{"ok":true,"date":"2030-04-01","dateKey":"04-01","liturgicalDay":"Feria of Lent","rank":"Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"The beginning of wisdom, the fear of our Lord: and the knowledge of the holy, prudence.","author":"Holy Scripture","source":"Proverbs 9:10, Original Douay-Rheims","treasuryHref":"/wisdom#the-beginning-of-wisdom","category":"Wisdom and Holy Fear"},"season":"Lent","novenas":[],"octaveContexts":[],"subject":"City of God in Exile: Feria of Lent - 2030-04-01","previewText":"Feria of Lent. The Cross Is Daily. Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nFeria of Lent\n2030-04-01 - Lent - Feria - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nCompunction: sorrow for sin that pierces the heart and moves a person toward repentance rather than despair.\nProper Mass or prayers: the texts assigned specifically to a particular feast or day, rather than texts shared with many celebrations.\nFeria: a weekday without a higher feast of its own; its prayers usually follow the current liturgical season.\nTODAY IN THE ROMAN YEAR\nHumiliation, opposition, and penance do not mean that God has ceased to govern. Our Lord redeemed the world through His obedient suffering on the Cross. When Catholics accept unavoidable trials without sin, perform penance, and continue obeying the truth, those sufferings can humble pride and deepen fidelity rather than lead to despair. Offer Our Lady body, soul, temporal goods, spiritual goods, past, present, future, nature, grace, and glory without reserve. Renew the complete gift of body, soul, possessions, spiritual goods, time, relationships, labor, suffering, and future to Jesus through Mary.\n\n\"This devotion consists, then, in giving ourselves entirely and altogether to our Lady, in order to belong entirely and altogether to Jesus by her. We must give her; (1) our body, with all its senses and its members; (2) our soul, with all its powers; (3) the exterior goods of fortune, whether present or to come; (4) our interior and spiritual goods, which are our merits and our virtues, and our good works, past, present, and future.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 121\n\nTotal consecration admits no protected province. Body and senses, soul and faculties, present and future possessions, merits, virtues, and good works are entrusted so the person may belong entirely to Jesus through Mary. Ownership gives way to stewardship beneath God's commandments, Providence, and the obligations of state.\n\nThis breadth forbids both vague symbolism and selective surrender. Govern sight, hearing, speech, appetite, imagination, memory, intellect, will, time, money, home, labor, influence, prayer, penance, and suffering as consecrated goods. Eternity is the horizon, and belonging to Jesus through Mary is the reward sought.\n\nPRACTICE\nFulfill your ordinary duties promptly and offer them for the glory of God.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\"The beginning of wisdom, the fear of our Lord: and the knowledge of the holy, prudence.\"\nHoly Scripture, Proverbs 9:10, Original Douay-Rheims\n\nROMAN MARTYROLOGY - April 1\nAt Rome, the passion of St. Theodora, sister of the illustrious martyr Hermes, who underwent martyrdom in the time of the emperor Adrian, under the judge Aurelian, and was buried by the side of her brother, on the Salarian road, a short distance from the city. — The same day, St. Venantius, bishop and martyr. — In Egypt, the holy martyrs Victor and Stephen. — In Armenia, the holy martyrs Quinctian and Irenaeus. — At Constantinople, under the emperor Leo, St. Macarius, confessor, who ended his life in exile for the defence of the honor paid to sacred images. — At Grenoble, the bishop St. Hugh, who spent many years of his life in solitude, and departed for heaven, with a reputation for miracles. — At Amiens, the abbot St. Valery, whose tomb is made illustrious by frequent miracles.\n\nHIGHLIGHTED SAINT\nThe Lenten Feria\nThe Church's daily school of penance.\nThe Lenten feria is not empty time between Sundays. In the Roman rite, Lent gives proper Masses to the ferias, forming the faithful by daily penance, prayer, almsgiving, and conversion.\nThese weekdays teach that penance is not a mood but a discipline. The Church trains the whole man: appetite, speech, memory, habits, and the will turned back to God.\nDo not despise the ordinary Lenten weekday. Small faithful penance is one of the roads by which exile becomes pilgrimage.\nBREVIARY WITNESS\nThe daily discipline of the forty days.\nMatins - Feria of Lent\n- The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired.\n- Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.\nUse the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities.\nInstruction from the Breviary\nThe Breviary witness for Feria of Lent 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 daily discipline of the forty days.. Its first point is this: The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.\nThe practical instruction is: Use the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities. 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 Cross Is Daily\nThe Church places this truth before you today: The disciple of Christ must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Our Lord in obedience, penance, and perseverance. 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. Holiness is formed in ordinary fidelity before it is tested in public suffering.\nThe grace to be practiced is Daily penance and conversion, 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 total stewardship by using every natural, temporal, and spiritual good according to God's will and the duties of your state.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial. 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 daily penance and conversion 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. Surrender control, possessiveness, bodily indulgence, vanity, and every reserve that contradicts entire belonging to Jesus through Mary. Use every faculty, possession, opportunity, prayer, sacrifice, and duty as consecrated property ordered to God's glory and souls.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of holy; the witness placed beside it is St. Bede the Venerable.\nYour resolution before God: Fulfill your ordinary duties promptly and offer them for the glory of God.\nCarry this word: Grace is guarded by ordinary fidelity.\nTHE PILGRIM'S MIRROR\n\"As long as we live in this world we may not be fully without temptation.\"\nThomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 13, p. 21\nThe presence of temptation does not itself prove that you have consented or that prayer has failed. The Christian remains in warfare. Temptation humbles presumption, reveals the need for grace, and gives the will an occasion to prefer God in deed rather than merely in desire.\n\nDo not converse needlessly with the temptation. Call upon Jesus and Mary, leave the occasion when you can, turn the imagination toward something lawful, and perform the nearest duty. If you fall, repent promptly; do not let wounded pride delay your return to mercy.\nToday's Practice: Prepare a firm response for today's habitual temptation: an aspiration, departure from the occasion, and prompt return to duty.\nDAILY EXAMEN\nReview the full inventory of the gift, repent wherever self resumed ownership, and return everything without reserve.\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, strengthen the little duties of this day with Thy grace, that nothing entrusted to me may be wasted through negligence or vanity.\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\nTake Up Thy Cross Daily: https://cityofgodinexile.com/scripture-treasury/luke-9-23-deny-thyself-take-up-thy-cross-daily-and-the-standard-of-christ?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2030-04-01&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2030-04-01&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 Lent - 2030-04-01\n \n \n
\n Feria of Lent. The Cross Is Daily. Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Feria of Lent

