Day: November 27, 2019

Saint Catherine Labouré

Virgin, Visionary
(1806-1876)

Saint Catherine Zoé Labouré was born in a small village of France in 1806, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer who had at one time wanted to become a priest, and his very Christian wife. Catherine, the ninth of the eleven living children, lost her mother when she was only nine years old and had to abandon school to go to live with an aunt, accompanied by her younger sister. Two years later she was recalled to take charge of the household, because the older children had all left, one to become a Sister of Saint Vincent de Paul, the others to marry or seek a living elsewhere. Continue reading →

Gratitude to God

CHRIST tells you:

MY CHILD, all things were made by Me, and without Me nothing can exist. I am the center of all existence and the source of all truth. In your daily life you must love truth. I am pleased with the honest man, the man who lives his life according to the truth. Face facts and admit them in your thoughts, words, and actions. Continue reading →

TRIUMPH

I.
JESUS VEILED, in His own great mystery of love, offered by our priests, dwelling on our altars, feeding our souls,—–this is the sacred and venerable truth which we are now about to consider. The wisdom of the Cherubim cannot fathom the depths of this adorable Sacrament, neither can the burning love of the Seraphim adequately praise the inventions of compassion which are contained therein. Nevertheless it is our duty as well as our privilege to look into this mystery. It is our daily Sacrifice, and our perpetual Food, and our constant adoration: and the more we know of it the greater will be our love of that most dear Lord whose veiled Presence we possess therein; and to know Jesus a little more and then to love Him a little more, let the little be ever so little,—–is it not worth a long life of sadness and of care? Mother Church will give us her hand in traversing these mysterious regions of Divine Truth. She will set holy doctors round about our path, like so many guardian Angels, to keep us from going astray, and to tell us the right thoughts to think and the right words to use; while she herself, by many a touching ceremony, and many a deep wise rubric, will fill us full of sacred fear and of that awe-stricken reverence which befits the enquiry into so deep a mystery. The voice of her great son St. Thomas Aquinas still lives in her office, now with a single antiphon unlocking whole abysses of Scripture, and now in almost supernatural hymns uniting the strictness of dogma with a sweetness and a melody more like echoes of Heaven than mere poetry of earth. Jesus Veiled! Let us kneel down before Him in adoring-awe, while our Mother teaches us His beauty, and His sweetness, and His goodness, and His nearness. When we think we know Him we shall not know the half, and when we speak of Him we shall stammer as children do, and when our hearts are hot with love of Him, they will be cold in comparison of the love which is His due. Continue reading →