From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Story of Moses and the bronze serpent   
      
      "This story is a type of the whole mystery of the incarnation. For   
   the serpent signifies bitter and deadly sin, which was devouring the   
   whole race on the earth... biting the Soul of man and infusing it with   
   the venom of wickedness. And there is no way that we could have   
   escaped being conquered by it, except by the relief that comes only   
   from heaven. The Word of God then was made in the likeness of sinful   
   flesh, 'that he might condemn sin in the flesh' (Romans 8:3), as it is   
   written. In this way, he becomes the Giver of unending salvation to   
   those who comprehend the divine doctrines and gaze on him with   
   steadfast faith. But the serpent, being fixed upon a lofty base,   
   signifies that Christ was clearly manifested by his passion on the   
   cross, so that none could fail to see him."   
    by Cyril of Alexandria (excerpt from COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 2.1)   
      
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   September 18th - St. Joseph of Cupertino   
   (1603 – 1663)   
      
   When Joseph Desa was born in southern Italy in 1603, his parents did   
   not rejoice. The father, a carpenter deep in debt, died early. His   
   mother found young Joseph an unpleasant burden. Perhaps it was for   
   want of parental affection that her son developed a preoccupied   
   manner. His young companions called him “Boccaperta,” “the gaper.” He   
   also had a strong temper at first. Still, he was a reverent child.   
      
   Joseph proved a difficult person to place. Apprenticed to a shoemaker,   
   he showed no talent for cobbling. Therefore, at 17, he himself asked   
   to join the Conventual Franciscans. They turned him down. The Capuchin   
   Franciscans did accept him as a lay-brother candidate, but he broke so   
   many dishes that they soon told him he’d better leave.   
      
   Finally, Signora Desa talked her brother, himself a Conventual   
   Franciscan, into hiring her boy as a servant. They accepted him on   
   this basis.   
      
   From then on, however, young Joe’s life began to change. He really   
   applied himself to becoming a better person – gentler, calmer, more   
   prayerful. It even came to the point that the Conventuals had him   
   enter the order and study for the priesthood. The reason for his   
   superiors’ changed views was that Joseph had displayed marvelous gifts   
   of mystical prayer.   
      
   Chief of these was the gift of ecstasy. In his prayer he was often so   
   swept up into union with God that he lost all sense of time and space.   
   His ecstasies were frequently connected with the still rarer gift of   
   “levitation”: being lifted up into the air when in ecstatic prayer.   
      
   For example, when Joseph was stationed at the monastery at Grottella,   
   it would take little to send him into rapture: the sight of a   
   religious statue or the mention of anything that reminded him of God.   
   Once, when he was living at their monastery at Orsini, his fellow   
   Franciscans in chapel saw him fly up seven or eight feet into the air,   
   kiss a statue tenderly and float off to his own cell. Sometimes when   
   he started flying he would even pick up a fellow friar and lift him up   
   beside him in the air, much to the consternation of the liftee. Only   
   the command of his superior could bring Friar Joseph down for a soft   
   landing. When he came to, of course, he had no knowledge of what had   
   been going on.   
      
   What were the Franciscans going to do with this unique friar?   
      
   The solution they arrived at was to keep him out of sight, so that he   
   wouldn’t continue to disturb public order. For thirty-five years,   
   therefore, he was forbidden to attend the community Mass and prayers,   
   obliged to say his own Mass and prayers in a private chapel. From 1653   
   to 1657, church authorities even took him away from his fellow   
   Conventuals and sent him, now to one, now to another remote monastery   
   of the Capuchin Franciscans. When devoted followers located one of his   
   “prisons,” the authorities spirited him off to another.   
      
   In 1657 he was finally allowed to return to the Conventual monastery   
   of Osimo. There he died in 1663. Meanwhile, separation from almost   
   everybody had caused him no great grief. It merely meant that his only   
   companion was God. And that was what God wanted.   
      
   You might say, therefore, that St. Joseph worried his fellow   
   Franciscans because he was a square peg and wouldn’t fit in the usual   
   round hole. What they overlooked is there is no need for every peg to   
   be round.   
      
   The square pegs that God sometimes makes are also beautiful in His   
   eyes. So should they be in ours.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   The nature of water is soft, and the nature of stone is hard; but if a   
   bottle is hung above the stone, allowing the water to fall down drop   
   by drop, it wears away the stone. So it is with the Word of God: it is   
   soft and our heart is hard, but the man who hears the Word of God   
   often opens his heart to the fear of God.   
   --Saint Poemen   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect hospitality, for through it   
   some have unknowingly entertained angels.  (Hebrews 13:1-2)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   When I say,"Hail Mary"    
     the heavens bow down,   
     the angels rejoice,   
     the earth jubilates,   
     hell trembles,   
     and the devils take flight!   
      
     St. Francis of Assisi   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)