{"ok":true,"date":"2028-12-19","dateKey":"12-19","liturgicalDay":"Feria of Advent","rank":"Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Follow me. And he rose up and followed him.","author":"Our Lord Jesus Christ","source":"Matthew 9:9, Douay-Rheims","category":"Confidence and Daily Self-Denial"},"season":"Advent","novenas":[{"title":"Christmas Novena","feast":"Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ","day":4,"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: Feria of Advent - 2028-12-19","previewText":"Feria of Advent. Truth and Charity Cannot Be Divided. Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nFeria of Advent\n2028-12-19 - Advent - Feria - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nOrdination: the sacrament by which a baptized man is made a deacon, priest, or bishop and receives the grace and authority needed for that ministry.\nFeria: a weekday without a higher feast of its own; its prayers usually follow the current liturgical season.\nEmber Day: one of the traditional seasonal fast days—Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday—offered in thanksgiving, penance, and prayer for the Church's ministers.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nOn Ember Saturday the Church waits with the prophets for the Root of Jesse, before whom kings shall be silent and whom the nations shall seek. Christ's kingdom grows from promises the world thought buried, and no apparent weakness can annul God's fidelity. Unite prayer and penance for those to be ordained and for nations estranged from their King. As a faithful servant of Mary, make room for the reign of Jesus Christ in the smallest duties. Renew your gift of self to Jesus through Mary. Nothing offered is too small when charity places it at the service of the King.\n\n\"These may be expressed in four words: to do all our actions by Mary, with Mary, in Mary and for Mary; so that we may do them all the more perfectly by Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus and for Jesus.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 257\n\nSt. Louis de Montfort's fourfold practice is not a pious ornament laid over an unchanged life. It gives ordinary actions a new interior order. The soul renounces its own proud and hurried spirit, looks to Mary's dispositions, rests beneath her maternal care, and returns the act through her to Jesus Christ.\n\nOffer the day's ordinary work in this manner. Before beginning, surrender self-will; while working, imitate Mary's recollection and fidelity; when the work is finished, place it in her hands without seeking praise. Thus common duties become part of a consecrated life.\n\nPRACTICE\nOffer the day's Ember observance and pray the Rosary with the goal of completing all three traditional sets of mysteries for ordinands, seminarians, and missionary conversions.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Follow me. And he rose up and followed him.\"\nOur Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew 9:9, Douay-Rheims\n\nNOVENA IN PROGRESS\nChristmas Novena - Day 4 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 19\nAt Alexandria, in Egypt, blessed Nemesius, martyr, who was first denounced before the judge as a robber, but on being freed from that charge, was soon after, in the persecution of Decius, accused before the judge Emilian of being a Christian. By him he was twice subjected to the torture, and condemned to be burned alive with robbers, thus bearing a resemblance to our Saviour, who was crucified with thieves. — At Mcsea, the Saints Darius, Zosimus, Paul, and Secundus, martyrs. — At Nicomedia, the holy martyrs Cyriacus, Paulillus, Secundus, Anastasius, Sindimius, and their companions. — In Mauritania (Barbary), St. Timothy, deacon, who, after enduring a painful imprisonment for the faith of Christ, was cast into the fire, where he consummated his martyr dom. — At Gaza, in Palestine, the martyrdom of the Saints Meuris and Thea. — At Avignon, blessed Urban V., who deserved well of the Church by restoring the Apostolic See to Rome, by bringing about a reunion of the Latins and the Greeks, and by suppressing heretics. Pius IX. approved and confirmed the veneration which had long been paid to him. — At Auxerre, St. Gregory, bishop and confessor. — At Orleans, St. Adjutus, an abbot renowned for the spirit of prophecy. — At Rome, St. Fausta, mother of St. Anastasia, distinguished for noble birth and piety.\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nThe Advent Feria\nThe Church waiting for the coming of Our Lord.\nThe Advent feria is a school of sober expectation, teaching the faithful to wait for the coming of Christ with repentance, desire, vigilance, and hope.\nThese weekdays keep the soul from treating Advent as mere atmosphere. The Church asks for preparation: crooked ways made straight, hearts awakened, and the Saviour truly desired.\nLet Advent weekdays make room in the soul. The City waits with lamps lit, not with noise.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nWaiting with the Church.\nMatins - Feria of Advent\n- The Advent ferias school the faithful in expectation, repentance, vigilance, and desire for the coming Saviour.\n- Their witness is sober hope: the Church waits not as the world waits, but with prayer, preparation, and longing for Christ.\nLet the waiting become clean and watchful. Advent is not delay; it is preparation.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Feria of Advent 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 Waiting with the Church.. Its first point is this: The Advent ferias school the faithful in expectation, repentance, vigilance, and desire for the coming Saviour. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness is sober hope: the Church waits not as the world waits, but with prayer, preparation, and longing for Christ.\nThe practical instruction is: Let the waiting become clean and watchful. Advent is not delay; it is preparation. 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\nTruth and Charity Cannot Be Divided\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Charity loves the real good of the soul, and therefore cannot ask truth to be hidden, softened into falsehood, or traded for comfort. 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 saints defended truth sharply when souls were endangered, yet their severity was ordered to salvation, not pride.\nThe grace to be practiced is Watchful expectation, 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. Imitate Mary's hidden life. Let fidelity be complete even when the work is ordinary and no human eye rewards it.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger. 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 watchful expectation 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. Receive obscurity and lack of recognition as a school of self-forgetfulness, not as permission for discouragement. Complete every duty faithfully, giving the least-noticed duty the same care under Our Lady's gaze, and leave its value entirely to God.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Bernard of Clairvaux.\nYour resolution before God: Offer the day's Ember observance and pray the Rosary with the goal of completing all three traditional sets of mysteries for ordinands, seminarians, and missionary conversions.\nCarry this word: What appears hidden or cut down remains fruitful when rooted in God's promise.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"Fight strongly therefore against all sins, and dread not overmuch, although thou be encumbered by an evil custom, for that evil custom may be overcome with a good custom.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 21, p. 35\nHabit is formed by repeated consent. Under grace, a small faithful act repeated daily becomes a defense against the sin that once seemed immovable.\n\nDo not wait for a dramatic conversion of temperament. Grace commonly asks for the next contrary act: silence instead of complaint, custody instead of curiosity, prayer instead of brooding, prompt duty instead of delay. Repeated fidelity clears a path by which the will learns to move more readily toward God.\nToday's Practice: Oppose your recurring bad habit with its contrary good acts throughout the day.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nThank God for the hidden graces of the day. Ask Our Lady to teach you to treasure what Heaven sees rather than what the world applauds.\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 Root of Jesse, come to deliver us and delay not; strengthen Thy Church and raise up faithful ministers for her altars.\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\nSpeaking the Truth in Charity: https://cityofgodinexile.com/scripture-treasury/ephesians-4-15-speaking-the-truth-in-charity-doctrinal-clarity-and-pastoral-mercy?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2028-12-19&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2028-12-19&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 Advent - 2028-12-19\n \n \n
\n Feria of Advent. Truth and Charity Cannot Be Divided. Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Feria of Advent

