The Daily Pilgrimage
Today in the City of God: calendar, Martyrology, Gospel, witness, prayer, and Catholic formation held together.
Daily formation
2027-09-17
Receive the day before spending it. Magnify Christ with Our Lady, obey God's commandments, fulfill the duties of your state in life, die to self, trust divine Providence, practice the virtues those duties require, resist error, and close the whole day beneath truth and mercy.
This page is meant to be read slowly and faithfully, so that every part of the present day may be ordered to God.
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Stigmata of St. Francis, Confessor
City of God in Exile
Stigmata of St. Francis, Confessor
2027-09-17 - Time after Pentecost - Double - white
Today
Stigmata of St. Francis, Confessor
Growth After Pentecost
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
Conformity to Christ Crucified.
Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.
Offering
To Jesus through Mary
Ask Our Lady to make Jesus Christ known in you as He ought to be known: believed, adored, obeyed, and loved.
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.
September intention
The Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Our Lady did not flee the Cross. By remembering her sorrows, the pilgrim learns compassion for the Passion of Christ, patience in affliction, and fidelity when consolation is withdrawn.
Intention
For those crushed by grief, for sinners at the hour of death, and for the grace to carry every cross without abandoning Christ.
A faithful act
Accept sorrows without murmuring and offer them with Our Lady for dying souls.
Prayer
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, keep us faithful beside the Cross of Jesus.
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 from God.
Pentecost does not end when the octave passes. Its fruit must remain in the soul: public confession of truth, docility to apostolic doctrine, courage before false authority, and charity strong enough to resist error without bitterness.
Profess faith in Jesus Christ as true God and true man, and ask His Mother to lead you into complete obedience to Him.
Formation in True Devotion - Day 293: Review and Deepening: True Praise beneath the Majesty of God
“Jesus Christ is not known as He ought to be.”
St. Louis de Montfort's grief is not that Our Lady receives too little attention as though she sought a kingdom apart from Christ. He grieves because ignorance of Mary's place accompanies an impoverished knowledge of Jesus. The Son is treated as an idea, a moral teacher, or a source of comfort rather than as the Incarnate King who came through her and demands the whole man.
Ask whether you know Christ only in the truths you prefer. To know Him as He ought to be known is to receive His divinity, His Cross, His Church, His commandments, His sacraments, His judgment, and His mercy without division. Let Mary uncover every partial or comfortable image of Jesus that must give way to the Catholic whole.
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, where Thou art forgotten, mocked, or coldly received, let me answer with prayer, penance, reverence, and love for Thy Sacred Heart.
Quote of the Day
“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
Plain-language help for today - 3 unfamiliar terms
- Octave
- an eight-day extension of a major feast, allowing the Church to continue praying over the same mystery.
- Cardinal
- a senior cleric of the Roman Church who advises the pope and, under the Church's law, ordinarily helps elect a successor.
- Passion of Christ
- the sufferings and death Jesus freely accepted for our salvation, from His agony in Gethsemane through His Crucifixion.
The full Breviary lessons preserve an older English translation. Read the modern explanation first; it identifies the people, event, and doctrine before the historical wording appears.
Today's Full Breviary Sermon or Proper Lesson
The servant visibly conformed to the wounds of his Lord.
Matins - Second Nocturn - Stigmata of St. Francis, Confessor
The complete appointed Breviary sermon or proper lessons verified for this observance are printed below. Where a Common supplies additional material, it is identified distinctly rather than presented as the proper text.
St. Bonaventure, Cardinal Bishop of Albano, Life of St. Francis, chapter 13
“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”
- The Breviary recounts St. Francis withdrawing to Mount Alvernia in fasting and prayer, where the Crucified appeared beneath the form of a seraph, one of the highest orders of angelic spirits.
- The sacred wounds manifest an interior conformity already formed by poverty, penance, humility, and burning love for Christ crucified.
- The feast prevents Franciscan simplicity from being detached from sacrifice: the servant resembles the Master through the Cross.
Let love become cruciform. St. Francis teaches poverty of spirit, penance, humility, recollection, and consent to bear the likeness of the suffering Christ.
