\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nSt. Charles Borromeo\nCardinal, bishop, reformer, and shepherd of Milan.\nThe Martyrology honors St. Charles Borromeo, cardinal and bishop of Milan, for holiness of life and miracles.\nHis feast teaches episcopal reform as personal sacrifice: a shepherd must defend doctrine, restore discipline, care for souls, and spend himself for the flock rather than merely administer religion.\nLet St. Charles teach serious charity. The Church is renewed by doctrine, discipline, prayer, penance, and shepherds willing to be spent. Today, begin repairing the neglected duties already known to you instead of merely wishing things were better.\nFROM MATINS\nPastoral reform carried through plague, penance, and charity.\nMatins - Second Nocturn - St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor\nRoman Breviary\n\"Charity was the brightest mark of his life.\"\n- The Breviary presents St. Charles as a reforming bishop who began with personal purity, prayer, preaching, discipline, and obedience to the Church's received doctrine.\n- During the plague of Milan he gave money, furniture, bedding, sacramental care, and his own bodily service to the sick poor.\n- His defense of ecclesiastical discipline survived violence because reform was not an administrative pose, but a life of fasting, meekness, catechesis, and self-offering beneath the Cross.\nReform what has actually been entrusted to you, beginning with yourself. St. Charles teaches that doctrine, discipline, catechesis, public penance, and costly mercy belong together.\nFULL BREVIARY LESSONS\nFourth Lesson - A Bishop Formed for Reform\nCharles, of the noble family of Borromeo, was born on the 2nd day of October, in the year of our Lord 1538, at the Castle of Arona, fourteen miles from Milan. In foretoken of his holy life, God caused a bright light to shine by night over the chamber where his mother lay in travail. As soon as his age would allow him, he received the tonsure. When he was twelve years old, he was made Abbat of the rich Benedictine Abbey of St Gratian and St Felin, but reminded his father that the revenues thereof were not to be used as mere family property. His father, to whom the administration of these revenues fell during his son's non-age, still gave them forthwith over to him, and whatever was left over, he gave to the poor. While he was young he studied letters at Pavia. He kept his purity thoroughly, so that he scared away the unclean women, of whom many were set upon him, to overthrow his self-control. In the twenty-third year of his age, his uncle, Pius IV, made him a Cardinal, in which dignity he was a burning and shining light of godliness and all graces before the whole of the Sacred College. About forty days afterwards the same Pope created him Archbishop of Milan. As such it was his great desire to order the Church committed to his charge in accordance with the requirements of the most holy Council of Trent, which was in great part by his labours brought to a conclusion. To raise up the degraded lives of the people, he oftentimes held Synods, but himself set an example of deep godliness. He worked earnestly to purge the parts about the Alps and borders of Switzerland of heresy, and brought many of the heretics to the Christian faith.\nFifth Lesson - Charity during the Plague\nCharity was the brightest mark of his life. His principality of Oria, in the kingdom of Naples, he sold for forty thousand crowns, and gave the whole sum to the poor in one day. Twenty thousand crowns being left him as a legacy by Virginia, widow of Count Frederick Borromeo, he gave the whole to the poor. The incomes of the benefices wherewith he had been loaded by his uncle, he spent upon the needs of the poor, except what he used for himself. When the plague grievously raged in Milan, he gave up to the sick poor the furniture of his own house, even to his own bedding, and thenceforward slept upon the boards. He constantly visited the sick, cheered them by his fatherly kindness, and wonderfully comforted them, ministering to them with his own hands the Sacraments of the Church. At the same time he drew near to plead for them with God in lowly entreaty, and ordered a public Procession wherein he walked himself carrying a Cross, with a rope halter round his neck, and his bare feet bleeding from the stones, and himself fain to turn away the Divine anger by offering himself as a scapegoat for the sins of his people. He was a stout defender of the freedom of the Church. But in the Church he was an earnest reformer of discipline, and once, when he was engaged in prayer, the paid agent of some conspirators took a shot at him with a blunderbuss, but, though the ball struck him, the power of God kept him unharmed.\nSixth Lesson - Penance, Catechesis, and a Holy Death\nHe was remarkable for his abstinence. He very often fasted upon nothing but bread and water, and sometimes nothing but lupines. He tamed his body by depriving himself of sleep, by very rough haircloth, and by constant scourging. He was an earnest practiser of lowliness and meekness. However much he was taken up with business, he never gave himself relaxation from prayer and from preaching the word of God. He built many Churches, convents, and schools. He wrote much matter, useful more especially for the good of Bishops. The publication of the \"Parish Priests' Catechism\" was due to his care. In October, 1584, he withdrew himself, for the purpose of making a retreat, to what is called the \"Sacro Monte\" of Varallo, an hill whereon many sacred subjects and especially the incidents of the Lord's sufferings are represented in life-size groups of coloured figures. On October 24 he was taken ill of a tertian ague, but concealed it, and lived there for some days a life of torture by voluntary suffering, but of sweetness by thoughts of Christ's woes. After his return to Milan, which he reached in a litter upon All Souls' Day, his sickness became hopeless, and early in the night between the 3rd and 4th days of November, in the 47th year of his own age, and in that of our Lord 1584, covered with ashes and sackcloth, and with his eyes fixed upon the image of Christ crucified, he exchanged earth for heaven. He was famous for miracles, and Pope Paul V numbered him among the Saints.\nTHE PILGRIM'S SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE\nThe Church Suffers Without Ceasing to Be the Church\nThe Church places this truth before you today: The Church can be eclipsed, persecuted, betrayed, and reduced in visible splendor, yet Christ does not fail in His promises. 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. Exile must not make the faithful invent another Church, nor despair of the one Christ founded.\nThe grace to be practiced is Pastoral reform through holiness, 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 supernatural poverty by relying upon grace while using every lawful means God places within reach.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist both triumphalist denial of crisis and despairing denial of Christ's indefectible Church. 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 pastoral reform through holiness 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 awareness of weakness drive you toward prayer and vigilance, never toward discouragement or lowered standards. Ask grace before all demanding duties and temptations, cooperate throughout them, and give thanks when they are completed.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of one; the witness placed beside it is St. John Fisher.\nYour resolution before God: Correct your neglected spiritual duties before criticizing the failures of another.\nCarry this word: The reformer must first consent to be reformed by grace.\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\nName the graces received today and return them through Mary to the Father from whom every good gift descends.\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, through St. Charles Borromeo, sanctify Thy priests and make me begin every necessary reform with repentance, prayer, and obedience.\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\nPerpetuity, Visibility, and Apostolic Continuity: https://cityofgodinexile.com/how-the-true-church-is-known/perpetuity-visibility-and-apostolic-continuity?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2028-11-04&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2028-11-04&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: St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor - 2028-11-04\n \n \n
\n St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor. The Church Suffers Without Ceasing to Be the Church. Resist both triumphalist denial of crisis and despairing denial of Christ's indefectible Church.\n
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City of God in Exile