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2030-04-01 - Lent - 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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Compunction
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sorrow for sin that pierces the heart and moves a person toward repentance rather than despair.
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Proper Mass or prayers
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the texts assigned specifically to a particular feast or day, rather than texts shared with many celebrations.
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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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Today in the Roman Year

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Humiliation, opposition, and penance do not mean that God has ceased to govern. Our Lord redeemed the world through His obedient suffering on the Cross. When Catholics accept unavoidable trials without sin, perform penance, and continue obeying the truth, those sufferings can humble pride and deepen fidelity rather than lead to despair.

Offer Our Lady body, soul, temporal goods, spiritual goods, past, present, future, nature, grace, and glory without reserve.

Renew the complete gift of body, soul, possessions, spiritual goods, time, relationships, labor, suffering, and future to Jesus through Mary.

“This devotion consists, then, in giving ourselves entirely and altogether to our Lady, in order to belong entirely and altogether to Jesus by her. We must give her; (1) our body, with all its senses and its members; (2) our soul, with all its powers; (3) the exterior goods of fortune, whether present or to come; (4) our interior and spiritual goods, which are our merits and our virtues, and our good works, past, present, and future.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 121

Total consecration admits no protected province. Body and senses, soul and faculties, present and future possessions, merits, virtues, and good works are entrusted so the person may belong entirely to Jesus through Mary. Ownership gives way to stewardship beneath God's commandments, Providence, and the obligations of state.

This breadth forbids both vague symbolism and selective surrender. Govern sight, hearing, speech, appetite, imagination, memory, intellect, will, time, money, home, labor, influence, prayer, penance, and suffering as consecrated goods. Eternity is the horizon, and belonging to Jesus through Mary is the reward sought.