Complete Breviary Text
Fourth Lesson - Prayer upon Mount Alverno
Francis being indeed a faithful servant and minister of Christ, about the space of two years before he gave back his spirit to heaven, withdrew himself into an high mountain apart, even that mountain which is called Mount Alverno, and began to fast for forty days to the honour of the Archangel Michael. To think of the things above gave him sweeter comfort than beforetime he was wont, and the hot longing for heaven was kindled in him, so that he began to feel that the gifts from above were poured forth upon him in such fulness as he had never felt before. The burning of his desire made his heart rise towards God like the heart of a seraph, and his tender answering love yearned to be changed into the likeness of Him Who hath so loved us that He was content to bear the Cross. And it was so that one morning early, about the time of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he was praying upon the side of the mountain, and there appeared unto him as it had been one of the Seraphim, having six wings, glorious and fiery, flying to him from heaven. It came therefore very swiftly, and stood in the air, hard by the man of God. He beheld then the appearance thereof, that it was not winged only, but crucified also. His hands and feet were stretched forth and nailed to a Cross. Twain of his wings were lifted up and joined one to the other over his head, and twain were stretched forth to fly withal, and with twain he wrapped around his body. When Francis saw it, he was sore amazed, and his soul was filled with sorrow and gladness, for the eyes of him that appeared were full of strange love and tenderness, so that he conceived great rejoicing thereat, but the nailing to the Cross was so exceedingly dreadful, that as he saw it, a sword of sorrow pierced his soul.
Fifth Lesson - Changed into the Likeness of Christ Crucified
Then He Whom he beheld with his bodily eyes, began to speak silently unto him in his heart, and he understood that albeit the deathless Seraphim cannot suffer or faint, this vision was nevertheless therefore set before him, that he might know that as a friend of Christ he was to be all changed into the likeness of Christ JESUS crucified, not by the martyrdom of the body, but by the fervour of the soul. Then they held together some sweet converse, as of a man with his friend, and the vision passed from him, but his heart was kindled inwardly with the fire of the Seraphim, and his body was outwardly changed into the likeness of Him Who was crucified, even as wax is softened by the fire and taketh the impression of the seal. From thenceforth there were in his hands and feet the marks of the nails. The heads of the nails were seen in the palms of his hands and on the insteps of his feet, and the points came out on the backs of his hands and the soles of his feet. In his right side also was a long raw wound, as though he had been pierced with a spear, from which wound his holy blood oftentimes ran and stained his shirt and breeches.
Sixth Lesson - The Marks Made by the Living God
Thereafter Francis was a new creature, famous for a new and awful sign. The holy marks of the Lord JESUS, whereon living man for twelve centuries had not been allowed to look, were his adornment. He came down from the mount bearing in himself the form of JESUS Crucified, not pourtrayed upon tables of stone or wood by the hand of any earthly craftsman, but drawn upon his flesh by the finger of the living God. The dying Seraph knew well that "it is good to keep close the secret of a king," (Tobit xii. 7,) and knowing the secret of his King, he strove as far as in him lay to keep the sacred marks hidden from men. Nevertheless, forasmuch as it is the will of the Lord God for His Own glory to make manifest the greatness of His Own works, He openly showed forth divers wonders through these wounds which He had Himself made in secret, so that the hidden and wondrous power of the marks might become known by the fame of the miracles. The foregoing marvellous but thoroughly witnessed facts, which were already spoken of in Papal documents with especial praise and joy, were made, by the pleasure of Pope Benedict XI., the subject of a yearly memorial, which was afterwards extended by Paul V. to the whole Church, in the hope of fanning in the hearts of the faithful the love of Christ Crucified.
Walk with the Church
The Church has already begun praying. Enter her prayer.
Today the Roman year keeps Stigmata of St. Francis, Confessor. Receive the observance as the Church gives it: first understand what is commemorated, then let its doctrine and worship shape the day.
