{"ok":true,"date":"2030-12-17","dateKey":"12-17","liturgicalDay":"Feria of Advent","rank":"Feria","color":"violet","quoteOfTheDay":{"text":"They shall put you out of the synagogues.","author":"Our Lord Jesus Christ","source":"John 16:2, Douay-Rheims","category":"Truth: Christ and His Church"},"season":"Advent","novenas":[{"title":"Christmas Novena","feast":"Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ","day":2,"totalDays":9,"startIsoDate":"2030-12-16","feastIsoDate":"2030-12-25","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 - 2030-12-17","previewText":"Feria of Advent. Christ Is King Over Public Life. Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ.","plainText":"CITY OF GOD IN EXILE\nFeria of Advent\n2030-12-17 - Advent - Feria - violet\nPLAIN-LANGUAGE GUIDE FOR TODAY\nFeria: a weekday without a higher feast of its own; its prayers usually follow the current liturgical season.\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. Ask the Father to make you a living member of Christ beneath the maternal care of Mary. Renew your baptismal renunciation of Satan and your belonging to Jesus Christ, asking His Mother to guard that supernatural life.\n\n\"God the Father has communicated to Mary His fruitfulness, as far as a mere creature was capable of it, in order that He might give her the power to produce His Son, and all the members of His mystical Body.\"\nSt. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 17\n\nOur Lady's divine maternity is unique: she is Mother of the Incarnate Head according to His human nature. Her maternal office toward His members belongs to the order of grace. She does not replace baptism, faith, or the sacraments; she serves the supernatural life by which Christ forms His members.\n\nTo live as her child is therefore to live as a member of Christ. Refuse every devotion that leaves conduct unchanged. Ask Mary to protect the life of grace, obtain repentance after sin, and form in you the likeness of the Head to whom the whole Mystical Body belongs.\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\"They shall put you out of the synagogues.\"\nOur Lord Jesus Christ, John 16:2, Douay-Rheims\n\nNOVENA IN PROGRESS\nChristmas Novena - Day 2 of 9\nPreparing for Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ on 2030-12-25.\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\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\nChrist Is King Over Public Life\nThe Church places this truth before you today: Our Lord's kingship is not confined to private devotion. Men, families, laws, and nations are subject to His authority. 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 Church's Catholicity includes the public claim of Christ over all peoples, not merely the private consolation of believers.\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. Practice fidelity to grace by resisting every mortal sin and promptly correcting deliberate venial sin.\nThere is also an enemy to recognize: Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ. 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. Accept the discipline by which Christ conforms His members to the crucified Head. Fulfill all the duties of your state as a member of Christ whose conduct must honor the whole Mystical Body.\nThe Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of catholic; the witness placed beside it is Pope Pius XI.\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\"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\nExamine whether your conduct preserved the likeness of Christ or wounded His members, and seek contrition and amendment through Mary.\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\nAuthority and the Kingship of Christ: https://cityofgodinexile.com/authority-and-revolt/authority-the-modernist-revolt-against-the-kingship-of-christ?entered=1\nOpen this day in the Sacred Calendar: https://cityofgodinexile.com/sacred-calendar?date=2030-12-17&entered=1\nOpen this day's Daily Pilgrimage: https://cityofgodinexile.com/daily-dispatch?date=2030-12-17&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: Feria of Advent - 2030-12-17\n \n \n
\n Feria of Advent. Christ Is King Over Public Life. Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ.\n
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City of God in Exile

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Feria of Advent

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2030-12-17 - 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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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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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.

Ask the Father to make you a living member of Christ beneath the maternal care of Mary.

Renew your baptismal renunciation of Satan and your belonging to Jesus Christ, asking His Mother to guard that supernatural life.

“God the Father has communicated to Mary His fruitfulness, as far as a mere creature was capable of it, in order that He might give her the power to produce His Son, and all the members of His mystical Body.”

St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 17

Our Lady's divine maternity is unique: she is Mother of the Incarnate Head according to His human nature. Her maternal office toward His members belongs to the order of grace. She does not replace baptism, faith, or the sacraments; she serves the supernatural life by which Christ forms His members.

To live as her child is therefore to live as a member of Christ. Refuse every devotion that leaves conduct unchanged. Ask Mary to protect the life of grace, obtain repentance after sin, and form in you the likeness of the Head to whom the whole Mystical Body belongs.

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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“They shall put you out of the synagogues.”
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Our Lord Jesus Christ, John 16:2, Douay-Rheims

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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 2030-12-25.

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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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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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Christ Is King Over Public Life

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The Church places this truth before you today: Our Lord's kingship is not confined to private devotion. Men, families, laws, and nations are subject to His authority. 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 Church's Catholicity includes the public claim of Christ over all peoples, not merely the private consolation of believers.

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. Practice fidelity to grace by resisting every mortal sin and promptly correcting deliberate venial sin.

There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist secular liberalism, which treats society as though it could be rightly ordered without Christ. 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. Accept the discipline by which Christ conforms His members to the crucified Head. Fulfill all the duties of your state as a member of Christ whose conduct must honor the whole Mystical Body.

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The Church's witness: this truth manifests the Church's mark of catholic; the witness placed beside it is Pope Pius XI.

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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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“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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Examine whether your conduct preserved the likeness of Christ or wounded His members, and seek contrition and amendment through Mary.

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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 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 Authority and the Kingship of Christ\n
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Persevere, pilgrim.

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The gates remain open to the faithful.

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