From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   How Sorrows are to be Borne Patiently:  [II]   
      
   THE DISCIPLE.   
    Lord, because You were patient in Your life, in this respect   
   especially fulfilling the command of Your Father, it is fitting that   
   I, a wretched sinner, should bear myself patiently in accordance with   
   Your will, and that, for the salvation of my soul, I should bear the   
   burden of this corruptible life so long as You shall will. For though   
   this present life is hard, yet by Your grace it is made full of merit;   
   and by Your example and the lives of Your Saints it is rendered easier   
   and happier for the weak. Its consolations are richer than under the   
   old Law, when the gates of Heaven were shut, and the way thither dark,   
   so that few cared to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And even those who   
   in former days were righteous and to be saved could not enter the   
   Kingdom of Heaven until Your Passion and the Atonement of Your sacred   
   Death.   
   --Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Bk 3 Ch 18   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   May 21st – St. Serapion the Sindonite    
      
   Born in Egypt; died c. 356. Serapion's moniker, the Sindonite, comes   
   from the garment of coarse linen which he always wore. Like other   
   desert monks, he led a life of extreme austerity. Though he traveled   
   into several countries, he always lived in the same poverty,   
   mortification, and recollection. In one town, recognizing the   
   spiritual blindness of comedian, he sold himself to the idolater for a   
   small sum. His only sustenance in this servitude was bread and water.   
   He accomplished every duty belonging to his servitude with the utmost   
   diligence and fidelity, joining with his labor prayer. Having   
   converted his master and the whole family to the faith, and induced   
   him to quit the stage, Serapion was freed. His former master tried to   
   return the sum he had paid, but Serapion refused it, even to   
   distribute to the poor.   
      
   Soon after this Serapion sold himself a second time, to relieve a   
   distressed widow. Having spent some time with his new master, in   
   recompense of signal spiritual services, he was given his liberty, a   
   cloak, a tunic, and a book of the Gospels.   
      
   He was scarcely out the door when he met a poor man to whom he gave   
   his cloak. Shortly thereafter he gave his tunic to a man shivering in   
   the cold. Thus he was again reduced to his single linen garment. A   
   stranger asked who had stripped him and left him naked. Showing the   
   man his book of the Gospels, he said: "This it is that hath stripped   
   me." Not long after, he sold the book itself to relieve someone in   
   extreme distress.   
      
   When an old acquaintance asked what had happened to the book, Serapion   
   replied: "Could you believe it? This gospel seemed continually to cry   
   to me: 'Go, sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor.' Wherefore I   
   have also sold it and given the price to the indigent members of   
   Christ." Having nothing left but his own person, he sold himself again   
   on several other occasions, when the corporal or spiritual necessities   
   of his neighbor called for relief. Once he became slave to a certain   
   Manichee at Lacedaemon whom he served for two years. Again he brought   
   the man and his whole family over to the true faith.   
      
   Saint Serapion went from Lacedaemon to Rome to study the most perfect   
   models of virtue, but returned to Egypt where he died before Palladius   
   visited in 388. Upon reading the story of Serapion, Saint John the   
   Almsgiver called for his steward, and, weeping, said: "Can we flatter   
   ourselves that we do anything great because we give our estates to the   
   poor? Here is a man who could find means to give himself to them, and   
   so many times over" (Benedictines, Husenbeth)   
      
   Saint Quotes:   
   "Lose yourself wholly; and the more you lose, the more you will find."   
   --St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church   
      
   Charity is the sweet and holy bond which links the soul with its   
   Creator: it binds God with man and man with God.   
   -- Saint Catherine of Siena   
      
   <><><><>   
   St Augustine, the Holy Trinity, the Child and the Sea Shell   
      
   The great Doctor of the Church St. Augustine of Hippo spent over 30   
   years working on his treatise De Trinitate [about the Holy Trinity],   
   endeavouring to conceive an intelligible explanation for the mystery   
   of the Trinity.   
   He was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to   
   understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a small boy   
   running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The   
   boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place   
   it into a small hole in the sand.   
   The Bishop of Hippo approached him and asked, “My boy, what are doing?”   
   “I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied   
   with a sweet smile.   
   “But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all   
   that water” said Augustine.   
   The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the   
   Saint, and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying   
   to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity   
   with your small intelligence.”   
   The Saint was absorbed by such a keen response from that child, and   
   turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to   
   ask him something else, the boy had vanished.   
      
   Some say that it was an Angel sent by God to teach Augustine a lesson   
   on pride in learning. Others affirm it was the Christ Child Himself   
   who appeared to the Saint to remind him of the limits of human   
   understanding before the great mysteries of our Faith.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)