From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Appreciating God’s Grace  (5)   
      
      Be grateful, therefore, for the least gift and you will be worthy   
   to receive a greater. Consider the least gift as the greatest, the   
   most contemptible as something special. And, if you but look to the   
   dignity of the Giver, no gift will appear too small or worthless. Even   
   though He give punishments and scourges, accept them, because He acts   
   for our welfare in whatever He allows to befall us.   
      He who desires to keep the grace of God ought to be grateful when   
   it is given and patient when it is withdrawn. Let him pray that it   
   return; let him be cautious and humble lest he lose it.   
   --Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Book 2, Chapter 10   
      
   ===============   
   August 19th - St John Eudes, “Apostle of Two Hearts”   
      
     Priest, Missionary, Founder, Preacher, Confessor, Writer, he founded   
   the Congregation of Jesus and Mary and the Order of Our Lady of   
   Charity, and was the author of the propers for the Mass and Divine   
   Office of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.   
      
   Eudes was born in 1601 on a farm near the village of Ri, in Normandy,   
   the son of Isaac and Martha Eudes. After studying with the Jesuits at   
   Caen, Eudes joined the Oratorians on 25 March 1623. His masters and   
   models in the spiritual life were Pierre de Bérulle and the mystic   
   Charles de Condren. As a student of de Bérulle, Eudes is a member of   
   the French School of Spirituality. The French School was not a system   
   or philosophy, but a highly Christocentric approach to spirituality,   
   characterized by a sense of adoration, a personal relationship with   
   Jesus, and a rediscovery of the Holy Spirit.   
      
   Eudes was ordained a priest on 20 December 1625. Immediately after his   
   ordination, he came down with an illness that kept him bedridden for a   
   year. During severe plagues in 1627 and 1631, he volunteered to care   
   for the stricken in his own diocese. He went about Normandy committing   
   himself to the sick, administering the sacraments, and burying the   
   dead. To avoid infecting his colleagues, he lived in a huge cask in   
   the middle of a field during the plague.   
      
   At age 32, Eudes became a parish missionary, preached over 100 parish   
   missions, throughout Normandy, Ile-de-France, Burgundy and Brittany.   
   He was called by Jean-Jacques Olier “the Prodigy of his Age”.   
      
   He saw that parish priests needed support in becoming men of prayer   
   and action. He held conferences for them in which he outlined their   
   duties. Later, John started his own society of priests called the   
   Congregation of Jesus and Mary. The members were dedicated to   
   promoting good seminary training, which would form Christlike priests.   
      
   Christian love impelled John to feel compassion for the women who were   
   trying to escape prostitution. He wanted a place for them to live, a   
   refuge from their former way of life. To serve the women in these   
   refuges, he established a society of religious women called the   
   Congregation of Our Lady of the Refuge. It now serves the needs of   
   troubled girls around the world.   
      
   Influenced by the teaching of the French school and St. Francis de   
   Sales, especially as set out in the Treatise on the Love of God, and   
   also by the revelations of St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde, he was the   
   theoretician, so to speak, of devotion to the Sacred Heart and   
   explained the expressions of his predecessors. Won over to devotion to   
   the Heart of Jesus by Bérulle’s devotion to the Incarnate Word, he   
   combined with it the gentleness and devotional warmth of St. Francis   
   de Sales. He changed the somewhat individual and private character of   
   the devotion into a devotion for the whole Church by writing for the   
   benefit of his communities an Office and a Mass, which were later   
   approved by several bishops before spreading throughout the Church.   
   For this reason, Pope Leo XIII, in proclaiming his virtues heroic in   
   1903, gave him the title of “Author of the Liturgical Worship of the   
   Sacred Heart of Jesus and Holy Heart of Mary”.   
      
   Eudes dedicated the seminary chapels of Caen and Coutances to the   
   Sacred Heart. The feast of the Holy Heart of Mary was celebrated for   
   the first time in 1648 and that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1672,   
   each as a double of the first class with an octave. He composed   
   various prayers and rosaries to the Sacred Hearts. His book “Le Cœur   
   Admirable de la Très Sainte Mère de Dieu” is the first book ever   
   written on the devotion to the Sacred Hearts.   
      
   Eudes taught the mystical unity of the hearts of Jesus and Mary and   
   wrote, his most famous works are – Devotion to the Adorable Heart of   
   Jesus and The Admirable Heart of the Most Holy Mother of God:   
      
   “You must never separate what God has so perfectly united. So closely   
   are Jesus and Mary bound up with each other that whoever beholds Jesus   
   sees Mary; whoever loves Jesus, loves Mary;  whoever has devotion to   
   Jesus, has devotion to Mary.”   
      
   The most striking characteristic of the teaching of St. John Eudes on   
   Devotion to the Sacred Heart--as indeed of his whole teaching on the   
   spiritual life--is that Christ is always its centre. St John died a   
   month after finishing The Admirable Heart of the Most Holy Mother of   
   God, of natural causes on 19 August 1680 at Caen, Normandy, France.   
      
   Beatified on 25 April 1909 by Pope Pius X and Canonised on 31 May 1925   
   by Pope Pius XI.   
   Attributes – Priest’s garments with the Sacred Heart. Patron of the   
   diocese of Baie-Comeau, Quebec.   
   By Anastpaul   
      
      
   Saint Quotes   
   “Faith is a beam, radiating from the face of God.”   
   --St John Eudes   
      
   “Our wish, our object, our chief preoccupation   
   must be to form Jesus in ourselves,   
   to make His spirit, His devotion, His affections,   
   His desires and His disposition live and reign there.   
   All our religious exercises should be directed to this end.   
   It is the work which God has given us to do unceasingly. “   
   --St John Eudes   
      
   Bible Quote   
   7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let   
   him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at   
   her.”    (John 8:7)  RSVCE   
      
   <><><><>   
   O Heart of my Saviour   
      
   O Heart all lovable   
   and all loving of my Saviour,   
   be the Heart of my heart,   
   the soul of my soul,   
   the spirit of my spirit,   
   the life of my life   
   and the sole principle   
   of all my thoughts, words and actions,   
   of all the faculties of my soul   
   and of all my senses,   
   both interior and exterior.   
   this day and always. Amen   
   By St John Eudes   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)