From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   The cross is called Christ’s glory   
      
   The cross is called Christ’s glory; it is saluted as his his triumph.   
   We recognize it as the cup he longed to drink and the climax of the   
   sufferings he endured for our sake. As to the cross being Christ’s   
   glory, listen to his words: Now is the Son of Man glorified, and in   
   him God is glorified, and God will glorify him at once. And again:   
   Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world came   
   to be. And once more: “Father, glorify your name”. Then a voice came   
   from heaven: “I have glorified it and will glorify it again”. Here he   
   speaks of the glory that would accrue to him through the cross. And if   
   you would understand that the cross is Christ’s triumph, hear what he   
   himself also said: When I am lifted up, then I will draw all men to   
   myself. Now you can see that the cross is Christ’s glory and triumph.   
   -- Saint Andrew of Crete   
      
   ================   
   February 5th - St. Avitus   
    (Alcimus Ecdicius).   
      
   A distinguished bishop of Vienne, in Gaul, from 490 to about 518,   
   though his death is place by some as late as 525 or 526. He was born   
   of a prominent Gallo-Roman family closely related to the Emperor   
   Avitus and other illustrious persons, and in which episcopal honors   
   were hereditary. In difficult times for the Catholic faith and Roman   
   culture in Southern Gaul, Avitus exercised a favourable influence. He   
   pursued with earnestness and success the extinction of the Arian   
   heresy in the barbarian Kingdom of Burgundy (443-532), won the   
   confidence of King Gundobad, and converted his son, King Sigismund   
   (516-523). He was also a zealous opponent of Semipelagianism, and of   
   the Acacian Schism at Constantinople. Like his contemporary, Ennodius   
   of Pavia, he was strenuous in his assertion of the authority of the   
   Apostolic See as the chief bulwark of religious unity and the   
   incipient Christian civilization. "If the pope," he says, "is   
   rejected, it follows that not one bishop, the whole episcopate   
   threatens to fall" (Si papa urbis vocatur in dubium, episcopatus   
   videbitur, non episcopus, vaccilare. — Ep. xxxiv; ed. Peiper).   
      
   The literary fame of Avitus rests on a poem of 2,552 hexameters, in   
   five books, dealing with the Scriptural narrative of Original Sin,   
   Expulsion from Paradise, the Deluge, the Crossing of the Red Sea. The   
   first three books offer a certain dramatic unity; in them are told the   
   preliminaries of the great disaster, the catastrophe itself, and the   
   consequences. The fourth and fifth books deal with the Deluge and the   
   Crossing of the Red Sea as symbols of baptism. Avitus deals freely and   
   familiarly with the Scriptural events, and exhibits well their beauty,   
   sequence, and significance. He is one of the last masters of the art   
   of rhetoric as taught in the schools of Gaul in the fourth and fifth   
   centuries. Ebert says that none of the ancient Christian poets treated   
   more successfully the poetic elements of the Bible. His poetic   
   diction, though abounding in archaisms and rhythmic redundancy, is   
   pure and select, and the laws of metre are well observed. It is said   
   that Milton made use of his paraphase [sic] of Scripture in the   
   preparation of "Paradise Lost". He wrote also 666 hexameters "De   
   virginitate" or "De consolatoriâ castitatis laude" for the comfort of   
   his sister Fuscina, a nun. His prose works include "Contra Eutychianam   
   Hæresim libri II", written in 512 or 513, and also about eighty-seven   
   letters that are of considerable importance for the ecclesiastical and   
   political history of the years 499-518. Among them is the famous   
   letter to Clovis on the occasion of his baptism. There was once extant   
   a collection of his homilies, but they have perished with the   
   exception of two and some fragments and excerpts.   
      
    In recent times Julien Havet has demonstrated (Questions   
   mérovingiennes, Paris, 1885), that Avitus is not the author of the   
   "Dialogi cum Gundobado Rege", a defence of the Catholic Faith against   
   the Arians, purporting to represent the famous Colloquy of Lyons in   
   449, and first published by d'Achéry (1661) in his "Spicilegium" (V,   
   110-116). It is a forgery of the Oratorian, Jérome Viguier, who also   
   forged the letter of Pope Symmachus (13 Oct., 501) to Avitus. The   
   works of Avitus are found in Migne, P.L., LIX, 191-398. There are two   
   recent editions: one by R. Peiper (in Mon. Germ. Hist.: Auct. Antiq.,   
   VI, Berlin, 1883), the other by U. Chevalier (Lyons, 1890).   
      
   http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02161c.htm   
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Whoever bears the mark of a servant of Mary is already enrolled in the   
   Book of Life.   
   --St. Bonaventure   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   He that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory: but he that   
   seeketh the glory of him that sent him, he is true, and there is no   
   injustice in him.  (John 7:18)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   Irish Night Time Prayer   
      
   Four corners to my bed   
   Four apostles at my head.   
   Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.   
   God bless the bed I lie upon.   
   Before I lay me down to sleep,   
   I give my soul to Christ to keep.   
   Four corners to my bed,   
      
   Four angels there a spread,   
   Two to foot, and two to head,   
   And two to carry me, when I'm dead.   
   If any danger come to me,   
   Sweet Jesus Christ, deliver me!   
   And if I die before I wake,   
   I pray that Christ my soul will take.   
   Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)