Fulfill your ordinary duties promptly and offer them for the glory of God.

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Quote of the Day

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“The beginning of wisdom, the fear of our Lord: and the knowledge of the holy, prudence.”
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Holy Scripture, Proverbs 9:10, Original Douay-Rheims

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Roman Martyrology - April 1

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At Rome, the passion of St. Theodora, sister of the illustrious martyr Hermes, who underwent martyrdom in the time of the emperor Adrian, under the judge Aurelian, and was buried by the side of her brother, on the Salarian road, a short distance from the city. — The same day, St. Venantius, bishop and martyr. — In Egypt, the holy martyrs Victor and Stephen. — In Armenia, the holy martyrs Quinctian and Irenaeus. — At Constantinople, under the emperor Leo, St. Macarius, confessor, who ended his life in exile for the defence of the honor paid to sacred images. — At Grenoble, the bishop St. Hugh, who spent many years of his life in solitude, and departed for heaven, with a reputation for miracles. — At Amiens, the abbot St. Valery, whose tomb is made illustrious by frequent miracles.

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Highlighted Saint

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The Lenten Feria

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The Church's daily school of penance.

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The Lenten feria is not empty time between Sundays. In the Roman rite, Lent gives proper Masses to the ferias, forming the faithful by daily penance, prayer, almsgiving, and conversion.

These weekdays teach that penance is not a mood but a discipline. The Church trains the whole man: appetite, speech, memory, habits, and the will turned back to God.

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Do not despise the ordinary Lenten weekday. Small faithful penance is one of the roads by which exile becomes pilgrimage.

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Breviary Witness

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The daily discipline of the forty days.

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Matins - Feria of Lent

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  • The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired.
  • Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.
    • \n
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Use the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities.

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Instruction from the Breviary

The Breviary witness for Feria of Lent 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 daily discipline of the forty days.. Its first point is this: The Lenten ferias form the faithful through the Church's daily school of penance, in which conversion is practiced rather than merely admired. Its next point develops the lesson: Their witness is steady and practical: fasting, prayer, compunction, almsgiving, and obedience bring the soul back beneath the rule of Christ.

The practical instruction is: Use the ordinary weekday for conversion through repeated small acts of fasting, prayer, mercy, and obedience. A soul is often rebuilt by these quiet fidelities. 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?
    • \n
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The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference

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The Cross Is Daily

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The Church places this truth before you today: The disciple of Christ must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Our Lord in obedience, penance, and perseverance. 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. Holiness is formed in ordinary fidelity before it is tested in public suffering.

The grace to be practiced is Daily penance and conversion, 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 total stewardship by using every natural, temporal, and spiritual good according to God's will and the duties of your state.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist a comfortable religion that admires Christ while refusing self-denial. 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 daily penance and conversion 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. Surrender control, possessiveness, bodily indulgence, vanity, and every reserve that contradicts entire belonging to Jesus through Mary. Use every faculty, possession, opportunity, prayer, sacrifice, and duty as consecrated property ordered to God's glory and souls.

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

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Your Resolution Before God

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Fulfill your ordinary duties promptly and offer them for the glory of God.

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Grace is guarded by ordinary fidelity.
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The Pilgrim's Mirror

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How shall I imitate Christ today?

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“As long as we live in this world we may not be fully without temptation.”
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Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 13, p. 21

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The presence of temptation does not itself prove that you have consented or that prayer has failed. The Christian remains in warfare. Temptation humbles presumption, reveals the need for grace, and gives the will an occasion to prefer God in deed rather than merely in desire.

Do not converse needlessly with the temptation. Call upon Jesus and Mary, leave the occasion when you can, turn the imagination toward something lawful, and perform the nearest duty. If you fall, repent promptly; do not let wounded pride delay your return to mercy.

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Today's Practice

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Prepare a firm response for today's habitual temptation: an aspiration, departure from the occasion, and prompt return to duty.

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Daily Examen

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Three questions before night prayer

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Review the full inventory of the gift, repent wherever self resumed ownership, and return everything without reserve.

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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, strengthen the little duties of this day with Thy grace, that nothing entrusted to me may be wasted through negligence or vanity.

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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 Take Up Thy Cross Daily\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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