From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Goodness and Peace in Man  [2]     
      
    Direct your zeal, therefore, first upon yourself; then you may with   
   justice exercise it upon those about you. You are well versed in   
   coloring your own actions with excuses which you will not accept from   
   others, though it would be more just to accuse yourself and excuse   
   your brother. If you wish men to bear with you, you must bear with   
   them. Behold, how far you are from true charity and humility which   
   does not know how to be angry with anyone, or to be indignant save   
   only against self!   
   --Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ-- Book II  Ch. 3   
      
      
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   April 29th - St. Joseph Cottolengo   
   (1786-1842)   
      
   One day in 1827 Father Joseph Cottolengo was called upon to give the   
   last sacraments to a young Frenchwoman who had taken ill in the city   
   of Turin, Italy, while en route back to France with her family. Amazed   
   at the fact that this foreign woman was dying uncared for in a   
   slum--the only place in which she could find lodging--Cottolengo   
   learned that there was no institution in the whole city where   
   emergency medical care could be obtained.   
      
   Father Joseph was a great devotee of the needy of any sort. Whenever   
   he saw that aid was necessary, he dropped everything else until   
   provision had been made. In the 1827 case, he at once rented five   
   rooms in a house to serve as an emergency hospital. A good local woman   
   supplied some beds, a doctor and a pharmacist offered their services,   
   and soon he had five patients under care. What proved the need of such   
   an institution was the way that the hospital grew. As more rooms were   
   added, Father Cottolengo gathered and organized a permanent nursing   
   staff of men and women. He called the men the Brothers of St. Vincent.   
   The women he formed into a nursing order of nuns, the Vincentian   
   Sisters.   
      
   This “Volta Rossa” hospital suffered a brief setback in 1831. A   
   cholera epidemic broke out, and the city authorities, fearing that the   
   hospital would become a breeding ground for the disease, shut it down.   
   Canon Cottolengo kept his cool, and simply planned to move the   
   hospital to other quarters. Meanwhile, his nurses took care of the   
   cholera victims in their own homes.   
      
   The place to which the hospital was moved in 1832 was Valdocco,   
   suburban to Turin. Not only did the transplanted emergency hospital   
   thrive in its new locale; there soon sprang up alongside it a number   
   of auxiliary institutions called into being by additional human needs.   
   There was a nursing school, a building for epileptics, and others for   
   deaf-mutes, the blind, orphans, homeless kids, prostitutes, the aged,   
   and the mentally retarded (“My good boys and girls”, he affectionately   
   termed his retarded children.) In the end, he had a vast complex of   
   charitable homes.   
      
   The most remarkable part of this “Little House of Divine Providence”   
   is that the founder actually did leave the management completely in   
   God’s hands. He kept no books, no accounts. What he got he forthwith   
   spent, never investing it as a cautionary or prudential measure. He   
   even refused to put his center under royal patronage as a security,   
   and would allow no endowments. Whenever a need arose, therefore, he   
   trusted that the God who had allowed it to arise would provide funds   
   to deal with it.   
      
   Some would think it a folly to start and maintain institutions without   
   knowing where the funds were coming from. But St. Joseph Cottolengo   
   did know where they were coming from. If he had no source of money, he   
   had a battery of people praying for it--various organizations and   
   religious orders that he had founded especially to storm heaven for   
   aid. His center was not called the Little House of Divine Providence   
   in vain. He really did challenge God to provide for the good works.   
   And God never failed him.   
      
   Most of this saint’s institutions continue to flourish today. That   
   says something, doesn’t it, about the wisdom of trusting in a heavenly   
   Father? Remember, it was He who once said to His people through   
   Isaiah: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the   
   child of her womb? Even should she forget I will never forget you!”   
   (49:15).   
      
   St. Joseph Cottolengo, pray that we may always trust bravely in God’s   
   assistance!   
   –Father Bob   
      
      
   Reflection:   
    The safest correction of vice is the Christian's blameless life. Yet   
   there are times when silence would make us answerable for the sins of   
   others. At such times let us, in the name of God, rebuke the offender   
   without fear.   
      
   Saint Quote:   
   The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he   
   does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to   
   defend himself from it.   
   -- Saint Vincent de Paul   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   PRAYER TO SAINT THERESE   
      
   I ardently beseech thee, dear Saint Therese,   
   to obtain from Almighty God this grace,   
   that with Mary and Joseph at my side   
   I may die a peaceful and holy death   
   strengthened by the sacraments of the Church   
   and entirely resigned to God's will.   
   May my last words on earth   
   be the dying prayer thou didst utter:   
   "My God...I love Thee!"   
      
   St. Therese pray for me.   
   St. Therese zealous for souls, pray for me.   
   St. Therese curing bodily ills, pray for me.   
   St. Therese always answering prayers, pray for me.   
   St. Therese leading souls back to God, pray for me.   
   St. Therese fulfilling thy promises, pray for me.   
   St. Therese showering roses from Heaven, pray for me.   
   St. Therese wonderworker of our time, pray for me.   
      
   May God the Father,   
   God the Son,   
   and God the Holy Spirit   
   be ever glorified through thee,   
   Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.   
   Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)