From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   April 23rd - St. Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, Martyr   
   (956-997)   
      
   The ancient European world, centered largely around the Mediterranean   
   Sea, scarcely knew of the existence of the Slavs, a huge Indo-European   
   race that lived in the East, far removed from Greek and Roman contact.   
      
   With the great movement of peoples in the early Middle Ages, branches   
   of this Slavic society moved west. A largely agricultural body, they   
   settled down in three groups:   
      
   The Eastern Slavs (Russians, Belarussians or White Russians, and Ukrainians);   
   The Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, plus smaller groupings to the   
   north);   
   The Southern Slavs, mostly in the Balkan Peninsula (Bulgarians, Serbs,   
   Croatians, and Slovenes).   
   All of these shared a common Slavic tongue, but it developed variant   
   forms in the various groups.   
      
   Some of these Slavic names are very familiar to us today. With the   
   breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, many of the Slavic   
   societies are today claiming political independence.   
      
   The Slavs gradually learned of the Christian message from two sources:   
   the Latin West (through Irish, Frankish and Roman missionaries), and   
   the Greek East (through SS. Cyril and Methodius, two Greeks who   
   brought with them the Greek liturgy of Constantinople expressed in the   
   Slavic vernacular). As a result, one part of the Christian Slavs ended   
   up following the Latin Rite, the other part, the Greco-Slavic Rite.   
      
   Cyril and Methodius introduced the Greco-Slavic liturgy to the Czechs,   
   with the approval of the Holy See. Eventually, however, western   
   political pressures forced the followers of the two   
   brother-missionaries to move east and south, so that the Czechs   
   remained affiliated with the Latin Rite.   
      
   This is a long but necessary introduction to St. Adalbert of Prague. A   
   Bohemian Czech of the Latin Rite (though not unfriendly to the   
   Greco-Slav Rite), he was to further the apostolate widely among his   
   fellow Slavs. Adalbert (baptized Vojtech) was a member of the   
   Slavniks, an East Bohemian princely dynasty. Because of his piety and   
   talent, he was chosen, in 982, second bishop of Prague, whose first   
   bishop had been a German.   
      
   A man of zeal, Adalbert worked for the reform of the Czech church and   
   the spread of Christianity among the non-Christian Bohemians and   
   Hungarians. His high social status and his close friendship with   
   Emperor Otto III made him a person of influence, but they also earned   
   for him the hatred of extreme Bohemian nationalists, who were inclined   
   to favor the old pagan traditions. Forced to leave Prague, Bishop   
   Adalbert went to Rome in 990 and became a monk in a Benedictine   
   monastery. In 992 he was persuaded to return to his diocese, but he   
   had to leave again in 995 after the Bohemian king Boleslaus II   
   massacred Adalbert’s family and their adherents.   
      
   Utterly unable to fulfill his duties in Prague, Adalbert got   
   permission from Pope John XV to devote himself to the full-time   
   apostolate of the more easterly Slavic nations. His friend, King   
   Boleslaus the Great of Poland offered to sponsor a mission under his   
   supervision to the pagan Prussians in Pomerania on the Baltic coast.   
      
   Adalbert and his companions made a few converts at Danzig, but the   
   Prussians ordered the missionaries out of the country. Refusing to   
   give up his mission, and remaining in Pomerania, the bishop was   
   murdered by the pagans on April 23, 997. The martyr’s body was thrown   
   into the water, but was eventually washed up on the Polish coast,   
   acquired by King Boleslaus, and enshrined in the cathedral of Gniezno,   
   Poland.   
      
   This Slavic bishop was an important figure in the Christian history of   
   central Europe. An active promoter of monasticism, he founded   
   monasteries in Bohemia and Poland. He influenced the conversion of   
   Hungary (and was possibly the baptizer of Hungary’s apostolic ruler,   
   St. Stephen). And he is considered the apostle of Prussia. Poland and   
   Bohemia have both claimed him as their own.   
      
   –Father Robert   
      
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Behold, he cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, and   
   they also that pierced him. And all the tribes of the earth shall   
   bewail themselves because of him. Even so. Amen. 8 I am Alpha and   
   Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, who is, and who   
   was, and who is to come, the Almighty.  (Apoc. 1:7-8)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   On The Foundation of Humility  [III]   
      
   No one can review his past life without finding therein motives enough   
   and to spare for humbling himself before Almighty God. "We have   
   sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, we have   
   revolted; to us belongeth shame and confusion of face" (Dan. ix. 5,   
   7). If ever we are inclined to think much of ourselves, we have only   
   to look back on our past years; on the deliberate sins against   
   charity, against truthfulness, against purity; on the pride, the   
   selfishness, the self-will, the neglect of God that have stained our   
   lives.   
      
   Besides the actual sins, how many infidelities to grace! God has been   
   so liberal with His graces, and I have been so negligent in availing   
   myself of them. How many I might have earned if I had been faithful   
   and had not wilfully turned aside from what God asked of me to follow   
   my own will and pleasure. What cause for humiliation of myself! If   
   others who have perhaps lived and died in sin had had my graces, would   
   they not have made a far better use of them than I have? To me, O God,   
   shame and confusion of face! I must throw myself on Thy mercy and   
   humbly beg forgiveness.   
      
   When, moreover, I look at what I now am, I find fresh cause for   
   humbling myself. I might have been a saint if I had been more   
   faithful, and now I am one of the vilest of sinners. My soul in the   
   sight of God is disfigured by sin, as a body is by the ulcers and   
   sores that spoil its natural beauty and comeliness. I abound with   
   faults innumerable; I am unworthy to appear in the presence of God. "O   
   hide Thy face from my sins, blot out all my iniquities!"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)