From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Avoid Pride and Grasp Wisdom   
      
       "After hearing that they should be humble some persons do not wish   
   to learn anything.   
       They think they will be proud if they have anything. It has been   
   made clear to us where God wishes us to be in the depths and where he   
   wishes us to be in the heights. He wishes us to be humble to avoid   
   pride, and he wishes us to be on high to grasp wisdom."   
   --St. Augustine--Commentary on Psalm 130, 12   
      
   Prayer: While I move and bear this body I pray that I may be pure,   
   generous, just, and prudent. May I be a perfect lover and knower of   
   your Wisdom.   
   --St. Augustine--Soliloquies 1, 6   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   August 23rd - St. Rose of Lima   
   (1586-1617)   
      
   It is ironic, and perhaps cautionary, that the first canonized saint   
   of the Western Hemisphere should have been not a man of organized   
   philanthropy but a frail young woman of staggering asceticism and   
   profound mystical gifts.   
      
   The future patron of Peru was the daughter of a Spanish conquistador   
   named Gaspar de Flores and his wife Maria de Oliva. She was baptized   
   Isabel, but called Rose. (“She looks like a rose,” exclaimed the   
   Indian servant of the Flores family when she first beheld the   
   beautiful child.) The mother was pleased by this compliment, and   
   thereafter ignored the baptismal name.   
      
   Rose found her own beauty perilous. Intensively spiritual in bent, she   
   even tried to scar her features when people praised her good looks. To   
   please her mother, she wore a wreath of roses, but beneath it she   
   placed something like a crown of thorns. We are not called on to   
   imitate the saints in their particular methods of mortification, but   
   their penances should always remind us that in our necessary efforts   
   to follow God’s will, we must not allow our own wills to become   
   stumbling blocks.   
      
   St. Catherine of Siena, it seems, became the model whom Rosa de Flores   
   selected. When those around her ridiculed this ambition, she stood her   
   ground. It was her desire to enter a religious order. Her parents   
   forbade it, however, and she accepted their veto. But to counter their   
   nagging insistence that she marry, she took a private vow of chastity.   
   Then, when she was 20, she enrolled in the Dominican Third Order.   
   Thereafter she wore a habit of a Dominican tertiary. Unable to become   
   a nun, she finally discovered an equivalent on her own property: a   
   little hut at the end of the garden where she could live and work and   
   pray much like a hermitess.   
      
   In her prayer life, Rose suffered far more from interior pains than   
   from the scorn of her associates. For 15 years she endured agonizing   
   spiritual desolation. But she was also rewarded by visions of her   
   guardian angel, of St. Catherine, and of the Blessed Virgin. Her   
   greatest consolation was to hear from the lips of Christ himself,   
   “Rose of my heart, be my spouse.”   
      
   The penitent of Lima was not so involved in prayer, however, as to   
   neglect others. When her parents came upon hard times, she labored day   
   and night to support them, raising beautiful flowers for sale, and   
   doing fine needlework on order. She also set up a little infirmary in   
   one room in which she took care of impoverished children and ailing   
   seniors. This marked the beginning of social service in her native   
   city.   
      
   Despite the criticism that many had visited on Rose, she won a great   
   crowd of admirers among the local citizenry. When she died on August   
   16, 1617–a date that she had exactly foretold–the throngs who came to   
   her wake were so great that the funeral had to be postponed several   
   days.   
      
   Beatified in 1668, in 1671 she was canonized as “St. Rose of St.   
   Mary,” and proclaimed patron, not only of Peru, but of all America,   
   the West Indies, and the Philippine Islands.   
      
   Ask her to help you, then, Catholics of the United States. She is one   
   of our official spokes-women.   
   –Father Robert   
      
      
   Saint Quotes:   
   Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase Your love in my heart.   
      
   Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.   
   --Saint Rose of Lima   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his   
   right hand upon me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18   
   and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I   
   have the keys of Death and Hades.  [Revelation 1:17-18]  RSVCE   
      
      
   <><><><>   
    The Need of God’s Blessing: His Gift of Sons   
      
   1 Unless the LORD builds the house,   
   its builders labor in vain.   
   Unless the LORD watches over the city,   
   the watchmen stand guard in vain.   
   2 In vain you rise early   
   and stay up late,   
   toiling for food to eat--   
   for he grants sleep to [a] those he loves.   
   3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD,   
   children a reward from him.   
   4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior   
   are sons born in one's youth.   
   5 Blessed is the man   
   whose quiver is full of them.   
   They will not be put to shame   
   when they contend with their enemies in the gate.  Psalm 127:1-5   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)