From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Imitating the Creator's goodness   
      
      In the love of God there can be no excess, but the love of the   
   world is harmful in every way. We must therefore cling inseparably to   
   the good things that are eternal but make use of those that are   
   temporal like passers-by; then, as pilgrims hastening to our   
   homeland, we shall use any worldly good fortune that comes to us as a   
   mean to further our journey, not as an enticement to detain us.   
      Because the world attracts us by its beauty, abundance, and   
   variety, it is not easy to turn away from it unless in the beauty of   
   visible things one loves the Creator rather than the creature; for   
   when the Creator says: You shall love the Lord your God with all your   
   heart and with all your mind and with all your strength, he shows that   
   it is not his will for us to loosen the bonds of our love for him in   
   any respect whatever. And by joining to this precept love of our   
   neighbor, he commands us to imitate his own goodness, loving what he   
   loves and doing what he does.   
    --St. Leo the Great   
      
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   25 April – Saint Giovanni Battista Piamarta FN   
   Also known as   
       • Johnannes Baptist Piamarta   
       • John the Baptist Piamarta   
      
    (1841 – 1913)   
    Priest, Teacher, Apostle of the Poor, Founder of the Congregation of   
   the Holy Family of Nazareth.  St Giovanni established his congregation   
   in 1900 in order to promote Christian education across the Italian   
   peninsula. He also founded the Humble Servants of the Lord. Both of   
   which he is the Patron and of jobseekers.   
      
   Giovanni Battista Piamarta was born in Brescia on 26 November 1841   
   into a poor household, his father was a barber.   
      
   He lost his parents at the age of nine in 1840 and the orphanage was   
   situated in the slums of the town, where he experienced the   
   desperation of the street children. His maternal grandfather helped   
   him to keep afloat and alive and sent him to the Oratory of Saint   
   Thomas. His adolescence was difficult but thanks to the parish of   
   Vallio Terme he entered the diocesan seminary.   
      
   He was ordained to the priesthood on 23 December 1865 and he began his   
   pastoral mission in Carzago Riviera (Bedizzole), spending his first   
   two decades in intense pastoral work and is remembered as a priest   
   “zealous, excellent, flawless in everything”.   
      
   During that time he was appointed as the priest (and later director)   
   of the parish of Saint Alexander and then as the parish priest of   
   Pavone del Mella. Brescia was in the process of industrialisation and   
   Piamarta identified with the difficulties and hopes of disadvantaged   
   adolescents, due to his own experiences as a child.   
      
   With the support of Monsignor Pietro Capetti and the Catholic Movement   
   he started the Art and Crafts Institute for the vocational and   
   Christian education of the poorest children and adolescents on 3   
   December 1886. The “Workman’s Institute” grew and they were able to   
   help and teach many adolescents to receive an adequate technical   
   education.   
      
   In 1889, he and Father Giovanni Bonsignori began the Agricultural   
   Colony of Remedello. As a result, a range of the religious gathered   
   around Piamarta who shared the ideals and labours of the mission. In   
   March 1900 he established the Congregation of the Holy Family of   
   Nazareth (“Piamartinis”) to continue the work of technical Christian   
   education around the world.   
      
   This would, in time, include Italy, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil (from   
   where the Canonisation miracle came) and Chile. Piamarta’s work with   
   the Brescian printing and publishing house, “Queriniana”, helped make   
   Brescia a European centre of Catholic publications.   
      
   St Giovanni died on 25 April 1913 in Remedello after a life spent in   
   the service of God and his fellow man. In 1926 his remains were moved   
   to the church of the workmen that he himself had built. He was   
   Beatified on 12 October 1997 by St Pope John Paul II and Canonised on   
   21 October 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.   
      
   https://anastpaul.com/2019/04/19/   
      
      
   The Son of Man came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many   
   (cf. Mk 10:45   
   “Giovanni Battista Piamarta, priest of the Diocese of Brescia, was a   
   great apostle of charity and of young people. He raised awareness of   
   the need for a cultural and social presence of Catholicism in the   
   modern world and so he dedicated himself to the Christian, moral and   
   professional growth of the younger generations with an enlightened   
   input of humanity and goodness. Animated by unshakable faith in divine   
   providence and by a profound spirit of sacrifice, he faced   
   difficulties and fatigue to breathe life into various apostolic works,   
   including the Artigianelli Institute, Queriniana Publishers, the   
   Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth for men and for women, the   
   Congregation of the Humble Sister Servants of the Lord.   
   The secret of his intense and busy life is found in the long hours he   
   gave to prayer. When he was overburdened with work, he increased the   
   length of his encounter, heart to heart, with the Lord. He preferred   
   to pause before the Blessed Sacrament, meditating upon the passion,   
   death and resurrection of Christ, to gain spiritual fortitude and   
   return to gaining people’s hearts, especially the young, to bring them   
   back to the sources of life with fresh pastoral initiatives.”   
      
   Pope Benedict XVI on the Canonisation of St Giovanni, Sunday, 21 October 2012   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   “May your heart be an altar,   
   from which the bright flame,   
   of unending thanksgiving   
   ascends to heaven.”   
   --St Mary Euphrasia Pelletier   
      
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   Grant us Your Light, O Lord   
   By St Bede (673-735) (From ‘On the Apocalypse’)   
      
   Grant us Your light, O Lord,   
   so that the darkness of our hearts,   
   may wholly pass away   
   and we may come at last,   
   to the light of Christ.   
   For Christ is that morning star,   
   who, when the night of this world has passed,   
   brings to His saints,   
   the promised light of life   
   and opens to them,   
   everlasting day. Amen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)