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St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor

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2028-11-04 - Time after Pentecost - Double - white

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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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Cardinal
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a senior cleric of the Roman Church who advises the pope and, under the Church's law, ordinarily helps elect a successor.
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Ecclesiastical or ecclesial
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belonging or relating to the Church; the words refer to her life, law, worship, ministers, or common mission.
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Clergy or cleric
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the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.

The full Breviary lessons preserve an older English translation. Read the modern explanation first; it identifies the people, event, and doctrine before the historical wording appears.

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Today in the Roman Year

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St. Charles Borromeo answered corruption not by weakening discipline, but by becoming more prayerful, penitential, learned, and fatherly. He reformed seminaries, clergy, worship, and care of souls because doctrine must become ordered Catholic life. Before demanding reform elsewhere, place every known disorder in your own soul beneath God's law.

Approach with holy poverty the treasury God has placed in His Mother for the members of Christ.

Confess your poverty before God and ask through Our Lady for every grace needed to keep His commandments and fulfill all your duties.

“God the Father made an assemblage of all the waters, and He named it the sea (mare). He has made an assemblage of all His graces, and He has called it Mary (Maria).”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 23

The image magnifies the abundance of God, not an independent abundance in a creature. Every grace belongs to Him and is purchased for us by Jesus Christ. Mary is called the treasury because God freely filled her and wills to employ her maternal intercession for Christ's members.

Come as one who is poor and needs grace for everything: faith, repentance, purity, prayer, patience, courage, and perseverance. Spiritual poverty is not minimalism. Because the need is great, the petition should be persevering and the cooperation generous.

Correct your neglected spiritual duties before criticizing the failures of another.

