From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   My words shall not pass away   
      
   "Nothing of this world is more durable than the heavens and the earth,   
   and nothing in the order of nature passes away more quickly than   
   speech. Words, as long as they are incomplete, are not yet words. Once   
   completed they cease utterly to be. In fact they cannot be perfected   
   except by their own passing away. Therefore he says: “Heaven and earth   
   shall pass away, but my words shall not pass.” As if he were openly to   
   say: all that seems to you enduring and unchangeable is not enduring   
   and without change in eternity. And everything of mine that seems to   
   pass away is enduring and without change. My speech, that seems to   
   pass away, utters thoughts (sententiae manentes) which endure   
   forever."   
    by Gregory the Great (excerpt from  HOMILIES 1)   
      
   ============   
   January 15th - St. Maurus, Abbot   
      
   d. 584   
   AMONG other noblemen who placed their sons under the care of St.   
   Benedict to be brought up in piety and learning a certain Equitius   
   left his son Maurus, then but 12 years old; and when he was grown   
   up St. Benedict made him his assistant in the government of Subiaco.   
   The boy Placid, going one day to fetch water, fell into the lake and   
   was carried the distance of a bow-shot from the bank. St. Benedict saw   
   this in spirit in his cell, and bade Maurus run and draw him out.   
   Maurus obeyed, walked unknowingly upon the water, and dragged out   
   Placid by the hair. He attributed the miracle to the prayers of St.   
   Benedict; but the abbot declared that God had rewarded the obedience   
   of the disciple. Not long after, the holy patriarch retired to Monte   
   Cassino, and St. Maurus may have become superior at Subiaco.   
      
   This, which we learn from St. Gregory the Great, is all that can be   
   told with any probability regarding the life of St. Maurus. It is,   
   however, stated upon the authority of a pretended biography by   
   pseudo-Faustus--i.e. Abbot Odo of Glanfeuil--that St. Maurus, coming   
   to France, founded by the liberality of King Theodebert the great   
   abbey of Glanfeuil, afterwards called Saint-Maur-sur-Loire, which he   
   governed until his seventieth year. Maurus then resigned the abbacy,   
   and passed the remainder of his life in solitude to prepare himself   
   for his passage to eternity. After two years he fell sick, and died on   
   January 15 in the year 584. He was buried on the right side of the   
   altar in the church of St. Martin, and on a roll of parchment laid in   
   his tomb was inscribed this epitaph   
      
   “Maurus, a monk and deacon, who came into France in the days of King   
   Theodebert, and died the 18th day before the month of February.” That   
   this parchment was really found in the middle of the ninth century is   
   probable enough; but there is no reliable evidence to establish the   
   fact that the Maurus so described is identical with the Maurus who was   
   the disciple of St. Benedict.   
      
   He is mentioned in St.. Gregory the Great's biography of the latter as   
   the first oblate; offered to the monastery by his noble Roman parents   
   as a young boy to be brought up in the monastic life. Four stories   
   involving Maurus recounted by Gregory formed a pattern for the ideal   
   formation of a Benedictine monk. The most famous of these involved St.   
   Maurus's rescue of Saint Placidus, a younger boy offered to St.   
   Benedict at the same time as St. Maurus. The incident has been   
   reproduced in many medieval and Renaissance paintings.   
   Saints Maurus and Placidus are venerated together on 5 October.   
      
      
   Bible Quote:   
   18 But the path of the just is like shining light,   
   that grows in brilliance till perfect day.*   
   19The way of the wicked is like darkness;   
   they do not know on what they stumble.  (Proverbs 4:18-19)   
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Prudence must precede every action which we undertake; for, if   
   prudence be wanting, there is nothing, however good it may seem, which   
   is not turned into evil.   
   -- St. Basil   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   St. Theresa’s Prayer to the Holy face   
      
   O Jesus, Who in Thy bitter Passion didst become "the most abject of   
   men, a man of sorrows," I venerate Thy Sacred Face whereon there once   
   did shine the beauty and sweetness of the Godhead ... but now it has   
   become for me as if it were the Face of a leper! Nevertheless, under   
   those disfigured features, I recognize Thy Infinite Love and I am   
   consumed with the desire to love Thee and make Thee loved by all men.   
      
   The tears which well up abundantly in Thy Sacred Eyes appear to me as   
   so many precious pearls that I love to gather up, in order to purchase   
   the souls of poor sinners by means of their infinite value. O Jesus,   
   Whose adorable Face ravished my heart, I implore Thee to fix deep   
   within me Thy Divine Image and to set me on fire with Thy Love, that I   
   may be found worthy to come to the contemplation of Thy glorious Face   
   in Heaven. Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)