{"ok":true,"date":"2028-12-17","dateKey":"12-17","liturgicalDay":"Third Sunday of Advent","rank":"Sunday of the Second Class","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"If it sometimes wander and withdraw itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that: trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it: the will must bring it back in tranquility.","author":"Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection","source":"The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of a Holy Life, Eighth Letter","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#bring-the-wandering-mind-back-in-tranquility","category":"Prayer and the Interior Life"},"season":"Advent","novenas":[{"title":"Christmas Novena","feast":"Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ","day":2,"totalDays":9,"startIsoDate":"2028-12-16","feastIsoDate":"2028-12-25","intention":"Prepare the soul and household to receive the King in humility, adoration, and Catholic faith.","prayer":null,"practice":"Keep silence and simplicity wherever they prepare the soul and household for the Christ Child.","sources":[]}],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Third Sunday of Advent - 2028-12-17","previewText":"Third Sunday of Advent. Obedience Serves Truth. Resist both rebellion against true authority and false obedience to commands that betray doctrine.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nThird Sunday of Advent\n2028-12-17 - Advent - Sunday of the Second Class - violet\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nThe Church begins the great O Antiphons by calling upon eternal Wisdom, who reaches from end to end and orders all things sweetly. The world calls self-direction freedom, but the soul becomes peaceful only when Christ orders its loves beneath His law. Ask Him to show you the next step of prudence and then obey it. 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\nBegin putting every disordered duty, possession, or use of time already known to you into a clear and Godward order.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"If it sometimes wander and withdraw itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that: trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it: the will must bring it back in tranquility.\"\nBrother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of a Holy Life, Eighth Letter\n\nNOVENA IN PROGRESS\nChristmas Novena - Day 2 of 9\nPreparing for Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ on 2028-12-25.\nPrepare the soul and household to receive the King in humility, adoration, and Catholic faith.\n\nKeep silence and simplicity wherever they prepare the soul and household for the Christ Child.\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - December 17\nAt Eleutheropolis, in Palestine, the holy martyrs Florian, Calanicus and their fifty-eight companions, who were massacred by the Saracens for the faith of Christ, in the time of the emperor Heraclius. — At Marseilles, in France, blessed Lazarus, bishop, who was raised from the dead by our Lord, as we read in the Gospel. — At Rome, St. John de Matha, founder of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives. His festival is observed on the 8th of February, according to the decree of Innocent XI. — In the monastery of Fulda, the holy abbot Sturmius, abbot and apostle of Saxony, who was ranked among the saints by Innocent II., in the second Council of Lateran. — At Bigarden, near Brussels, St. Vivina, virgin, whose eminent sanctity is attested by frequent miracles. — At Constantinople, St. Olympiades, widow. — At Andenne, at the Seven Churches, St. Begga, widow, sister of St. Gertrude. — The same day, the translation of St. Ignatius, bishop and martyr, who, the third after the blessed apostle Peter, governed the Church of Antioch. His body was conveyed from Rome, where he had suffered under Trajan, to Antioch, and deposited in the church cemetery beyond the gate of Daphnis. St. John Chrysostom, on that solemn occasion, delivered a discourse to his people. But afterwards his relics were carried back to Rome, and placed with the highest reverence in the church of St. Clement, together with the body of that blessed pope and martyr.\n\nGOSPEL OF THE DAY\nMake straight the way of the Lord.\nThird Sunday of Advent - John 1:19-28\n\"I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.\"\nLet Gaudete joy be quiet and clean. A soul becomes lighter when it stops needing to be the center of the scene.\n\nTHE CHURCH'S READING OF THE GOSPEL\nWhat This Gospel Teaches\nSt. John refuses borrowed glory and gives all attention to Christ.\nTrue joy is not self-display, but making a straight road for the Lord.\nError corrected: The vanity that wants religious work to become self-importance.