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Octave Context

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  • Within the Common Octave of All Saints - Common Octave
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Quote of the Day

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“Casting all your carefulness upon him, because he hath care of you.”
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Holy Scripture, 1 Peter 5:7, Original Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - November 4

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At Milan, St. Charles Borromeo, cardinal, and bishop of that city, who was ranked among the Saints by Paul V. on account of the holiness of his life and his renown for miracles. — At Bologna, the holy martyrs Vitalis and Agricola. The former was first the servant of the latter, and afterwards his partner and colleague in martyrdom. He was subjected by the persecutors to all kinds of torments, so that there was no part of his body without wounds. After having suffered with constancy, he yielded up his soul to God in prayer. Agricola was put to death by being fastened to a cross with many nails. St. Ambrose relates that being present at their translation, he took the martyr's nails, his glorious blood, and the wood of his cross, and deposited them under the consecrated altars. — The same day, the birthday of the Saints Philologus and Patrobas, disciples of the apostle St. Paul. — At Autun, St. Proculus, martyr. — In Vexin (in the North of France), St. Clarus, priest and martyr. — At Ephesus, St. Porphyry, martyr, under the emperor Aurelian. — At Myra, in Lycia, the holy martyrs Nicander, bishop, and Hermas, priest, under the governor Libanius. — The same day, the birthday of St. Pierius, priest of Alexandria, who, being deeply versed in the sacred Scriptures, leading a very pure life, and freed from all impediments in order to apply to Christian philosophy, taught the people with great renown, and published various treatises, under the emperors Carus and Diocletian, when Theonas governed the church of Alexandria. After the persecution, he spent the remainder of his life at Rome, where he rested in peace. — At Bhodez, in France, blessed Amantius, bishop, whose life was resplendent with sanctity and miracles. — In Bithynia, St. Joannicius, abbot. — In Hungary, at AlbaBegale, the demise of St. Emeric, confessor, son of St. Stephen, king of Hungary. — In the monastery of Cerfroid, in the diocese of Meaux, St. Felix de Valois, founder of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Bedemption of Captives. His feast is celebrated on the 20th of this month by order of Innocent XI. — At Treves, St. Modesta, virgin.

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Highlighted Saint

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St. Charles Borromeo

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Cardinal, bishop, reformer, and shepherd of Milan.

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The Martyrology honors St. Charles Borromeo, cardinal and bishop of Milan, for holiness of life and miracles.

His feast teaches episcopal reform as personal sacrifice: a shepherd must defend doctrine, restore discipline, care for souls, and spend himself for the flock rather than merely administer religion.

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Let St. Charles teach serious charity. The Church is renewed by doctrine, discipline, prayer, penance, and shepherds willing to be spent. Today, begin repairing the neglected duties already known to you instead of merely wishing things were better.

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From Matins

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Pastoral reform carried through plague, penance, and charity.

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Matins - Second Nocturn - St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop and Confessor

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Roman Breviary, Proper lessons for St. Charles Borromeo

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“Charity was the brightest mark of his life.”
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  • The Breviary presents St. Charles as a reforming bishop who began with personal purity, prayer, preaching, discipline, and obedience to the Church's received doctrine.
  • During the plague of Milan he gave money, furniture, bedding, sacramental care, and his own bodily service to the sick poor.
  • His defense of ecclesiastical discipline survived violence because reform was not an administrative pose, but a life of fasting, meekness, catechesis, and self-offering beneath the Cross.
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Reform what has actually been entrusted to you, beginning with yourself. St. Charles teaches that doctrine, discipline, catechesis, public penance, and costly mercy belong together.

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Full Breviary Lessons

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Fourth Lesson - A Bishop Formed for Reform

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Charles, of the noble family of Borromeo, was born on the 2nd day of October, in the year of our Lord 1538, at the Castle of Arona, fourteen miles from Milan. In foretoken of his holy life, God caused a bright light to shine by night over the chamber where his mother lay in travail. As soon as his age would allow him, he received the tonsure. When he was twelve years old, he was made Abbat of the rich Benedictine Abbey of St Gratian and St Felin, but reminded his father that the revenues thereof were not to be used as mere family property. His father, to whom the administration of these revenues fell during his son's non-age, still gave them forthwith over to him, and whatever was left over, he gave to the poor. While he was young he studied letters at Pavia. He kept his purity thoroughly, so that he scared away the unclean women, of whom many were set upon him, to overthrow his self-control. In the twenty-third year of his age, his uncle, Pius IV, made him a Cardinal, in which dignity he was a burning and shining light of godliness and all graces before the whole of the Sacred College. About forty days afterwards the same Pope created him Archbishop of Milan. As such it was his great desire to order the Church committed to his charge in accordance with the requirements of the most holy Council of Trent, which was in great part by his labours brought to a conclusion. To raise up the degraded lives of the people, he oftentimes held Synods, but himself set an example of deep godliness. He worked earnestly to purge the parts about the Alps and borders of Switzerland of heresy, and brought many of the heretics to the Christian faith.

