The Daily Pilgrimage
“Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways.” — Proverbs 8:32
Daily formation
2026-02-13
Receive the day as a child of Holy Mother Church. Beneath Our Lady's care, magnify Christ, obey God's commandments, fulfill the duties of your state in life, die to self, trust divine Providence, resist error, and return the whole day to God.
Holy Mother Church gathers her children around the Sacred Calendar, feeds them with truth, warns them against what wounds the soul, and teaches them to walk faithfully toward their heavenly home.
“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.”
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Feria of Septuagesima
City of God in Exile
Feria of Septuagesima
2026-02-13 - Septuagesima - Feria - violet
Today
Feria of Septuagesima
Today in the City of God
Truth
Valid Sacraments Are a Grave Priority
The faithful must seek valid sacraments with prudence, sacrifice, and holy seriousness, without inventing sacraments or despising them.
Practice
Faithful obedience to the grace of the present day.
Thank God for natural goods and order their use to grace and truth.
Offering
To Jesus through Mary
Choose Our Lady freely as Queen and Mistress, offering the loving will beneath the sovereignty God has granted her by grace.
The Pilgrim's Devotional Rhythm
Keep this month and this weekday in prayer.
The month's intention and the weekday remembrance gather the pilgrim's prayer into the devotional rhythm of the Church. In harmony with today's Mass, feast, and duties, they teach him to receive ordinary time from God and return it to Him in honor and intercession.
February intention
The Holy Family
At Nazareth, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph show how hidden duties become holy when they are performed in obedience and charity. This month asks the pilgrim to carry the order of Nazareth into his own home.
Intention
For Catholic homes, the preservation of marriage and family life, and families divided by sin, error, absence, or sorrow.
A faithful act
Perform your ordinary household duties promptly and without complaint for the good of those entrusted to you.
Prayer
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, order our homes in truth, purity, obedience, and peace.
Friday remembrance
The Passion and Sacred Heart of Jesus
Friday keeps Calvary before the Christian soul. Unite the day's labor and suffering to the Passion of Christ, remembering that His Sacred Heart was opened for sinners and that love proves itself by sacrifice and obedience.
Intention
In reparation for sin; for the conversion of sinners; and for those who suffer, are persecuted, or will die this day.
A faithful act
Keep the Church's Friday abstinence and add hidden self-denial in memory of the Passion.
Prayer
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, through Thy bitter Passion, have mercy on us and on poor sinners.
Good Morning, Pilgrim
Receive this day as a child of Holy Mother Church.
The Church does not leave the faithful to pass through time as though days were neutral. This observance teaches the soul to receive the day under grace, to remember what God has done, and to let sacred time order study, prayer, and perseverance.
Choose Our Lady freely as Queen and Mistress under Christ, placing the entire loving will beneath her maternal formation.
Formation in True Devotion - Day 76: Fundamental Truths of True Devotion
“Is it not reasonable that amongst so many slaves of constraint, there should be some of love, who of their own good will, in the quality of slaves, should choose Mary for their mistress?”
St. Louis de Montfort contrasts constraint with love. Our Lady's universal queenship exists by God's gift; the devout soul recognizes it willingly and gives her the heart. This voluntary spiritual belonging never authorizes coercion, passivity before abuse, or obedience to any sinful human command. It is the free response of charity to God's order.
Choose her governance concretely. Let her Magnificat govern praise, her fiat govern decisions, her purity govern senses, her pondering govern memory, her flight into Egypt govern prudence, her presence at Cana govern intercession, and her station beneath the Cross govern perseverance. A loving subject imitates the Queen.
Ora — Begin with Prayer
Offer the day before spending it
Prayer gives the day its right beginning and its right end. Before work, conversation, news, or distraction claims the mind, adore the Blessed Trinity and offer every prayer, work, joy, suffering, and temptation to Jesus through Mary. Ask your Guardian Angel for help, and place the souls and needs entrusted to you beneath God's will.
Begin simply. Make the Morning Offering through the hands of Our Lady. Pray the Three Hail Marys for purity and final perseverance, ask your Guardian Angel to govern the senses and imagination, and name the soul or intention for which today's prayers and sacrifices will be offered. Do not rush these acts merely because they are familiar; let them place the whole day beneath God before the world begins to claim it.
O Lord, bless every natural good, but do not let me confuse it with the life of grace. Draw my family, my work, and my affections beneath the Catholic Faith.
Quote of the Day
“Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”
Plain-language help for today - 3 unfamiliar terms
- Septuagesima
- the first Sunday of the traditional pre-Lenten season; it begins the Church's gradual preparation for the fasting and penance of Lent.
- Feria
- a weekday without a higher feast of its own; its prayers usually follow the current liturgical season.
- Supernatural
- arising from God's grace and directed toward eternal life, above what unaided human nature can produce.
Walk with Holy Mother Church
Holy Mother Church has already begun praying. Enter her prayer.
Today the Roman year keeps Feria of Septuagesima. Receive the observance from the Church's hands: first understand what is commemorated, then let its doctrine and worship shape the day.
