From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Faith is the messenger   
      
      Faith is the messenger that bears your prayers to God. Prayer can   
   be like incense, rising ever higher and higher. The prayer of faith is   
   the prayer of trust that feels the presence of God, which it rises to   
   meet. It can be sure of some response from God. We can say a prayer of   
   thanks to God every day for His grace, which has kept us on the right   
   way and allowed us to start living the good life. So we should pray to   
   God with faith and trust and gratitude.   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   November 8th – St. Willehad, Bishop of Bremen   
   d. 789   
      
   WILLEHAD was an Englishman, a native of Northumbria, and was educated   
   probably at York, for he became a friend of Alcuin. After his   
   ordination the spiritual conquests which many of his countrymen had   
   made for Christ, with St. Willibrord in Friesland and St. Boniface in   
   Germany, seemed a reproach to him, and he also desired to carry the   
   saving knowledge of the true God to some of those barbarous nations.   
      
   He landed in Friesland about the year 766 and began his mission at   
   Dokkum, the place near which St. Boniface and his companions had   
   received the crown of martyrdom in 754. (The Roman Martyrology   
   mistakenly calls St. Willehad a disciple of St. Boniface.) After   
   baptizing some, he made his way through the country now called   
   Overyssel, preaching as he went. In Humsterland the missionaries were   
   all put in peril of their lives, for the inhabitants cast lots whether   
   he and his companions should be put to death; Providence determined   
   the lots for their preservation. Having escaped out of their hands,   
   St. Willehad thought it prudent to go back to Drenthe, in the more   
   favourable neighbourhood of Utrecht. Here, in spite of the labours of   
   St. Willibrord and his successors, there was still plenty of heathens   
   to convert, but the promising field was spoiled by imprudent zeal.   
   Some of Willehad’s fellow missionaries venturing to demolish the   
   places dedicated to idolatry, the pagans were so angered that they   
   resolved to massacre them. One struck at St. Willehad with such force   
   that the sword would have severed his head but that the force of the   
   blow, as his biographer assures us, was entirely broken by cutting a   
   string about the saint’s neck by which hung a little box of relics   
   which he always carried with him. The whole incident bears a   
   suspicious resemblance to that recorded of St. Willibrord on the   
   island of Walcheren.   
      
     Having made so little progress among the Frisians St. Willehad went   
   to the court of Charlemagne, who in 780 sent him to evangelize the   
   Saxons, whom he had recently subdued. The saint thence proceeded into   
   the country where Bremen now stands, and was the first missionary who   
   passed the Weser; some of his companions got beyond the Elbe. For a   
   short time all went well, but in 782 the Saxons rose in revolt against   
   the Franks. They put to death all missionaries that fell into their   
   hands, and St. Willehad escaped by sea into Friesland, whence he took   
   an opportunity of going to Rome and laying before Pope Adrian I the   
   state of his mission. He then passed two years in the monastery of   
   Echternach, founded by St. Willibrord, and assembled his fellow   
   labourers whom the war had dispersed; here, too, he made a copy of the   
   letters of St. Paul.   
      
   Charlemagne put down the Saxon rebellion in ruthless fashion, and   
   Willehad was able to return to the country between the Weser and the   
   Elbe.* { Charlemagne’s dealings with the barbarous Saxons were not   
   such as to make solid missionary work any easier.}   
      
    When the saint had founded many churches, Charlemagne in 787 had him   
   ordained bishop of the Saxons, and he fixed his see at Bremen, which   
   city seems to have been founded about that time. St. Willehad   
   redoubled his zeal and his solicitude in preaching. His cathedral   
   church he built of wood and consecrated it on November I, 789, in   
   honour of St. Peter. A few days later he was taken ill, and it was   
   seen that he was very bad. One of his disciples said to him, weeping,   
   “Do not so soon forsake your flock exposed to the fury of wolves “. He   
   answered, “Withhold me not from going to God. My sheep I recommend to   
   Him who intrusted them to me and whose mercy is able to protect them.”   
   And so he died, and his successor buried his body in the new stone   
   church at Bremen. St. Willehad was the last of the great English   
   missionaries of the eighth century.   
      
   Our knowledge of St. Willehad is almost entirely derived from a Latin   
   life written about the year 856 by some ecclesiastic of Bremen. It was   
   formerly attributed to the authorship of St. Anskar, but this view has   
   now been abandoned, though Anskar seems to be responsible for the book   
   of miracles attached to the life. ...   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   ''Be assured that we shall obtain more grace and merit in   
   one day by suffering patiently the afflictions that come to us   
   from God or from our neighbor than we would acquire in ten   
   years by mortifications and other exercises that are of our   
   own choice."   
   --St. Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church, 1567-1622   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   And I will shew wonders in the heaven above, and signs on the earth   
   beneath: blood and fire, and vapour of smoke. 20 The sun shall be   
   turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and   
   manifest day of the Lord come. 21 And it shall come to pass, that   
   whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.   
   (Acts 2:19-21   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   A Prayer Of Confidence In God   
      
   Jesus of the loving Heart, I believe that thou doth care for me more   
   than Thou careth for the birds of the air or the lilies of the field.   
      
   I believe that Thou doth care for me more than a mother careth for the   
   child in her arms.   
   I believe that even though a mother may forget the child of her womb,   
   yet wilt Thou not forget me.   
      
   And, therefore, I trust in Thee in all and through all and in spite of   
   all. Amen.   
      
   Strong Heart of Jesus,   
   my God and my Friend,   
   In life and in death,   
   on Thee I depend.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)