From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   You Must Be Drawn   
      
      "Our Lord said: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent   
   me draws that person." This is a great commendation of grace!   
      Do not make judgments about whom God draws and whom he does not   
   draw, unless you wish to fall into error. Accept this once and for   
   all, and understand it: you are not yet drawn to God? Pray that you   
   may be drawn!"   
   --St. Augustine--Sermon on John 26, 2   
      
   Prayer: Lord, heal and open my eyes that I may recognize your will.   
   Put to flight my foolishness that I may know you. Show me the road I   
   must travel that I may see you. Thus aided, I hope to do all you have   
   commanded me.   
   --St. Augustine--Soliloquies 1, 5   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   September 2nd – Bl. Margaret of Louvain, Virgin and Martyr   
      
   In the sixth book of his “Dialogue on Miracles”, dealing with   
   Singleness of Heart, the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach   
   tells the story of this young girl whose cultus in the diocese of   
   Malines was confirmed in 1905. She was born at Louvain about the year   
   1207 and went into domestic service with a relative named Aubert. He   
   was an innkeeper and a good and charitable man, who would entertain   
   pilgrims and necessitous travellers free of charge. Margaret entered   
   whole-heartedly into these good works, but the recollected way with   
   which she went about them and her indifference to the attentions of   
   men got her the nickname of “the proud Margaret”.   
      
    About the year 1225 Aubert and his wife determined to become   
   religious. Having sold their business and made the necessary   
   preparations, they were spending their last night at home when they   
   were visited by some evil-disposed men under the pretence of saying   
   good-bye. Margaret was sent out to get some wine for the visitors, and   
   while she was gone they set on Aubert and his wife, murdered them, and   
   seized their money which they had by them to take to the monasteries   
   to which they were going. On her return with the wine the robbers   
   carried off Margaret and at a lonely spot near the river Dyle proposed   
   to kill her too, as a witness to their crime. One of them offered to   
   marry her if she would keep silence, but she refused, and thereupon an   
   extra ten marks was added to the share of one of them to make away   
   with her. “He, taking the innocent lamb like a cruel butcher, cut her   
   throat, stabbed her in the side, and threw her into the river.” The   
   body was found and, in consequence of the supernatural light and   
   angelic voices that were reported to accompany it, was taken by the   
   clergy to St Peter’s collegiate church at Louvain and buried in a   
   special chapel in their churchyard. Miracles were vouchsafed at this   
   tomb and there Bl. Margaret has been venerated from that day to this.   
      
   Concerning this story the novice in the Dialogue asks “What would you   
   say was the cause of martyrdom in the case of this girl?” To which his   
   preceptor replies “Simplicity and an innocent life, as I have already   
   said. There are different kinds of martyrdom, namely, innocence, as in   
   Abel; uprightness, as in the prophets and St John Baptist; love of the   
   law, as in the Machabees confession of the faith, as in the apostles.   
   For all these different causes Christ the Lamb is said to have been   
   ‘slain from the beginning of the world’.” All Christian virtues, being   
   protestations of our faith and proofs of our fidelity to God, are a   
   true motive of martyrdom.   
      
   The Bollandists, in the Acta Sanctorum, September, vol. i, find   
   nothing to add to the account given by Caesarius, but they supply   
   evidence regarding the later cultus, and translate from the Flemish a   
   relation of a number of miracles wrought at the shrine. Several   
   booklets of a popular kind have been printed about Bd Margaret in   
   modern times; the most note worthy, by M. G. Ollivier, originally   
   appeared as an article in the Revue Thomiste, vol. iv (1896), pp.   
   592-618. The Dialogue of Caesarius was published in English in 1929.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   The poor and the sick are our owners and they represent the very   
   person of Jesus Christ.   
   -- Saint Luigi Scrosoppi of Udine   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Religion pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to keep   
   oneself unspotted from this world.  (James 1:27)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   On The Foundation of Humility  [III]   
      
   No one can review his past life without finding therein motives enough   
   and to spare for humbling himself before Almighty God. "We have   
   sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, we have   
   revolted; to us belongeth shame and confusion of face" (Dan. ix. 5,   
   7). If ever we are inclined to think much of ourselves, we have only   
   to look back on our past years; on the deliberate sins against   
   charity, against truthfulness, against purity; on the pride, the   
   selfishness, the self-will, the neglect of God that have stained our   
   lives.   
      
   Besides the actual sins, how many infidelities to grace! God has been   
   so liberal with His graces, and I have been so negligent in availing   
   myself of them. How many I might have earned if I had been faithful   
   and had not wilfully turned aside from what God asked of me to follow   
   my own will and pleasure. What cause for humiliation of myself! If   
   others who have perhaps lived and died in sin had had my graces, would   
   they not have made a far better use of them than I have? To me, O God,   
   shame and confusion of face! I must throw myself on Thy mercy and   
   humbly beg forgiveness.   
      
   When, moreover, I look at what I now am, I find fresh cause for   
   humbling myself. I might have been a saint if I had been more   
   faithful, and now I am one of the vilest of sinners. My soul in the   
   sight of God is disfigured by sin, as a body is by the ulcers and   
   sores that spoil its natural beauty and comeliness. I abound with   
   faults innumerable; I am unworthy to appear in the presence of God. "O   
   hide Thy face from my sins, blot out all my iniquities!"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)