\n- Where does this error tempt me in practice?\n- What act does this Gospel require of me today?\n\nFROM MATINS\nSt. John Baptist and the humility of truth.\nMatins - Third Nocturn - Third Sunday of Advent\nPope St. Gregory the Great\n\"He soberly chose rather to seem only what he really was.\"\n- The Breviary contemplates St. John Baptist confessing the truth about himself and refusing a dignity that did not belong to him.\n- St. Gregory teaches that John's humility made him a member of Christ, precisely because he would not take Christ's title.\n- True greatness in the Church is not self-enlargement, but faithful witness to the One who comes.\nLearn John's clean humility. Say what is true, refuse borrowed glory, and let every office, talent, and word point past you to Christ.\nTHE PILGRIM'S SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE\nObedience Serves Truth\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Catholic obedience is a virtue ordered to God and His truth. It is not servility before contradiction or unlawful command. 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. Authority is real because it comes from God, but it remains ministerial. It cannot command against the faith it exists to guard.\nThe grace to be practiced is Practice humility by decreasing so Christ may be better known, drawn from today's Gospel. 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 both rebellion against true authority and false obedience to commands that betray doctrine. Do not study this danger only in other people. Look quietly for the door by which it seeks entrance into your own soul - perhaps through delay, curiosity, resentment, human respect, attachment to comfort, or the desire to control the outcome. Dying to self today means choosing practice humility by decreasing so Christ may be better known 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 apostolic; the witness placed beside it is St. Thomas Aquinas.\nYour resolution before God: Begin putting every disordered duty, possession, or use of time already known to you into a clear and Godward order.\nCarry this word: Divine Wisdom does not flatter disorder; He restores all things to their right end.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"It behoveth thee to break thine own will in many things, if thou wilt have peace and concord with others.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 17, p. 27\nConcord bought by surrendering truth is false, but many quarrels arise from preference rather than principle. Yield what belongs to self-will while holding fast what belongs to God.\n\nLearn to distinguish the two before the moment of conflict. Doctrine, purity, justice, and necessary duty may require firmness. Your preferred method, timing, recognition, or last word usually does not. The soul becomes strong when it stops spending zeal upon the defense of self.\nToday's Practice: Yield harmless preferences cheerfully whenever truth and duty do not require firmness.\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 eternal Wisdom, come and teach me the way of prudence; order my mind, affections, and duties beneath Thy reign.\nDAILY RULE FOR THE PILGRIM\nA brief rule to keep every day:\nBegin with morning prayer\nAdore the Blessed Trinity and offer the whole day to Jesus through Mary before other duties claim the mind.\nKeep the Angelus\nPause morning, noon, and evening to remember the Incarnation.\nSeek Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament\nAttend Holy Mass when duty permits; otherwise make a Spiritual Communion and renew desire for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.\nReturn to Jesus and Mary\nUse frequent holy aspirations during work, waiting, suffering, and temptation.\nPray the Rosary\nKeep the mysteries of Christ before the mind with Our Lady and learn to imitate what they contain.\nEnd with night prayer and examen\nGive thanks, confess faults, forgive injuries, make a practical amendment, and entrust the night to Our Lady.\nCONTINUE STUDY\nObedience, the Virtue Modernism Must Redefine: https://cityofgodinexile.com/authority-and-revolt/obedience-the-virtue-modernism-must-redefine?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2028-12-17&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2028-12-17&entered=1\nBrowse the Formation Index: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch/formation?entered=1","html":"\n\n \n \n \n City of God in Exile: Third Sunday of Advent - 2028-12-17\n \n \n
\n Third Sunday of Advent. Obedience Serves Truth. Resist both rebellion against true authority and false obedience to commands that betray doctrine.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Third Sunday of Advent

