From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Be converted with a sincere heart   
      
      Fix your minds on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Inflamed   
   with love for us, he came down from heaven to redeem us. For our sake   
   he endured every torment of body and soul and shrank from no bodily   
   pain. He himself gave us an example of perfect patience and love. We,   
   then, are to be patient in adversity. Put aside your hatred and   
   animosity. Take pains to refrain from sharp words. If they escape your   
   lips, do not be ashamed to let your lips produce the remedy, since   
   they have caused the wounds. Pardon one another so that later on you   
   will not remember the injury. The recollection of an injury is itself   
   wrong. It adds to our anger, nurtures our sin, and hates what is good.   
   It is a rusty arrow and poison for the soul. It puts all virtue to   
   flight. It is like a worm in the mind: it confuses our speech and   
   tears to shreds our petitions to God. It is foreign to charity: it   
   remains planted in the soul like a nail. It is wickedness that never   
   sleeps, sin that never fails. It is indeed a daily death.   
   --Francis de Paola   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   April 6th - Bl. Notker Balbulus   
      
   In the days when Grimoald was abbot of Saint-Gall, the parents of Bl.   
   Notker placed their young son in its school. The boy was delicate,   
   with an impediment in his speech from which he derived his nickname of   
   Balbulus, and he seems to have been already what the monk Ekkehard   
   (IV) described him to have been in later life, “weakly in body but not   
   in mind, stammering of tongue but not of intellect, pressing forward   
   boldly in things divine--a vessel filled with the Holy Ghost without   
   equal in his time”. With his companions and lifelong friends, Tutilo   
   and Radpert, he studied music under Marcellus, the Irishman, and the   
   trio afterwards did much to develop the singing-school of Saint-Gall   
   which had hitherto mainly confined itself to trying to maintain north   
   of the Alps the form of ecclesiastical music as used in Rome. They   
   were all three professed, and afterwards taught in the schools; Notker   
   was also librarian and guest-master.   
      
    Charles the Fat, who was fond of visiting Saint-Gall, had a great   
   regard for Notker whom he often consulted in his spiritual and even in   
   his temporal difficulties, without, however, always following his   
   advice. One day a messenger arrived from the monarch while the holy   
   man was busy weeding his garden and planting and watering. “Tell the   
   emperor to do what I am now doing”, was the answer he sent back, and   
   Charles, who was no fool, was not at a loss to understand his meaning.   
   The court chaplain, a learned but conceited man, thought to confound   
   the monk whose influence with his master he resented. “Tell me, you   
   who are so learned, what God is now doing”, he asked him in the   
   presence of a large gathering. “He is doing now what He has done in   
   the past, He is putting down the proud and exalting the humble”, was   
   the ready reply : the chaplain beat a hasty retreat amid general   
   laughter.   
      
   It was thought at one time that Notker was the inventor of the   
   sequence or “prose” which fits into the music of the Alleluia jubilus   
   between the epistle and the gospel at Mass, but it is now established   
   that he composed his sequences on a model he found in an antiphonary   
   brought to Saint-Gall by a fugitive monk when Jumièges was burnt down.   
   To Notker belongs the credit of introducing sequences into Germany, of   
   developing them, and of composing some thirty-eight or more original   
   ones of his own. His other works comprise a martyrology, some hymns,   
   and the completion of Echambert’s Chronicle. A metrical biography of   
   St. Gall is also attributed to him as well as the Gesta Caroli Magni   
   by an anonymous monk of Saint-Gall, but, as there were several other   
   monks there of the name of Notker who also were writers, it is   
   extremely difficult to allocate the works which became connected with   
   their name.   
      
   So greatly was Bl. Notker beloved that for a long time after his death   
   in 912 his brethren could not speak of him without tears. His cultus   
   was confirmed in 1512.   
      
   The life of Notker by Ekkehard V, who lived long after his time, is   
   printed in the Acta Sanctorum, April, vol. i, but the biographical   
   notice in Mabillon’s Acta Sanctorum O.S.B. is also valuable. On   
   Notker’s musical and literary work much has been written. P. von   
   Winterfeld in the Neues Archiv (1902) does not hesitate to call him   
   the greatest poet of the middle ages.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   "The essence of perfection is to embrace the will of God in all   
   things, prosperous or adverse. In prosperity, even sinners find it   
   easy to unite themselves to the divine will; but it takes saints to   
   unite themselves to God's will when things go wrong and are painful to   
   self-love. Our conduct in such instances is the measure of our love of   
   God."   
   --St Alphonsus de Liguori   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   12 What shall I render to the LORD for all his bounty to me?   
   13 I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD,   
   14 I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.   
   15 Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.   
   16 O LORD, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your handmaid.   
     You have loosed my bonds.   
   17 I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the   
   name of the LORD.   
   18 I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people,   
   19 in the courts of the house of the LORD, in your midst, O Jerusalem.   
   [Psalm 116:12-19]   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   To Our Lord on the Cross:   
      
   My Crucified Jesus, mercifully accept the prayer which I now make to   
   Thee, for help in the moment of my death, when at its approach, all my   
   senses shall fail me.   
      
   When, therefore, O sweetest Jesus, my weary and downcast eyes can no   
   longer look up to Thee, be mindful of the loving gaze which I now turn   
   on Thee and have mercy on me. When my parched lips can no longer kiss   
   Thy most Sacred Wounds, remember then those kisses which I now imprint   
   on Thee, and have mercy on me. When my cold hands can no longer   
   embrace Thy Cross, forget not the affection with which I embrace it   
   now, and have mercy on me. And when, at length, my swollen and   
   lifeless tongue can no longer speak, remember that I called upon Thee   
   now.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)