From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   -- John 14:26-27 --   
      
    But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my   
   name, he will teach you all things,[a] and bring to your remembrance   
   all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I   
   give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your   
   hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.  RSVCE   
   ==============================   
   The end result of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives is deep, lasting   
   peace. Unlike worldly peace, which is usually defined as the absence   
   of conflict, this peace is confident assurance in any circumstance;   
   with Christ's peace, we have no need to fear the present or the   
   future. If your life is full of stress, allow the Holy Spirit to fill   
   you with Christ's peace.   
      
      
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   February 21st - St Peter Damian, OSB   
      
   St. Peter Damian must be numbered among the greatest of the Church’s   
   reformers in the Middle Ages, yes, even among the truly extraordinary   
   persons of all times. In Damian the scholar, we admire wealth of   
   wisdom: in Damian the preacher of God’s word, apostolic zeal; in   
   Damian the monk, austerity and self-denial; in Damian the priest,   
   piety and zeal for souls; in Damian the cardinal, loyalty and   
   submission to the Holy See together with generous enthusiasm and   
   devotion for the good of Mother Church. He was a personal friend of   
   Pope St Gregory VII.  In his lifetime, he served 7 Popes, there were   
   16 during his lifetime.   
      
   St Peter Damian was a monk, a lover of solitude, and at the same time   
   a fearless man of the Church, committed personally to the task of   
   reform, initiated by the Popes of the time. He was born in Ravenna in   
   1007, into a noble family but in impoverished circumstances.  The   
   family was large, Peter was the youngest, and it was reported Peter’s   
   mother was overwhelmed by the care of so many children such that she   
   was not an affectionate or dutiful mother.   
      
   Peter had a difficult childhood, he lost both parents at an early age,   
   as well. Put in the care of a brother who mistreated him, Peter’s   
   brother used him more as a slave than loved him as a sibling.  Peter   
   never forgot his poverty and was always kind to the poor he   
   encountered throughout his life thereafter.  Another brother, Damian,   
   the eldest, was a priest in the city of Ravenna and took pity on his   
   younger sibling and took him in.  Damian could see Peter’s   
   intellectual gifts and sent him to be educated at Parma and Faenza.   
   Peter was so grateful he took his brother Damian’s name.   
      
   The Cross was the Christian mystery that was to fascinate Peter Damian   
   more than all the others. “Those who do not love the Cross of Christ   
   do not love Christ”, he said (Sermo XVIII, 11, p. 117); and he   
   described himself as “Petrus crucis Christi servorum famulus Peter,   
   servant of the servants of the Cross of Christ” (Ep, 9, 1). Peter   
   Damian addressed the most beautiful prayers to the Cross in which he   
   reveals a vision of this mystery which has cosmic dimensions for it   
   embraces the entire history of salvation: “O Blessed Cross”, he   
   exclaimed, “You are venerated, preached and honored by the faith of   
   the Patriarchs, the predictions of the Prophets, the senate that   
   judges the Apostles, the victorious army of Martyrs and the throngs of   
   all the Saints” (Sermo XLVII, 14, p. 304). The example of St Peter   
   Damian should always spur us, too, always to look to the Cross as to   
   the supreme act of God’s love for humankind.  St Peter Damian also had   
   a very special devotion to the Blessed Mother.   
      
   However, the ideal image of “Holy Church” illustrated by Peter Damian   
   does not correspond as he knew well to the reality of his time. The   
   11th century was rife with corruption within the Church, especially   
   among its clergy.  Peter wrote Liber Gomorrhianus (Book of Gomorrah),   
   which described the vices of priests, offenses against their vows of   
   celibacy, and mainly in their concern with worldly matters, with   
   money, and the evil of simony, the buying and selling of church   
   offices.   
      
   For this reason he did not fear to denounce the state of corruption   
   that existed in the monasteries and among the clergy.  The practice of   
   the conferral by the lay authorities of ecclesiastical offices was   
   common, such that various Bishops and Abbots were behaving as the   
   rulers of their subjects rather than as pastors of souls. Their moral   
   life frequently left much to be desired. For this reason, in 1057   
   Peter Damian left his monastery with great reluctance and sorrow and   
   accepted, if unwillingly, his appointment as Cardinal Bishop of Ostia.   
   So it was that he entered fully into collaboration with the Popes in   
   the difficult task of Church reform. He saw that to make his own   
   contribution of helping in the work of the Church’s renewal   
   contemplation did not suffice. He thus relinquished the beauty of the   
   hermitage and courageously undertook numerous journeys and missions.   
      
   Because of his love for monastic life, 10 years later, in 1067, he   
   obtained permission to return to Fonte Avellana and resigned from the   
   Diocese of Ostia. However, the tranquility he had longed for did not   
   last long: two years later, he was sent to Frankfurt in an endeavor to   
   prevent the divorce of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV from his wife   
   Bertha.   
      
   Henry IV was eventually excommunicated for other offenses,   
   entanglements, and interferences in Church affairs, including   
   conspiring and executing a plot to the kidnap and imprison the Pope.   
   He famously stood in the snow at Canossa for 3 days,  January 1077,   
   wearing no shoes, taking no food or drink, wearing a hair shirt, The   
   Walk of Canossa as it is called, as penance imploring that his   
   excommunication by Pope St Gregory VII be lifted.  While meant as   
   remedy to make clear the error of ways, excommunication absolves, it   
   gets technical, the Christian community from Gospel obligations   
   towards the excommunicated, including fealty to a sovereign.  Once   
   having known the love of Christ in the bosom of the Church and having   
   rejected it, Christian duty no longer applies towards the   
   excommunicated.  Repent or lose your crown was the message.  The   
   expression “going to Canossa/nach Canossa gehen”, as in doing penance   
   of some type for some wrong, is still contemporary in Europe.   
      
   After another mission, on the journey home to his hermitage he died of   
   an unexpected illness. Dante placed St Peter Damian in one of the   
   highest circles of his Divine Comedy’s Paradiso.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   “Do not let your weakness make you impatient.”   
    -St. Peter Damian   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)