Roman Martyrology
February 13
At Antioch, the holy prophet Agabus, of whom mention is made by St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles. — At Ravenna, in the time of the emperor Decius, and the governor Quinctian, the Saints Fusca, virgin, and her nurse, Maura, who endured many afflictions, were transpierced with a sword, and thus ended their martyrdom. — At Meletine, in Armenia, in the persecution of the same Decius, St. Polyeuctus, martyr, who, after many sufferings, obtained the crown of martyrdom. — At Lyons, St. Julian, martyr. — At Todi, St. Benignus, martyr. — At Rome, pope St. Gregory II., who strenuously opposed the impiety of Leo the Isaurian, and sent St. Boniface to preach the Gospel in Germany. — At Angers, the demise of the holy bishop Lucinius, a man venerable for his sanctity. — At Lyons, St. Stephen, bishop and confessor. — At Kieti, the abbot St. Stephen, a man of wonderful patience, at whose death, as is related by the blessed pope Gregory, the holy angels were present and visible to all. — At Prato, in Tuscany, St. Catharine de Ricci, a Florentine virgin, of the Order of St. Dominic, replenished with heavenly gifts, whom pope Benedict XIV. inscribed on the catalogue of holy virgins. She died rich in virtues and merits on the 2d of this month, but her festival is celebrated on this day.
The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference
Valid Sacraments Are a Grave Priority
Remain here for a little while. Receive today's Catholic truth as a child of Holy Mother Church; let it judge the heart, strengthen the will, and become an act offered to God.
The Church places this truth before you today: The faithful must seek valid sacraments with prudence, sacrifice, and holy seriousness, without inventing sacraments or despising them. 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. Families often move for work, schools, or safety. The sacraments are a higher good, and should weigh heavily in practical decisions when God makes such a move possible.
The grace to be practiced is Faithful obedience to the grace of the present day, drawn from the daily rule of fidelity. 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 willing submission by imitating Mary's virtues across every decision, duty, temptation, relationship, sorrow, and act of worship.
There is also an enemy to recognize: Resist home-alone despair when it becomes settled indifference to seeking valid sacraments. 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 faithful obedience to the grace of the present day 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 the proud demand to remain self-governing while preserving all duties, prudence, and rightful resistance to sin or abuse. Let Our Lady's dispositions govern the full day and direct every act toward the honor and service of Jesus Christ.
The Church's witness
This truth manifests the Church's mark of holy. The witness placed beside it today is St. Charles Borromeo.
Your resolution before God
Thank God for natural goods and order their use to grace and truth.
Natural kindness is not the same as supernatural fidelity.
Carry this word quietly. Return to it when distraction, temptation, or discouragement begins to scatter the soul.
Novena in Progress
Prepare before the feast arrives.
The Church teaches souls to prepare. A novena trains desire, steadies intention, and prevents a feast from arriving as a mere date on the calendar.
Day 6 of 9
Preparing for Holy Face of Jesus on
Novena to the Holy Face
Petition
Ask for reparation, reverence, hatred of blasphemy, and love for the suffering Face of Christ before Lent begins.
A Faithful Act
Offer the day's prayers, sacrifices, and duties in reparation for blasphemy, irreverence, false worship, and sins against the first three commandments.
The Little Rule of Fidelity
Keep the day within prayer.
These anchors do not change because the soul needs a stable rule more than a daily novelty. Open them when you are learning the rule or when your ordinary prayer has begun to loosen.
Show today's prayer and duty anchors
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.
The Pilgrim's Mirror
How shall I imitate Christ today?
“Learn now to die to the world, that thou mayest then live with Christ.”
Christian death to self is not despair but preparation for life with Christ. Refuse the command of every attachment that draws you from God's will, beginning with the strongest.
The world tells you to preserve every comfort and construct an identity from passing things. Christ teaches you to travel lightly toward eternity. You need not despise God's gifts; receive them gratefully, but practice being able to surrender them when His will, charity, or duty requires it.
Today's Practice
Accept unnoticed sacrifices without seeking relief or recognition.
Before Night Falls
Return the completed day to God.
Give thanks before measuring the day by feeling or visible success. Ask light to see faults without discouragement, make an Act of Contrition, forgive injuries, and place tomorrow beneath divine Providence.
Examine whether you chose her maternal rule in conduct or honored her verbally while allowing appetite and self-will to reign.
- 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?
Go Now, Pilgrim
Walk faithfully. Pray attentively. Bear your cross willingly. Love God above all things.
Holy Mother Church has gathered you around her prayer and truth; now carry what you have received into the duties of your state.
When this day is finished, may you have laid one more stone in the City of God.
You do not walk alone: remain beneath Our Lady's care as she leads you toward her Divine Son and the Heavenly Jerusalem.
God willing, we shall meet again at tomorrow's pilgrimage.
Source notes for this pilgrimage
Martyrology: The Roman Martyrology, Baltimore, 1916, John Murphy Company; local raw text lines 1888-1921.
Pilgrim's Mirror: Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated by Richard Whitford, edited by Wilfrid Raynal, O.S.B. (Mount Vernon, N.Y.: Peter Pauper Press, c. 1947). Today's passage is at Book I, chapter 23, p. 41.
Marian formation: St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, translated by Fr. Frederick William Faber, 1941 Company of Mary edition, imprimatur September 26, 1949. Today's passage is at True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 76. The supplied 2010 PDF is used only as a digital transcription of that pre-1955 edition.
- Devotional rhythm: St. Andrew Daily Missal, Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B., 1953 edition; proper Mass or devotion named in this entry.
- Devotional rhythm: Luke 2:51-52, Douay-Rheims.
- Devotional rhythm: John 19:30-37, Douay-Rheims.
- Faith point: Roman Catechism, treatment of the sacraments.
- Faith point: Council of Trent, canons on the sacraments.
- Marian atmosphere and imitation: Luke 1:38, 46-49; Luke 2:19; John 2:5; John 19:25-27; and John 3:30, Douay-Rheims.
- Authority and revolt: Exodus 5:2, Douay-Rheims.
- Daily examen: St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, Particular and Daily Examen.