{"ok":true,"date":"2028-12-22","dateKey":"12-22","liturgicalDay":"Advent Ember Day","rank":"Non-privileged Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"Because it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy.","author":"Holy Scripture","source":"1 Peter 1:16, Original Douay-Rheims","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#be-ye-holy","category":"Confidence and Daily Self-Denial"},"season":"Advent","novenas":[{"title":"Christmas Novena","feast":"Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ","day":7,"totalDays":9,"startIsoDate":"2028-12-16","feastIsoDate":"2028-12-25","dayTitle":null,"meditation":null,"intention":"Prepare the soul and household to receive the King in humility, adoration, and Catholic faith.","preparatoryPrayer":null,"prayerOfTheChurch":null,"prayer":null,"practice":"Keep silence and simplicity wherever they prepare the soul and household for the Christ Child.","conclusion":null,"prayerLink":null,"sources":[]}],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Advent Ember Day - 2028-12-22","previewText":"Advent Ember Day. 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\nTHE DAILY PILGRIMAGE\n\"Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.\" - Proverbs 8:32\n\"Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom. [...] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.\" - Luke 12:32-34\nAdvent Ember Day\n2028-12-22 - Advent - Non-privileged Feria - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nMystical Body of Christ: the Church understood as a living body whose head is Christ and whose baptized members are united to Him and to one another by grace.\nClergy or cleric: the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.\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.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nThe nations long for unity while resisting the King in whom alone true unity is possible. Christ does not join men by treating truth and error as equal; He makes one people by one Faith, one Baptism, and life in His Mystical Body. Pray for conversions and refuse every counterfeit peace purchased by silence about His rights. Ask the Holy Ghost to produce the likeness of Jesus Christ in your soul through His faithful Spouse. Invoke the Holy Ghost and ask Him to reproduce in you the dispositions He formed so perfectly in Our Lady.\n\n\"This is the reason why He, the Holy Ghost, the more He finds Mary, His dear and indissoluble Spouse, in any soul, becomes the more active and mighty in producing Jesus Christ in that soul, and that soul in Jesus Christ.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 20\n\nThe Holy Ghost alone is the divine Sanctifier. Our Lady is wholly His creature and faithful Spouse. Her presence in a soul means that her faith, humility, purity, obedience, prayer, and charity are welcomed there; these dispositions make room for His work rather than resisting it through pride and self-will.\n\nDo not ask merely for Marian feelings. Ask for Marian dispositions throughout the day. The true measure is whether Christ is being formed: whether His truth governs the mind, His commandments govern the will, His charity governs conduct, and His Cross governs the use of suffering.\n\nPRACTICE\nPray the Creed for the conversion of those outside the Church and speak of their souls with truth and charity.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"Because it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy.\"\nHoly Scripture, 1 Peter 1:16, Original Douay-Rheims\n\nNOVENA IN PROGRESS\nChristmas Novena - Day 7 of 9\n\nPreparing for Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ on 2028-12-25.\n\nPETITION\nPrepare the soul and household to receive the King in humility, adoration, and Catholic faith.\n\nA FAITHFUL ACT\nKeep silence and simplicity wherever they prepare the soul and household for the Christ Child.\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - December 22\nAt Rome, between the two bay -trees on the Lavican road, the birthday of thirty holy martyrs, who were ajl on one day crownd with martyrdom, in the persecution of Diocletian. — In the same city, St. Flavian, ex-prefect, who, under Julian the Apostate, was condemned to be branded for Christ, and banished to Aquae Taurinae, where he gave up his soul to God in prayer. — At Ostia, the holy martyrs Demetrius, Honoratus and Florus. — At Alexandria, the holy martyr Ischyrion. Because he dispised all the cruelties they made him suffer to force him to sacrifice to idols, they transpierced his bowels with a sharp-pointed stake, and thus put him to death. — In Egypt, the Saint Chseremon, bishop of Nilopolis, and many other martyrs. Some of them fled whilst the persecution of Decius was raging, and wandering in different directions through deserts, were killed by wild beasts; others perished by famine, cold and sickness; others again were murdered by barbarians and robbers, and thus all were crowned with a glorious martyrdom. — At Nicomedia, St. Zeno, soldier, who derided Diocletian for sacrificing to Ceres, wherefore he had his jawbones fractured, his teeth plucked out and his head struck off.\n\nTODAY'S SAINT OR FEAST\nThe Advent Ember Day\nThe winter fast of expectation and ordination prayer.\nThe Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of expectation with fasting, prayer, and supplication for the Church's ministers.\nThey teach that preparation for Christmas must include purification. The Church asks the Lord of the harvest for holy laborers and asks that her own children be made ready for the coming King.\nLet the Ember fast make Advent serious without making it gloomy. The King is near, and the Church prepares with prayer.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nThe fast of expectation.\nMatins - Advent Ember Day\n- The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers.\n- Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.\nPrepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Advent Ember Day is part of the Church's daily teaching. It should not be read as a list of isolated facts. In the Divine Office, Scripture, the lives of the saints, doctrine, and the Church's prayer are placed together so that the mind learns what the Church remembers and the heart learns how a Catholic ought to judge and live.\nToday's witness is gathered under The fast of expectation.. Its first point is this: The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.\nThe practical instruction is: Prepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits. 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\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 Purified expectation and prayer for the Church, 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 interior docility by promptly following grace and rejecting the resistance of pride, impurity, resentment, and self-will.\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 purified expectation and prayer for the Church 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. Allow contradiction and sacrifice to uncover what in you still resists conformity to Jesus Christ. Perform every duty with Mary's faith, recollection, obedience, purity of intention, and charity so that Christ may govern the whole day.\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: Pray the Creed for the conversion of those outside the Church and speak of their souls with truth and charity.\nCarry this word: The unity of mankind is found under Christ the King, never above or apart from Him.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"My son, be waking and diligent in the service of God, and think oft wherefore thou art come, and why thou hast forsaken the world.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 25, p. 45\nFervor is not religious excitement. It is the awakened will that remembers its end and returns to duty when nature grows sluggish. You were created to know, love, and serve God and thereby attain eternal life; every lesser purpose must remain beneath this one.\n\nRecall why you began to seek a more faithful Catholic life. Then ask what has cooled: prayer postponed, sacrifice avoided, truth softened, or daily duty performed without love. Do not attempt to recover everything through emotion. Renew the next act, and let diligence carry the soul where feeling does not.\nToday's Practice: Renew aloud the purpose of your life before God, then complete the duty you have most resisted.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nExamine which dispositions resembled Mary and which resisted the Holy Ghost's work of forming Christ in you.\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 King of the nations and desire of all, come and save man whom Thou hast formed from the earth; bring wandering souls into Thy one fold.\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=2028-12-22&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2028-12-22&entered=1\nBrowse the Formation Index: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch/formation?entered=1","html":"\n\n \n \n \n City of God in Exile: Advent Ember Day - 2028-12-22\n \n \n
\n Advent Ember Day. 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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\n \"City\n
\n