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2028-12-19 - Advent - 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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Ordination
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the sacrament by which a baptized man is made a deacon, priest, or bishop and receives the grace and authority needed for that ministry.
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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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Ember Day
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one of the traditional seasonal fast days—Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday—offered in thanksgiving, penance, and prayer for the Church's ministers.
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Today in the Roman Year

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On Ember Saturday the Church waits with the prophets for the Root of Jesse, before whom kings shall be silent and whom the nations shall seek. Christ's kingdom grows from promises the world thought buried, and no apparent weakness can annul God's fidelity. Unite prayer and penance for those to be ordained and for nations estranged from their King.

As a faithful servant of Mary, make room for the reign of Jesus Christ in the smallest duties.

Renew your gift of self to Jesus through Mary. Nothing offered is too small when charity places it at the service of the King.

“These may be expressed in four words: to do all our actions by Mary, with Mary, in Mary and for Mary; so that we may do them all the more perfectly by Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus and for Jesus.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 257

St. Louis de Montfort's fourfold practice is not a pious ornament laid over an unchanged life. It gives ordinary actions a new interior order. The soul renounces its own proud and hurried spirit, looks to Mary's dispositions, rests beneath her maternal care, and returns the act through her to Jesus Christ.

Offer the day's ordinary work in this manner. Before beginning, surrender self-will; while working, imitate Mary's recollection and fidelity; when the work is finished, place it in her hands without seeking praise. Thus common duties become part of a consecrated life.

Offer the day's Ember observance and pray the Rosary with the goal of completing all three traditional sets of mysteries for ordinands, seminarians, and missionary conversions.

