From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   You have not the Time--   
   Concerning Prayer and Work--Excerpt from Sermon of the Cure de Ars   
      
   We can only find our happiness on earth in loving God, and we can only   
   love Him in prayer to Him. We see that Jesus Christ, to encourage us   
   often to have recourse to Him through prayer, promises never to refuse   
   us anything if we pray for it as we should. But there is no need to go   
   looking for elaborate and roundabout ways of showing you that we   
   should pray often, for you have only to open your catechism and you   
   will see there that the duty of every good Christian is to pray   
   morning and evening and often during the day--that is to say,   
   always....   
      
   Which of us, my dear brethren, could, without tears of compassion,   
   listen to those poor Christians who dare to say that they have not   
   time to pray? You have not the time! Poor blind creatures, which is   
   the more precious action: to strive to please God and to save your   
   soul, or to go out to feed your animals in the stable or to call your   
   children or your servants in order to send them out to till the earth   
   or to tidy up the stable? Dear God! How blind man is! .... You have   
   not the time! But tell me, ungrateful creatures, if God had called you   
   to die that night, would you have exerted yourselves? If He had sent   
   you 3 or 4 months of illness, would you have exerted yourselves? Go   
   away, you miserable creatures; you deserve to have God abandon you in   
   your blindness and leave you thus to perish. We find that it is too   
   much to give Him a few minutes to thank Him for the graces which He is   
   giving us at every instant! ....   
      
   You must get on with your work, you say. That, my dear people, is   
   where you are greatly mistaken. You have no other work to do except to   
   please God and to save your souls. All the rest is not your work. If   
   you do not do it, others will, but if you lose your soul, who will   
   save it?   
      
      
   =============   
   March 20th – St. Martin, Archbishop of Braga   
   d. 579   
      
   ST. MARTIN OF BRAGA is said by St. Gregory of Tours to have surpassed   
   in learning all the scholars of his age, and the Christian poet   
   Fortunatus described him as having inherited the merits as well as the   
   name of St. Martin of Tours. His early history is uncertain. The story   
   that he was a native of Pannonia is possibly the mistake of some   
   scribe who confused him with St. Martin of Tours. He is said to have   
   made a pilgrimage to Palestine, and it was perhaps with returning   
   pilgrims that he made his way to Galicia in Spain. There the Suevi   
   held the mastery and had propagated Arian doctrines. St. Martin,   
   however, by his earnest preaching brought Galicia back to the Catholic   
   Church. He began by converting and instructing King Theodomir, and   
   subsequently reconciled many other Arians and lapsed Catholics. He   
   built several monasteries, the principal among which, Dumium, served   
   him as a centre for his missionary efforts.   
      
   The Suevian monarchs out of regard for him made Dumium the seat of a   
   bishopric (now Mondoñedo), of which he became the first occupant, and   
   so closely did they attach Martin to their court that he was called   
   “the Bishop of the Royal Family”. Nevertheless he never relaxed his   
   own severe monastic rule of life, and maintained strict discipline in   
   the government of his monks. He was afterwards promoted to the see of   
   Braga, which made him metropolitan of the whole of Galicia, and he   
   held that dignity until his death.   
      
   Besides his main work as a missionary, St. Martin rendered great   
   service to the Church by his writings. The chief of these are a   
   collection of 84 canons, a Formula vitae honestae, written as a guide   
   to a good life at the request of King Miro, a description of   
   superstitious peasant customs entitled De correctione rusticorum, a   
   symposium of moral maxims, and a selection of the sayings of the   
   Egyptian solitaries. St. Martin died in 579 at his monastery at   
   Dumium, and his body was translated to Braga in 1606.   
      
   Our principal authorities are here Gregory of Tours and Venantius   
   Fortunatus. See the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. iii; Florez, España   
   Sagrada, vol. iv, pp. 1511-158 Gams, Kirchengeschichte Spaniens, vol.   
   ii, Pt 1, pp. 472-475. A cordial appreciation of the work and   
   scholarship of St. Martin of Braga may be found in the Cambridge   
   Medieval History, vol. iii, pp. 489-490. Prominence is also given to   
   him in Ebert’s Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalter, vol. i, and   
   ed. pp. 579-584. There is an account of his life in Martini Episcopi   
   Bracarensis Opera Omnia (1950), ed. C. W. Barlow.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Anxiety proceeds from an ill-regulated desire to be delivered from the   
   evil we experience, or to acquire the good to which we aspire;   
   nevertheless, nothing aggravates evil and hinders good so much as   
   anxiety and worry.   
   -- Saint Francis de Sales   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our   
   iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with   
   His stripes we are healed.   (Isaiah 53:5)   
      
      
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    God Alone Suffices!   
      
   I offer You, Lord, my thoughts: to be fixed on You;   
   my words: to have You for their theme;   
   my actions: to reflect my love for You;   
   my sufferings: to be endured for Your greater glory.   
      
   I want to do what You ask of me:   
   in the way You ask,   
   for as long as You ask,   
   because You ask it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)