City of God in Exile

\n

“Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.”

\n

Proverbs 8:32

\n

Advent Ember Day

\n

2028-12-22 - Advent - Non-privileged Feria - violet

\n
\n
\n
“Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom. […] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Luke 12:32–34
\n \n
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Plain-Language Guide for Today

\n
\n
Mystical Body of Christ
\n
the Church understood as a living body whose head is Christ and whose baptized members are united to Him and to one another by grace.
\n
Clergy or cleric
\n
the Church's ordained ministers; a cleric is a deacon, priest, or bishop.
\n
Ordination
\n
the sacrament by which a baptized man is made a deacon, priest, or bishop and receives the grace and authority needed for that ministry.
\n
\n \n
\n

Today in the Roman Year

\n

The nations long for unity while resisting the King in whom alone true unity is possible. Christ does not join men by treating truth and error as equal; He makes one people by one Faith, one Baptism, and life in His Mystical Body. Pray for conversions and refuse every counterfeit peace purchased by silence about His rights.

Ask the Holy Ghost to produce the likeness of Jesus Christ in your soul through His faithful Spouse.

Invoke the Holy Ghost and ask Him to reproduce in you the dispositions He formed so perfectly in Our Lady.

“This is the reason why He, the Holy Ghost, the more He finds Mary, His dear and indissoluble Spouse, in any soul, becomes the more active and mighty in producing Jesus Christ in that soul, and that soul in Jesus Christ.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 20

The Holy Ghost alone is the divine Sanctifier. Our Lady is wholly His creature and faithful Spouse. Her presence in a soul means that her faith, humility, purity, obedience, prayer, and charity are welcomed there; these dispositions make room for His work rather than resisting it through pride and self-will.

Do not ask merely for Marian feelings. Ask for Marian dispositions throughout the day. The true measure is whether Christ is being formed: whether His truth governs the mind, His commandments govern the will, His charity governs conduct, and His Cross governs the use of suffering.

Pray the Creed for the conversion of those outside the Church and speak of their souls with truth and charity.