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Fifth Lesson - Charity during the Plague

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Charity was the brightest mark of his life. His principality of Oria, in the kingdom of Naples, he sold for forty thousand crowns, and gave the whole sum to the poor in one day. Twenty thousand crowns being left him as a legacy by Virginia, widow of Count Frederick Borromeo, he gave the whole to the poor. The incomes of the benefices wherewith he had been loaded by his uncle, he spent upon the needs of the poor, except what he used for himself. When the plague grievously raged in Milan, he gave up to the sick poor the furniture of his own house, even to his own bedding, and thenceforward slept upon the boards. He constantly visited the sick, cheered them by his fatherly kindness, and wonderfully comforted them, ministering to them with his own hands the Sacraments of the Church. At the same time he drew near to plead for them with God in lowly entreaty, and ordered a public Procession wherein he walked himself carrying a Cross, with a rope halter round his neck, and his bare feet bleeding from the stones, and himself fain to turn away the Divine anger by offering himself as a scapegoat for the sins of his people. He was a stout defender of the freedom of the Church. But in the Church he was an earnest reformer of discipline, and once, when he was engaged in prayer, the paid agent of some conspirators took a shot at him with a blunderbuss, but, though the ball struck him, the power of God kept him unharmed.

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Sixth Lesson - Penance, Catechesis, and a Holy Death

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He was remarkable for his abstinence. He very often fasted upon nothing but bread and water, and sometimes nothing but lupines. He tamed his body by depriving himself of sleep, by very rough haircloth, and by constant scourging. He was an earnest practiser of lowliness and meekness. However much he was taken up with business, he never gave himself relaxation from prayer and from preaching the word of God. He built many Churches, convents, and schools. He wrote much matter, useful more especially for the good of Bishops. The publication of the "Parish Priests' Catechism" was due to his care. In October, 1584, he withdrew himself, for the purpose of making a retreat, to what is called the "Sacro Monte" of Varallo, an hill whereon many sacred subjects and especially the incidents of the Lord's sufferings are represented in life-size groups of coloured figures. On October 24 he was taken ill of a tertian ague, but concealed it, and lived there for some days a life of torture by voluntary suffering, but of sweetness by thoughts of Christ's woes. After his return to Milan, which he reached in a litter upon All Souls' Day, his sickness became hopeless, and early in the night between the 3rd and 4th days of November, in the 47th year of his own age, and in that of our Lord 1584, covered with ashes and sackcloth, and with his eyes fixed upon the image of Christ crucified, he exchanged earth for heaven. He was famous for miracles, and Pope Paul V numbered him among the Saints.

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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

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The Church Suffers Without Ceasing to Be the Church

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The Church places this truth before you today: The Church can be eclipsed, persecuted, betrayed, and reduced in visible splendor, yet Christ does not fail in His promises. 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. Exile must not make the faithful invent another Church, nor despair of the one Christ founded.

The grace to be practiced is Pastoral reform through holiness, 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 supernatural poverty by relying upon grace while using every lawful means God places within reach.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist both triumphalist denial of crisis and despairing denial of Christ's indefectible Church. 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 pastoral reform through holiness 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 awareness of weakness drive you toward prayer and vigilance, never toward discouragement or lowered standards. Ask grace before all demanding duties and temptations, cooperate throughout them, and give thanks when they are completed.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of one; the witness placed beside it is St. John Fisher.

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Your Resolution Before God

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Correct your neglected spiritual duties before criticizing the failures of another.

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The reformer must first consent to be reformed by grace.
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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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Name the graces received today and return them through Mary to the Father from whom every good gift descends.

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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, through St. Charles Borromeo, sanctify Thy priests and make me begin every necessary reform with repentance, prayer, and obedience.

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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 Perpetuity, Visibility, and Apostolic Continuity\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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\n \"The\n
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