From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   The Spirit of Love   
      
   "Excellent guest that he is, the Spirit finds you empty and fills you;   
   he finds you hungry and thirsty and satisfies you abundantly.   
   God the Holy Spirit, who comes from God, when he enters into people,   
   draws them to the love of God and neighbor. Indeed, he is love   
   itself."   
   --St. Augustine--Sermon 225, 4   
      
   Prayer: Cling to the Lord with love, that your life may grow in the   
   last days. Hold fast as well to the faithful, great, certain, and   
   everlasting promises of God, and to the unshakeable and ineffable gift   
   of his forbearance.   
   --St. Augustine--Letter 248, 1   
      
      
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   February 28th - Blessed Daniel Brottier and Blessed Villana de’Botti   
      
   Today we celebrate the feast of two holy men and women: Blessed Daniel   
   Brottier (1876-1936) and Blessed Villana de’Botti (1332-1361). While   
   from very different times and places, both Blessed Daniel and Villana   
   answered the call of the Lord in their own way, through repentance and   
   service, courage and sacrifice.   
      
   Blessed Daniel Brottier (1876-1936) was born in France to a devout   
   family, and earnestly felt the call of the Lord to the religious life.   
   He was ordained in 1899, and began his career as a professor, teaching   
   at the college of Pontlevov. While he loved his work, interacting with   
   students, he felt strongly called to missionary work, and at the age   
   of 26, entered the Order of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost.   
   Located in Orly, France, this missionary Order sent priests and   
   religious throughout the world.   
      
   The following year, Daniel was sent to Senegal, West Africa, where he   
   remained for eight years, preaching among the native people. While in   
   Africa his health suffered, eventually forcing him to return to   
   Europe. Upon his return, he was commissioned to chair the fund-raising   
   campaign to build a cathedral in Dakar, Senegal, as well as to support   
   the on-going missionary work in that portion of the world. Blessed   
   Daniel engaged in this task with zeal, honoring the Africans who had   
   died fighting for France, and the French who had died fighting for   
   Africa. His campaign—built on equality and respect between races—was   
   successful, and the cathedral was built. It was consecrated only weeks   
   before his death in 1936.   
      
   When World War I broke out, Daniel immediately volunteered as a   
   chaplain for the French forces, and spent four years on the front   
   lines of horrific battles. Risking his life repeatedly, he ministered   
   to the suffering and dying on the battlefields, miraculously escaping   
   injury himself. For his bravery, he was cited six times, receiving the   
   Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour. Blessed Daniel attributed   
   his survival to the intercession of saint Therese of Lisieux, and   
   built a chapel in her honor at the conclusion of the war in Auteuil,   
   France. There, he assumed administrative responsibilities of the   
   Orphan Apprentices of Auteuil—a project established to provide for   
   orphaned and abandoned children. There, he spent the remaining   
   thirteen years of his life, and was buried.   
      
   Blessed Daniel is remembered for saying: “My secret is this: help   
   yourself and heaven will help you. ... I have no other secret. If the   
   good God worked miracles, through Thérèse's intercession, I think I   
   can say in all justice that we did everything, humanly speaking, to be   
   deserving, and that they were the divine reward of our work, prayers   
   and trust in providence.”   
      
      
   Blessed Villana de’Botti (1332-1361) was born to a pious merchant in   
   Florence, Italy. Extremely drawn to the religious life, Villana ran   
   away from home at the young age of 13 to join a convent. Without her   
   family’s approval, she was refused admission, and returned home.   
   Hoping to prevent future similar incidents, her father arranged for   
   her to be married, which she obediently did.   
      
   Following her marriage, Villana gave up her pious manner, embracing   
   the pleasures of the world, and living an idle and lazy life. One day   
   as she was getting dressed for social entertainment, clad in a   
   gorgeous dress adorned with pearls and precious stones, she looked at   
   herself in a mirror. To her horror, the reflection that met her eyes   
   was that of a hideous demon. A second and a third mirror showed the   
   same ugly form. Thoroughly alarmed and recognizing in the reflection   
   the image of her sin-stained soul, she tore off her fine attire and,   
   clad in the simplest clothes she could find, ran weeping to the   
   Dominican Fathers at Santa Maria Novella to make a full confession and   
   to request absolution and help.   
      
   This glimpse in the mirror of her sins proved to be the turning point   
   of Blessed Villana’s life. From that moment on, she embraced a life of   
   piety, charity, and good works, and never strayed again from the Lord.   
   Villana entered the Third Order of Saint Dominic, and rapidly advanced   
   in the spiritual life. She concentrated on her vocation of married   
   life, and spent her free time praying and reading Scripture and the   
   lives of the saints. Her desire to atone for her earlier life   
   sometimes overwhelmed her, and her husband and family had to stop her   
   begging door to door and doing other penances. She was given to   
   religious ecstasies at Mass, but became the object of much ridicule   
   and slander. Her health suffered, but she received visions of Our Lady   
   and the saints, and had the gift of prophecy. Even her fiercest   
   opponents eventually came to see her as a living saint.   
      
   As she lay on her deathbed, she asked that the Passion should be read   
   to her, and at the words "He bowed His head and gave up the ghost,”   
   she crossed her hands on her chest and passed away. Her body was taken   
   to Santa Maria Novella, where it became such an object of veneration   
   that for over a month it was impossible to proceed with the funeral.   
   People struggled to obtain shreds of her clothing, and she was honored   
   as a saint from the day of her death.   
      
   O God, our merciful Father, you called Blessed Villana back from the   
   emptiness of the world and aroused in her a spirit of humility and   
   true penitence. Recreate in our hearts the power of your love and,   
   filled by that same spirit, may we serve you in newness of life. We   
   ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns   
   with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.   
      
   Both Blessed Daniel’s and Villana’s lives reveal to us our directive   
   to listen for, and answer the call of Our Heavenly Father. We are   
   called to lives of courage, devotion, charity, and obedience. We are   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)