From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Meditation for troubled times:   
      
   Like a tree, I must be pruned of a lot of dead branches before I will   
   be ready to bear good fruit. Think of changed people as trees that   
   have been stripped of their old branches, pruned, cut, and bare. But   
   through the dark, seemingly dead branches flows silently, secretly,   
   the new sap, until with the sun of spring comes new life. There are   
   new leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruit, many times better because of   
   the pruning. I am in the hands of a Master Gardener, who makes no   
   mistakes in His pruning. I pray that I may cut away the dead branches   
   of my life. I pray that I may not mind the pruning, since it helps me   
   to bear good fruit later.   
   --From Twenty-Four Hours a Day   
      
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   February 10th – St. William of Maleval, Hermit, Prophet   
    (Also known as William of Malval or Malvalla)   
      
   Born in France; died at Maleval, Italy, February 10, 1157; canonized   
   by Innocent III in 1202. After carefree years of licentious military   
   life, William experienced a conversion of heart of which we are told   
   nothing. The first real piece of information we have is that the   
   penitent Frenchman made a pilgrimage to the tombs of the apostles at   
   Rome. Here he begged Pope Eugenius III for pardon and to set him on a   
   course of penance for his sins. Eugenius enjoined him to make a   
   pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1145. William followed his counsel and   
   spent eight years on the journey, returning to Italy a changed man.   
      
   In 1153, William became a hermit on the isle of Lupocavio (near Pisa)   
   in Tuscany for a time. So many joined him until he was prevailed upon   
   to undertake the governance. He wasn't well suited to lead other men.   
   First, he failed to maintain discipline at the abbey. Unable to bear   
   the tepidity and irregularity of his monks, he withdrew to Monte   
   Bruno. But the same thing happened when he organized the disciples who   
   had gathered around him into his own abbey on Monte Bruno.   
      
   Finally, in September 1155, he realized this was not God's plan for   
   him and he embraced the eremitical life amid the solitude of Maleval   
   (then called the Stable of Rhodes) near Siena. At Maleval he lived in   
   an underground cave until the lord of Buriano discovered him some   
   months later and built him a cell. For the first four months, William   
   had only the beasts for company and only forage for food.   
      
   The example of his life soon attracted another of like mind. On the   
   Feast of the Epiphany 1156, he was joined by a companion named Albert,   
   who lived with him the rest of his life--only 13 months--and recorded   
   William's vita. Like most of the early hermits, William used extreme   
   penances to atone for his earlier sinful life. He slept on the bare   
   ground, ate sparingly of only the coarsest fare, and drank only   
   limited amounts of water. Prayer, contemplation, and manual labor   
   employed all his waking moments. William had the gift of working   
   miracles and of prophecy.   
      
   Shortly before William's death, which he predicted, he and Albert were   
   joined by a physician named Rinaldo. The two disciples buried William   
   in his little garden, and together studied to live according to   
   William's maxims and example. Later their number increased and they   
   built a chapel over their founder's grave with a hermitage; however   
   his relics were dispersed in the wars between Siena and Grosseto.   
      
   This was the origin of the Gulielmites, or Hermits of Saint William,   
   which spread throughout Italy, France, Flanders, and Germany. Gregory   
   IX, mitigating their austerities, gave the Rule of Saint Benedict to   
   the group organized as the Order of Bare-Footed Friars, but they were   
   eventually absorbed by the Augustinian hermits except for 12 houses in   
   the Low Countries.   
      
   William is honored in the new Paris Missal and Breviary, where his   
   feast is kept at the Abbey of Blancs-Manteaux, founded in 1257 as a   
   mendicant order, called the Servants of the Virgin Mary, but bestowed   
   on the Gulielmites after the second council of Lyons in 1297   
   (Benedictines, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Husenbeth).   
      
   In art, William of Maleval is similar to William of Aquitaine but with   
   no ducal coronet. He carries a pilgrim's staff and sometimes wears a   
   monastic habit over armor. At times he may be shown (1) bearing a   
   cross staff, one arm of which ends in a crescent, or (2) bearing a   
   shield with four fleur-de-lys (Roeder). He is the patron of armorers   
   and venerated in Siena, Italy (Roeder), and Paris (Husenbeth).   
      
      
   Quotes:   
   "Persons who keep themselves low in their own estimation and love to   
   be considered of little account and despised by others please God in   
   the highest degree; and, therefore, He willingly lowers Himself to   
   them, pours upon them the treasures of His graces, reveals to them His   
   secrets, invites and draws them sweetly to Himself. Thus, the more one   
   lowers and abuses himself before men, the more he rises and becomes   
   great in the sight of God, and the more clearly he will, one day,   
   behold the Divine Essence"   
   --Thomas a Kempis   
      
      
       St. Gertrude, one day hearing the little bell ring for Communion   
   and not feeling as well prepared as she desired, said to the Lord: "I   
   see that Thou art even now coming to me; but why hast Thou not first   
   adorned my heart with some ornaments of devotion, with which I might   
   be more suitably prepared to come and meet Thee?" But the Lord   
   answered: "Know that sometimes I am more pleased with the virtue of   
   humility than with exterior devotion"   
   (Taken from the book "A Year with the Saints". February - Humility)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)