The Daily Pilgrimage

Good Morning, Pilgrim

Receive this day from God.

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 the day for God's glory through Our Lady, surrendering every demand for reward, recognition, consolation, success, or ease.

Formation in True Devotion - Day 110: Five Marks of True Devotion

“Lastly, true devotion to our Blessed Lady is disinterested; that is to say, it inspires the soul not to seek itself but God only, [...] A true client of Mary does not serve that august Queen from a spirit of lucre and interest, nor for its own good, whether temporal, corporal, or spiritual; but exclusively because she merits to be served, and God alone in her.”
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, no. 110

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, teach fathers, mothers, pastors, rulers, and children to receive authority as service beneath Thee, not as power against Thee.

Quote of the Day

“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess GOD in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.”
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of a Holy Life, Fourth Conversation

Keep this word in the Wisdom Treasury

Walk with the Church

The Church has already begun praying. Enter her prayer.

Today the Roman year keeps Feria of Lent. Receive the observance as the Church gives it: first understand what is commemorated, then let its doctrine and worship shape the day.

Roman Martyrology

March 16

At Rome, the martyrdom of the deacon St. Cyriacus, who, after a long imprisonment, was covered with melted pitch and stretched on the rack, to have his limbs distended with ropes, was beaten with clubs, and finally beheaded with Largus, Smaragdus, and twenty others, by order of Maximian. Their feast, however, is kept on the 8th of August, the day on which their bodies were taken up by the blessed pope Marcellus and reverently entombed. — At Aquileia, in the time of the emperor Numerian and the governor Beronius, the birthday of the holy bishop Hilary, and the deacon Tatian, who terminated their martyrdom with Felix, Largus, and Denis, after being subjected to the rack and other tortures. — In Lycaonia, the holy martyr Papas, who was scourged for the Christian faith, torn with iron hooks, then compelled to walk with shoes pierced with nails, and finally bound to a barren tree. In leaving this world to go to God, he rendered the tree fruitful. — At Anazarbum, in Cilicia, under the governor Marcian, the martyr St. Julian, who was a long time tortured, then put into a sack with serpents, and cast into the sea. — At Ravenna, St. Agapitus, bishop and confessor. — At Cologne, St. Heribert, a bishop, celebrated for sanctity. — At Clermont, in Auvergne, the demise of St. Patrick, bishop. — In Syria, St. Abraham, hermit, whose life has been written by the blessed deacon Ephrem.

Learn from Today's Saint or Feast

The Lenten Feria

The Church's daily school of penance.

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.

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

Breviary Witness for the Day

The daily discipline of the forty days.

Matins - Feria of Lent

• 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.

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.