\n
\n \n \n
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Quote of the Day

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“Because it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy.”
\n

Holy Scripture, 1 Peter 1:16, Original Douay-Rheims

\n
\n \n
\n

Novena in Progress

\n
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Day 7 of 9

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Christmas Novena

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

\n \n \n \n

Petition

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

\n \n \n

A Faithful Act

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

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Roman Martyrology - December 22

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At Rome, between the two bay -trees on the Lavican road, the birthday of thirty holy martyrs, who were ajl on one day crownd with martyrdom, in the persecution of Diocletian. — In the same city, St. Flavian, ex-prefect, who, under Julian the Apostate, was condemned to be branded for Christ, and banished to Aquae Taurinae, where he gave up his soul to God in prayer. — At Ostia, the holy martyrs Demetrius, Honoratus and Florus. — At Alexandria, the holy martyr Ischyrion. Because he dispised all the cruelties they made him suffer to force him to sacrifice to idols, they transpierced his bowels with a sharp-pointed stake, and thus put him to death. — In Egypt, the Saint Chseremon, bishop of Nilopolis, and many other martyrs. Some of them fled whilst the persecution of Decius was raging, and wandering in different directions through deserts, were killed by wild beasts; others perished by famine, cold and sickness; others again were murdered by barbarians and robbers, and thus all were crowned with a glorious martyrdom. — At Nicomedia, St. Zeno, soldier, who derided Diocletian for sacrificing to Ceres, wherefore he had his jawbones fractured, his teeth plucked out and his head struck off.

\n
\n \n \n \n \n
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Today's Saint or Feast

\n

The Advent Ember Day

\n

The winter fast of expectation and ordination prayer.

\n

The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of expectation with fasting, prayer, and supplication for the Church's ministers.

They teach that preparation for Christmas must include purification. The Church asks the Lord of the harvest for holy laborers and asks that her own children be made ready for the coming King.

\n

Let the Ember fast make Advent serious without making it gloomy. The King is near, and the Church prepares with prayer.

\n
\n \n \n \n
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Breviary Witness

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The fast of expectation.

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Matins - Advent Ember Day

\n \n
    \n
  • The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers.
  • Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.
    • \n
\n

Prepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits.

\n

Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Advent Ember Day is part of the Church's daily teaching. It should not be read as a list of isolated facts. In the Divine Office, Scripture, the lives of the saints, doctrine, and the Church's prayer are placed together so that the mind learns what the Church remembers and the heart learns how a Catholic ought to judge and live.

Today's witness is gathered under The fast of expectation.. Its first point is this: The Advent Ember Days sanctify the season of waiting with fasting and prayer for the Church and her ministers. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness joins Our Lady's expectant purity to the Church's supplication, asking that Christ find His people ready.

The practical instruction is: Prepare for Christmas by prayer that costs something. The King is near, and the Church fasts while she waits. 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
    \n
  • 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?
    • \n
\n
\n \n \n
\n

The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

\n

The Church Suffers Without Ceasing to Be the Church

\n

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 Purified expectation and prayer for the Church, 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 interior docility by promptly following grace and rejecting the resistance of pride, impurity, resentment, and self-will.

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 purified expectation and prayer for the Church 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. Allow contradiction and sacrifice to uncover what in you still resists conformity to Jesus Christ. Perform every duty with Mary's faith, recollection, obedience, purity of intention, and charity so that Christ may govern the whole day.

\n

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

\n

Your Resolution Before God

\n

Pray the Creed for the conversion of those outside the Church and speak of their souls with truth and charity.

\n
The unity of mankind is found under Christ the King, never above or apart from Him.
\n
\n \n
\n

The Pilgrim's Mirror

\n

How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“My son, be waking and diligent in the service of God, and think oft wherefore thou art come, and why thou hast forsaken the world.”
\n

Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 25, p. 45

\n \n

Fervor is not religious excitement. It is the awakened will that remembers its end and returns to duty when nature grows sluggish. You were created to know, love, and serve God and thereby attain eternal life; every lesser purpose must remain beneath this one.

Recall why you began to seek a more faithful Catholic life. Then ask what has cooled: prayer postponed, sacrifice avoided, truth softened, or daily duty performed without love. Do not attempt to recover everything through emotion. Renew the next act, and let diligence carry the soul where feeling does not.

\n

Today's Practice

\n

Renew aloud the purpose of your life before God, then complete the duty you have most resisted.

\n
\n \n
\n

Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

\n

Examine which dispositions resembled Mary and which resisted the Holy Ghost's work of forming Christ in you.

\n \n
    \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
\n
\n \n
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Prayer

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O King of the nations and desire of all, come and save man whom Thou hast formed from the earth; bring wandering souls into Thy one fold.

\n
\n \n
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Daily Rule for the Pilgrim

\n

A brief rule to keep every day:

\n

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

\n

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.

\n
\n \"The\n
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