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2028-12-17 - Advent - Sunday of the Second 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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Today in the Roman Year

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

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.

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

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Quote of the Day

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“If it sometimes wander and withdraw itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that: trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it: the will must bring it back in tranquility.”
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Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of a Holy Life, Eighth Letter

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Novena in Progress

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Christmas Novena - Day 2 of 9

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Preparing for Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ on 2028-12-25.

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

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

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Roman Martyrology - December 17

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

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Gospel of the Day

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Make straight the way of the Lord.

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Third Sunday of Advent - John 1:19-28

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“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.”
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Let Gaudete joy be quiet and clean. A soul becomes lighter when it stops needing to be the center of the scene.

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The Church's Reading of the Gospel

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What This Gospel Teaches

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St. John refuses borrowed glory and gives all attention to Christ.

True joy is not self-display, but making a straight road for the Lord.

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Error corrected: The vanity that wants religious work to become self-importance.

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  • Where does this error tempt me in practice?
  • What act does this Gospel require of me today?
    • \n
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From Matins

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St. John Baptist and the humility of truth.

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Matins - Third Nocturn - Third Sunday of Advent

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Pope St. Gregory the Great, Homily 7 on the Gospels

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“He soberly chose rather to seem only what he really was.”
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    \n
  • The Breviary contemplates St. John Baptist confessing the truth about himself and refusing a dignity that did not belong to him.
  • St. Gregory teaches that John's humility made him a member of Christ, precisely because he would not take Christ's title.
  • True greatness in the Church is not self-enlargement, but faithful witness to the One who comes.
    • \n
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Learn John's clean humility. Say what is true, refuse borrowed glory, and let every office, talent, and word point past you to Christ.

\n
\n
\n \n
\n

The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

\n

Obedience Serves Truth

\n

The Church places this truth before you today: Catholic obedience is a virtue ordered to God and His truth. It is not servility before contradiction or unlawful command. 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. Authority is real because it comes from God, but it remains ministerial. It cannot command against the faith it exists to guard.

The grace to be practiced is Practice humility by decreasing so Christ may be better known, drawn from today's Gospel. 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 both rebellion against true authority and false obedience to commands that betray doctrine. Do not study this danger only in other people. Look quietly for the door by which it seeks entrance into your own soul - perhaps through delay, curiosity, resentment, human respect, attachment to comfort, or the desire to control the outcome. Dying to self today means choosing practice humility by decreasing so Christ may be better known 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 apostolic; the witness placed beside it is St. Thomas Aquinas.

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Your Resolution Before God

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

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

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“It behoveth thee to break thine own will in many things, if thou wilt have peace and concord with others.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 17, p. 27

\n \n

Concord bought by surrendering truth is false, but many quarrels arise from preference rather than principle. Yield what belongs to self-will while holding fast what belongs to God.

Learn to distinguish the two before the moment of conflict. Doctrine, purity, justice, and necessary duty may require firmness. Your preferred method, timing, recognition, or last word usually does not. The soul becomes strong when it stops spending zeal upon the defense of self.

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Today's Practice

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Yield harmless preferences cheerfully whenever truth and duty do not require firmness.

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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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    \n
  • 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?
    • \n
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Prayer

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

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Daily Rule for the Pilgrim

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A brief rule to keep every day:

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Begin with morning prayer

Adore the Blessed Trinity and offer the whole day to Jesus through Mary before other duties claim the mind.

Keep the Angelus

Pause morning, noon, and evening to remember the Incarnation.

Seek Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament

Attend Holy Mass when duty permits; otherwise make a Spiritual Communion and renew desire for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Return to Jesus and Mary

Use frequent holy aspirations during work, waiting, suffering, and temptation.

Pray the Rosary

Keep the mysteries of Christ before the mind with Our Lady and learn to imitate what they contain.

End with night prayer and examen

Give thanks, confess faults, forgive injuries, make a practical amendment, and entrust the night to Our Lady.

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Continue Study

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Carry today's lesson into a focused chapter from the library.

\n Obedience, the Virtue Modernism Must Redefine\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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\n \n","links":{"sacredCalendar":"/sacred-calendar?date=2028-12-17","webPreview":"/daily-dispatch?date=2028-12-17","emailPreview":"/daily-dispatch/email?date=2028-12-17","formationIndex":"/daily-dispatch/formation","subscribe":"/daily-dispatch/subscribe"},"included":{"martyrology":true,"gospelReflection":true,"saintlyWitness":false,"breviaryReading":false,"patristicBreviaryLesson":true,"faithPoint":"Obedience Serves Truth"}}