From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   April 12th - Saint Julius I, Pope   
   (d. 352)   
      
   Saint Julius was by birth a Roman; he was chosen Pope on the 6th of February in   
   337, and was remarkable for the sanctity of his life and his zeal in   
   strengthening the Christian faith.   
      
   The impious heresy of Arius was progressing dangerously everywhere in the East,   
   and many holy bishops were obliged to leave their sees. Saint Julius received   
   them warmly in Rome, Saint Athanasius in particular, and he defended them to   
   the   
   end against their adversaries. He condemned the synods which the Arians had   
   assembled in Tyre and in Antioch, with the intention of abolishing the faith of   
   Nicea. He assembled two councils in Rome, where he heard the exiled bishops and   
   proclaimed their innocence.   
      
   By his counsel, the Emperor Constans, the pious prince of the West, influenced   
   his brother Constantius to recall Saint Athanasius from exile.   
      
   Saint Julius rejected a deceptive formula of faith, imagined by the Eusebians,   
   who were partisans of Arius at the second council of Antioch. He assembled the   
   second Council of Sardica, composed of both Western and Oriental bishops. His   
   legates presided there, and he saw to it that useful measures for the   
   maintenance of the Catholic faith and the re-establishment of ecclesiastical   
   discipline were drafted and implemented.   
      
   He built two basilicas in Rome and adorned them with sacred paintings. He had   
   three cemeteries constructed, on the Flaminian and Aurelian ways, and at Porto.   
   He regulated legal questions concerning the clergy, ordaining that they would   
   plead nowhere but in ecclesiastical courts.   
      
   Saint Julius reigned for fifteen years, and died on the 12th of April, 352.   
      
   Reflection. The great Popes have all pleased God by their outstanding humility.   
   When the Lord gives the graces of a good administrator to souls, He requires in   
   them more than ordinary virtue, for it is His Authority which they merely   
   share,   
   by His permission. He does not permit that they attribute their success to   
   their   
   own imaginary powers.   
      
   Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et   
   Barral:   
   Paris, 1882), Vol. 4.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Repentance is the returning from the unnatural to the natural state, from the   
   Devil to God, through discipline and effort.   
   -St. John of Damascus   
      
   Bible Quote   
   10 When thou shalt pour out thy soul to the hungry, and shalt satisfy the   
   afflicted soul then shall thy light rise up in darkness, and thy darkness shall   
   be as the noonday.  11 And the Lord will give thee rest continually, and will   
   fill thy soul with brightness, and deliver thy bones, and thou shalt be like a   
   watered garden, and like a fountain of water whose waters shall not fail.   
   (Isaias 58:10-11)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   Prayer Against the Seven Deadly Sins   
      
   Let me use all things for one sole reason: to find my joy in giving You glory.   
      
   Therefore, keep me, above all things, from sin. Keep me from the death of   
   deadly   
   sin which puts hell in my soul. Keep me from the murder of lust that blinds and   
   poisons my heart. Keep me from the sins that eat a man's flesh with   
   irresistible   
   fire until he is devoured. Keep me from loving money in which is hatred, from   
   avarice [greed] and ambition that suffocate my life. Keep me from the dead   
   works   
   of vanity and the thankless labor in which artists destroy themselves for pride   
   and money and reputation, and saints are smothered under the avalanche of their   
   own importunate zeal. Staunch in me the rank wound of covetousness and the   
   hungers that exhaust my nature with their bleeding. Stamp out the serpent envy   
   that stings love with poison and kills all joy.   
      
   Untie my hands and deliver my heart from sloth. Set me free from the laziness   
   that goes about disguised as activity when activity is not required of me, and   
   from the cowardice that does what is not demanded, in order to escape   
   sacrifice.   
      
   But give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace. Give me   
   humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the   
   heaviest   
   of burdens. And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love.   
   Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I   
   may   
   love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the   
   sake   
   of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for You alone.   
      
   Thomas Merton, 1961, Gethsemani. Imprimatur Francis Cardinal Spellman,   
   Archbishop of New York   
      
      
   <><><>   
   Hungry for God   
      
   Additionally, I sought for something to love, for I was in love with love.   
   There was a hunger within me from a lack of inner food, which is none other   
   than   
   yourself,   
   my God. Yet that hunger did not make me hungry.   
   I had no desire for incorruptible food. This was not because I was already   
   filled with it but   
   because the more I was empty of it the more it was loathsome to me.   
   -Confessions 3, 1 Augustine   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)