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Quote of the Day

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“Follow me. And he rose up and followed him.”
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Our Lord Jesus Christ, Matthew 9:9, Douay-Rheims

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Novena in Progress

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Christmas Novena - Day 4 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 19

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At Alexandria, in Egypt, blessed Nemesius, martyr, who was first denounced before the judge as a robber, but on being freed from that charge, was soon after, in the persecution of Decius, accused before the judge Emilian of being a Christian. By him he was twice subjected to the torture, and condemned to be burned alive with robbers, thus bearing a resemblance to our Saviour, who was crucified with thieves. — At Mcsea, the Saints Darius, Zosimus, Paul, and Secundus, martyrs. — At Nicomedia, the holy martyrs Cyriacus, Paulillus, Secundus, Anastasius, Sindimius, and their companions. — In Mauritania (Barbary), St. Timothy, deacon, who, after enduring a painful imprisonment for the faith of Christ, was cast into the fire, where he consummated his martyr dom. — At Gaza, in Palestine, the martyrdom of the Saints Meuris and Thea. — At Avignon, blessed Urban V., who deserved well of the Church by restoring the Apostolic See to Rome, by bringing about a reunion of the Latins and the Greeks, and by suppressing heretics. Pius IX. approved and confirmed the veneration which had long been paid to him. — At Auxerre, St. Gregory, bishop and confessor. — At Orleans, St. Adjutus, an abbot renowned for the spirit of prophecy. — At Rome, St. Fausta, mother of St. Anastasia, distinguished for noble birth and piety.

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Highlighted Saint

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The Advent Feria

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The Church waiting for the coming of Our Lord.

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The Advent feria is a school of sober expectation, teaching the faithful to wait for the coming of Christ with repentance, desire, vigilance, and hope.

These weekdays keep the soul from treating Advent as mere atmosphere. The Church asks for preparation: crooked ways made straight, hearts awakened, and the Saviour truly desired.

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Let Advent weekdays make room in the soul. The City waits with lamps lit, not with noise.

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Breviary Witness

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Waiting with the Church.

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Matins - Feria of Advent

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  • The Advent ferias school the faithful in expectation, repentance, vigilance, and desire for the coming Saviour.
  • Their witness is sober hope: the Church waits not as the world waits, but with prayer, preparation, and longing for Christ.
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Let the waiting become clean and watchful. Advent is not delay; it is preparation.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Feria of Advent 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 Waiting with the Church.. Its first point is this: The Advent ferias school the faithful in expectation, repentance, vigilance, and desire for the coming Saviour. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness is sober hope: the Church waits not as the world waits, but with prayer, preparation, and longing for Christ.

The practical instruction is: Let the waiting become clean and watchful. Advent is not delay; it is preparation. 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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Truth and Charity Cannot Be Divided

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The Church places this truth before you today: Charity loves the real good of the soul, and therefore cannot ask truth to be hidden, softened into falsehood, or traded for comfort. 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 saints defended truth sharply when souls were endangered, yet their severity was ordered to salvation, not pride.

The grace to be practiced is Watchful expectation, 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. Imitate Mary's hidden life. Let fidelity be complete even when the work is ordinary and no human eye rewards it.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist the counterfeit charity that calls correction unkind while leaving souls in danger. 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 watchful expectation 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. Receive obscurity and lack of recognition as a school of self-forgetfulness, not as permission for discouragement. Complete every duty faithfully, giving the least-noticed duty the same care under Our Lady's gaze, and leave its value entirely to God.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

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Your Resolution Before God

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Offer the day's Ember observance and pray the Rosary with the goal of completing all three traditional sets of mysteries for ordinands, seminarians, and missionary conversions.

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What appears hidden or cut down remains fruitful when rooted in God's promise.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“Fight strongly therefore against all sins, and dread not overmuch, although thou be encumbered by an evil custom, for that evil custom may be overcome with a good custom.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 21, p. 35

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Habit is formed by repeated consent. Under grace, a small faithful act repeated daily becomes a defense against the sin that once seemed immovable.

Do not wait for a dramatic conversion of temperament. Grace commonly asks for the next contrary act: silence instead of complaint, custody instead of curiosity, prayer instead of brooding, prompt duty instead of delay. Repeated fidelity clears a path by which the will learns to move more readily toward God.

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Today's Practice

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Oppose your recurring bad habit with its contrary good acts throughout the day.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Thank God for the hidden graces of the day. Ask Our Lady to teach you to treasure what Heaven sees rather than what the world applauds.

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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 Root of Jesse, come to deliver us and delay not; strengthen Thy Church and raise up faithful ministers for her altars.

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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 Speaking the Truth in Charity\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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