From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   To Avoid Dissensions   
      
   To avoid dissensions we should be ever on our guard, more especially   
   with those who drive us to argue with them, with those who vex and   
   irritate us, and who say things likely to excite us to anger. When we   
   find ourselves in company with quarrelsome, eccentric individuals,   
   people who openly and unblushingly say the most shocking things,   
   difficult to put up with, we should take refuge in silence, and the   
   wisest plan is not to reply to people whose behavior is so   
   preposterous. Those who insult us and treat us contumeliously are   
   anxious for a spiteful and sarcastic reply: the silence we then affect   
   disheartens them, and they cannot avoid showing their vexation; they   
   do all they can to provoke us and to elicit a reply, but the best way   
   to baffle them is to say nothing, refuse to argue with them, and to   
   leave them to chew the cud of their hasty anger. This method of   
   bringing down their pride disarms them, and shows them plainly that we   
   slight and despise them.   
   -- Saint Ambrose of Milan   
      
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   June 4th - St. Quirinus, Bishop of Siscia, Martyr   
   d 308   
      
   OF the many martyrs who suffered in the Danubian provinces during the   
   reign of Diocletian, one of the most celebrated was Quirinus whose   
   praises have been sounded--by St. Jerome, by Prudentius and by   
   Fortunatus. The “acts" which record his trial, sufferings and death   
   are substantially genuine. Luckily, in some cases the trial records   
   have been preserved--even from ancient Roman days. Thus, the records   
   of the trial of St. Quirinus, Martyr, permit us to size up this   
   outstanding hero of the last great Roman persecution.   
      
   Diocletian was emperor of Rome in the first decade of the 4th century.   
   Many of his predecessors had struck at the Christians, but not   
   systematically. Diocletian was a bureaucrat, so he launched a   
   full-fledged war on the followers of Christ, intending it to be a   
   “final solution”. To this end he issued several edicts, beginning in   
   303.  The second edict ordered that all Christian clergy be jailed   
   until they consented to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods.   
      
   Quirinus, an old man, was bishop of the present Sisak in northern   
   Yugoslavia. When he heard that orders had been issued for his arrest,   
   he tried to escape. The constabulary caught up with him, however, and   
   haled him before Maximus, the local magistrate.   
      
   The first thing that Maximus asked was why the bishop had taken   
   flight. Quirinus replied that he was simply obeying Jesus, the true   
   God, who had instructed his followers not to seek martyrdom: “When   
   they persecute you in one town, fly to the next.” (Matt. 10:23)   
      
   Well, said the magistrate, the emperor would have caught you anyhow;   
   and now that you are a captive, your God cannot help you.   
      
   Quirinus disagreed. “God is always with us and can help us. He was   
   with me when I was taken and He is with me now. He it is who   
   strengthens me and speaks through my lips.”   
      
   “You talk a great deal,” Maximus grunted. “Let’s get to the point,”   
   he   
   said. “The emperor has ordered you to sacrifice to the gods. Do so!”   
      
   “I cannot,” said the bishop: “It would be a sacrilege. The gods whom   
   you serve are nothing. My God, whom I serve, is in heaven and earth,   
   and in the seas and everywhere; but He is higher than all because He   
   contains all things in Himself; all things were created by Him, and by   
   Him alone do they subsist.”   
      
   “You must be in your second childhood to believe such fables,” said   
   the judge to the old prelate. “Sacrifice and you shall be rewarded;   
   refuse and you will be tortured and put to a horrible death.”   
      
   Quirinus rejoined that torture would be to him more a glory than a   
   grief. So Maximus had him beaten. Even as the torturers were plying   
   their whips, they kept promising him a position as a priest of Jupiter   
   if he complied.   
      
   Quirinus countered: “I am exercising my priesthood here and now by   
   offering myself up to God.” He would gladly bear even more torture, he   
   said, so as to encourage other Christians to take this “short road to   
   eternal life.”   
      
   Maximus did not have the authority to impose the death sentence, so he   
   sent his aged prisoner on a long journey to Governor Amantius, who   
   lived in what is now Hungary.   
      
   When the bishop was brought before the governor, Amantius had the   
   clerks send the record of the earlier trial. “Is this account   
   correct?” he asked Quirinus. The prisoner said that it was: “I have   
   confessed the true God at Siscia, I have never worshipped any other.   
   Him I carry in my heart and no man shall succeed in separating me from   
   Him.”   
      
   Because of the bishop’s age, Amantius, not an unkindly man, was   
   unwilling to torture him further. He simply ordered death by drowning.   
   St. Quirinus was thrown into the river Raab with a stone around his   
   neck. The bishop did not sink at once; but those who watched him swept   
   downstream heard him still praying and crying encouragement to his   
   followers.   
      
   Like other martyrs, Quirinus had not sought martyrdom. Once condemned,   
   however, he had depended on Christ’s promise that “the Holy Spirit   
   will teach you at that moment all that should be said.” (Lk.   
   12:11-12). The Holy Spirit did not fail the old bishop. Nor will He   
   ever fail us, if we trust in Him.   
      
   The text of the passio is printed by Ruinart, and in the Acta   
   Sanctorum, June, vol. i. Much interest has been taken in this St.   
   Quirinus since the researches of Mgr de Waal in the Platonia and its   
   surroundings revealed the existence of a fragment of a great   
   inscription engraved there in honour of the saint. See de Waal's   
   monograph, Die Apostelgruft "ad Catacumbas", printed as a   
   "Supplementheft" to the Römische Quartalschrift (1894); and also   
   Duchesne, "La Memoria Apostolorum de la Via Appia", in Memorie della   
   pontificia Accademia romana di Archeol., vol. i (1923), pp. 8-10; with   
   CMH., p. 303.   
   –Father Robert F. McNamara   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   The crosses with which our path through life is strewn associate us   
    with Jesus in the mystery of His crucifixion.   
   --St. John Eudes   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   So we also, when we were children, were serving under the elements of   
   the world.  But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his   
   Son, made of a woman, made under the law:  That he might redeem them   
   who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons.   
   And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into   
   your hearts, crying: Abba, Father.  Therefore, now he is not a   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)