Category Archives: today

November 27 – SAINT VIRGILIO
“First and foremost, … remember the poor, so that what you withhold from yourselves by living more sparingly, you may deposit in the treasury of heaven. Let the hungry Christ receive what the fasting Christian receives less of. Let the self-denial of one who undertakes it willingly become the support of the one who has nothing. Let the voluntary want of the person who has plenty become the needed plenty of the person in want.”
Sermon 210.10.12

November 26 – SAINT CORRADO
“God proclaims a Sabbath for us. What kind of Sabbath? Consider first how it is to be observed. Our Sabbath has to be within, a thing of the heart. Many indeed are those who rest their bodies, but their conscience is in a state of turmoil … He, on the contrary, who has a good conscience, is at peace; and this peace is in itself the Sabbath of the heart … It is the joy we have in the serenity of our hope that constitutes our Sabbath.”
Exposition on the Psalms, 91.2

November 25 – SAINT CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA
“Be fervent in the Spirit and burn with the fire of love; make yourselves burn through praise of God and a good life. One man is hot, another cold; the hot one warms the cold. The man who does not burn enough with love must desire a more intense love and pray for help. The Lord is ready to help; we must open our hearts and yearn to receive.”
Sermon 234, 3

November 24 – SAINT ANDREW DUNG-LAC & COMPANIONS
“Because of its weight a body tends to its proper place. Weight does not necessarily urge a body down, but it does urge it to its proper place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward; each is moved by its weight and seeks its proper place. Oil mixed with water rises to the surface of the water; water poured into oil sinks beneath the oil; each is moved by its weight and seeks its proper place. If a being is not in its proper place, it is restless: if it is, it is at rest. My weight is love; it is what carries me wherever I am borne.”
Confessions XIII, 9,10

November 23 – SAINT CLEMENT
“Why did he permit himself to be tempted, if not to teach us how to resist the tempter? The world promises the pleasures of the flesh; answer it: ‘God is ore delightful than that.’ The world promises secular honors and high office; answer it: ‘The Kingdom of God is higher than all that.’ The world promises superfluous, even damnable spectacle to our curiosity; answer it: ‘God’s truth alone does not err.’”
Sermon 284,5

November 22 – SAINT CECILIA
“Let me love you, Lord, and give thanks to you and confess to your name, because you have forgiven my grave sins and wicked deeds. By your sheer grace and mercy, you melted my sins away like ice. To your grace also do I also ascribe whatever sins I did not commit, for what would I not have been capable of. I who could be enamored even of a wanton crime I acknowledge that you have forgiven me everything, both the sins I willfully committed by following my own will, and those I avoided through your guidance.”
Confessions II,7,15

November 21 – PRESENTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
“The Word of God took up our grass in order to make us gold. The Word of God, you see, which abides forever, did not consider it beneath him to be for a time grass; not in order to change the Word itself, but to bestow on the grass a change for the better. Yes, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and as the Lord he suffered for us and was buried, and rose again and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, no longer grass but now gold, undestroyed and indestructible.”
Sermon 113B, 2

November 20 – SAINT BENIGNUS
“Perfect love or charity is the final, perfect gift of the Holy Spirit. First, however, comes the gift which consists in the forgiveness of sins, the benefaction by which we are delivered from the power of darkness, and the prince of this world is thrown outside by our faith; he is the one who is at work in the children of unbelief … It is by the Holy Spirit who gathers the people of God together into one, that the unclean spirit is cast out, who is divided against himself.”
Sermon 71, 19-20

November 19 – SAINT FAUSTUS
“Listen, dearest grains of Christ; listen, Christ’s precious ears of wheat; listen, Christ’s dearest corn. Take a look at yourselves, go back to your consciences, interrogate your faith, interrogate your love, stir up your consciences. And if you discover that you are good grain, let the thought occur to you. Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved. Any of you who are shaking up your consciences find yourselves among the weeds, must not be afraid to change. The command hasn’t yet been given to cut, it isn’t the harvest yet; don’t be today what you were yesterday, or at least don’t be tomorrow what you are today.”
Sermon 73A.2

November 18
“Pride is a great evil; it is even the foremost evil, the beginning, root and cause of all sin. It was pride that overthrew the angel and made the devil. And even when overthrown, he passed on the cup of pride to upright humanity. He aroused pride in the human being who had been created in the image of God, and that pride made humanity shameful. The devil entered humanity and persuaded Eve to defy God’s law and use her own power. … ‘If you eat, he said, you will be like gods’ (Gen 3:5). Consider, then, whether it was not pride that persuaded her. The two who had been created human wanted to be gods. They assumed what they were not and lost what they were; they did not lose their human nature, but they lost blessedness, both present and future. They lost the place to which they were to be raised, deceived by the one who had been thrown down from there”
Sermon 340A