Roman Martyrology
September 17
The commemoration of the Impression of the - Sacred Wounds which St. Francis, founder of the Order of Minorites, received, through a wonderful favor of God, in his hands, feet and side, on Mount Alvernia, in Tuscany. — At Rome, on the road to Tivoli, the birthday of St. Justin, priest and martyr, who distinguished himself by a glorious confession of the faith, during the persecution of Valerian and Gallienus. He buried the bodies of the blessed pontiff, Xystus, of Lawrence, Hippolytus, and many other saints, and finally consummated his martyrdom under Claudius. — Also, at Rome, the holy martyrs Narcissus and Crescentio. — In Phrygia, St. Ariadna, martyr, under the emperor Adrian. — In England, the holy martyrs Socrates and Stephen. — At Nevers, the holy martyrs Valerian, Macrinus, and Gordian. — At Autun, under the emperor Antoninus and the governor Valerian, St. Flocellus, a boy, who, after many sufferings, was torn to pieces by wild beasts, and thus won the crown of martyrs. — At Liege, blessed Lambert, bishop of Maestricht. Having, through zeal for religion, rebuked the royal family, he was undeservedly put to death by the guilty, and thus entered the court of the heavenly kingdom, to enjoy it forever. — At Saragossa, in Spain, St. Peter of Arbues, first inquisitor of the faith in the kingdom of Arragon, who received the palm of martyrdom by being barbarously massacred by apostate Jews, for defending courageously the Catholic faith, according to the duties of his office. He was canonized by Pius IX. in 1867. — The same day, St. Agathoclia, servant of an infidel woman, who was for a long time subjected by her to blows and other afflictions, that she might deny Christ. She was finally presented to the judge and cruelly lacerated, and as she persisted in confessing the faith, they cut off her tongue and threw her into the flames. — At Cordova, St. Columba, virgin and martyr. — At Milan, the departure from this world of St. Satyrus, confessor, whose distinguished merits are mentioned by his brother, St. Ambrose. — At Rome, in the persecution of Diocletian, St. Theodora, a matron, who carefully ministered to the martyrs. — At Bingen, in the diocese of Mayence, St. Hildegarde, virgin.
Learn from Today's Saint or Feast
The Stigmata of St. Francis
The wounds of Christ impressed upon the servant.
The Martyrology commemorates the sacred wounds which St. Francis received through a wonderful favor of God in his hands, feet, and side on Mount Alvernia.
This feast teaches that love of Christ Crucified is not decorative. The saint who embraces holy poverty and penance is conformed to the wounds of the Master.
Let the Stigmata sober and console you. Christ's friends are marked by love, and love becomes most real when it consents to the Cross.
The Pilgrim's Spiritual Conference
Valid Sacraments Are a Grave Priority
Remain here for a little while. The purpose is not to gather another fact, but to allow today's Catholic truth to 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 Conformity to Christ Crucified, 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 integrity of faith: receive Christ whole rather than selecting only what consoles or agrees with the age.
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 conformity to Christ Crucified 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 cost of belonging to the real Christ when the world offers a gentler counterfeit. Obey Christ's commandments today, beginning where feeling or human respect has encouraged delay.
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
Offer today's inconveniences in reparation for irreverence, false worship, and indifference.
Reparation answers public offense with hidden love.
Carry this word quietly. Return to it when distraction, temptation, or discouragement begins to scatter the soul.
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?
“Thou alone art the true refection of the soul, and he that worthily eateth Thee shall be partaker and heir of eternal glory.”
The Blessed Sacrament is not one devotion among many: it is Jesus Christ, the soul's true food. Let every Marian offering lead you more faithfully to her Eucharistic Son.
If you can assist at Mass and receive worthily, approach with recollection and hunger rather than habit. If you cannot, do not allow absence to become forgetfulness. Turn toward the tabernacle, confess your desire, and ask Our Lady to prepare in you a more faithful welcome for Jesus.
Today's Practice
Make a reverent Spiritual Communion, or prepare carefully for Holy Communion if you will receive today.
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 where you sought Christ's comfort while resisting His kingship, and ask pardon through the Sorrowful Mother.
- 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.
When this day is finished, may you have laid one more stone in the City of God.
You do not walk alone: remain beside the Blessed Virgin 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 9800-9856.
- Saint witness: St. Andrew Daily Missal, September 17.
- Saint witness: Roman Martyrology, 1916 Baltimore edition, September 17.
- Breviary witness: Roman Breviary, Matins lessons for September 17, Stigmata of St. Francis.
- Breviary witness: Roman Martyrology, 1916 Baltimore edition, September 17.
- Matins lesson: The Roman Breviary, translated by John, Marquess of Bute, 1908, vol. IV, Autumn, Second Nocturn for the Stigmata of St. Francis, lessons iv-vi, printed pp. 563-564.
- Matins lesson: Bute 1908 is used here as an accessible pre-Pius X Breviary witness and is cited distinctly from the 1936-1937 Benziger / Burns Oates edition.
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 IV, chapter 14, p. 203.
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. 13. 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 2:34-35 and John 19:25-27, 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.