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November 14 – SAINT GIOCONDO
“People didn’t make themselves, but they make bad deeds. What God made in them is good, because God made man to his image and likeness. But the evil that man worked by free choice, turning away from his author and creator and turning to wickedness, this God condemns in order to set man free; that is, God condemns what man has done, and God sets free what God himself has done.”
Sermon 23A

November 13 – ALL AUGUSTINIAN SAINTS
“Who would be ashamed to say, ‘I am unequal to God’? Assuredly you are. Or to say, ‘I am unequal to Christ’? Yes, you are unequal even to the mortal Christ. But Peter was what you are, the apostles and prophets were what you are. If you have no stomach for imitating your Lord, imitate your fellow servant. A whole marching column of servants has gone ahead, so there is no excuse for the lazy. Yet human weakness still complains: ‘I am not Peter’s equal, nor Paul’s.’ What, are you unequal to confessing the truth? Men of humble origin are crowned; the haughty are left with excuse. Finally, I must ask you: Are you unequal to boys? Even to girls?”
Sermon 325

November 12 – SAINT JOSAPHAT
“The bread which you can see on the altar, sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ. That cup, or rather what the cup contains, sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ. It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins. If you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive. You see, the apostle says, We, being many, are one loaf, one body. That’s how he explained the sacrament of the Lord’s table; one loaf, one body, is what we all are, many though we be.”
Sermon 227

November 11 – SAINT MARTIN OF TOURS
“Since Christ is the head of the Church, and the Church is his body, the whole Christ is both head and body. He has already risen again. So, we have our head in heaven. Our head is interceding for us; our head, sinless and deathless, is already placating God for our sins, so that we too, when we rise again at the end and are changed into heavenly glory, may follow our head. After all, where the head goes, there too go the other parts of the body. But while we are here, we are still parts of it; we must never despair, because we are going to follow our head.”
Sermon 137, 1

November 10 – SAINT LEO THE GREAT
“Now is the time of mercy, for us to correct ourselves; the time for judgment has not yet come. There is space, there’s room; we have sinned, let us correct ourselves. The journey is not yet over, the day has not yet drawn to a close, we have not yet breathed our last. There is no need to despair, which is worse than anything, because on account of those human and pardonable sins, the more frequent the more trivial they are. God has established in the Church set times for requesting mercy, a daily medicine of our saying Forgive us our debts, as we too forgive our debtors; so that washing our faces with these words we may share together in the body and blood of Christ.”
Sermon 17, 5

November 9
“The teacher of humility, who shared our weakness and gave us a share in his own divinity, came to earth in order to teach us the way, even to be the Way himself. It was his humility, above all else, that he impressed upon us. He willingly submitted to baptism at the hands of one of his servants, so that we might learn to confess our own sins and to become weak in order to be truly strong, repeating with the apostle: When I am weak, then I am strong.”
Exposition of the Psalms 58

November 8 – BLESSED AVELINO RODRIGUEZ & COMPANIONS, O.S.A.
“Dearly beloved, exult and rejoice on the days of the holy martyrs; pray that you may be able to follow in the footsteps of the martyrs. It isn’t, after all, the case that you are human beings and they weren’t; not, after all, the case that you were born, and they were born quite differently; I mean, they didn’t carry around flesh of a different kind from what you do. We are all from Adam, we are all trying to be in Christ.”
Sermon 273

November 7 – BLESSED GRATIA OF KOTOR, O.S.A.
“If a man in poor circumstances becomes a monk, he should not think that he is doing the same work as he did before, if in fact he has made the passage from a love of increasing his private possessions by even a little to the charity of the common life, in which he no longer looks to his own interests but to those of Jesus Christ. He has passed into the fellowship of those who have one soul and one heart intent on God, among whom no one calls anything his own but everything is held in common.”
On the Work of Monks

November 6 – AUGUSTINIAN HOLY SOULS
“It is inevitable that we should be sad when those we love desert us by dying. Although we know they are not leaving us forever, but that we who remain will follow them who have gone a little in advance of us; nevertheless, when that death our nature shrinks from seizes one we love, it strikes us in the very love we bear. That is why the Apostle did not tell us that we should not be saddened, but that we should not be saddened in the same way as those who have no hope. In the death of those who are close to us we experience both sadness at the necessity of losing them and hope of getting them back. By the former we are distressed, by the latter consoled.”
Sermon 172, 1-3