From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Bearing with the Faults of Others  (4)   
      
   If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for   
   God’s sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with   
   one another’s burdens, for there is no man without fault, no man   
   without burden, no man sufficient to himself nor wise enough. Hence we   
   must support one another, console one another, mutually help, counsel,   
   and advise, for the measure of every man’s virtue is best revealed in   
   time of adversity--adversity that does not weaken a man but rather   
   shows what he is.   
   --Thomas à Kempis, From the Imitation of Christ chapter 16   
      
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   May 8th – Bl. Catherine of St. Augustine, Mystic, Missionary   
   (1632-1668)   
      
   A young future missionary to New France, Catherine de Longpré, in   
   religion Sister Marie-Catherine of Saint Augustine, was a nursing nun   
   in the community of the Hospitaler Sisters of Saint Augustine in   
   Evreux. Born in France in 1632, she went to Quebec at the age of 16.   
   Having offered her life for the sick and the sanctification of souls,   
   she found in Quebec City a newly-established and very poor hospital,   
   where she would labor for 20 years with unfailing devotion and   
   courage.   
      
   Blessed Catherine’s physical and moral sufferings increased to a   
   measure which few Saints have surpassed; she was chosen as a victim by   
   God for the expiation of sins, in this territory which He destined for   
   Himself in a particular way. To sustain her in the terrible obsessions   
   which she endured, to preserve other souls who could not have   
   withstood hell’s assaults, she was given for her heavenly spiritual   
   director, Saint John de Brebeuf, the North American martyr who had   
   died not long before, in what is now Ontario. The entire history of   
   her interior life was written by her confessor, the Jesuit Paul   
   Ragueneau, who had been a friend of the great Martyr and had labored   
   with him. Father Ragueneau recognized as authentic his fellow Jesuit’s   
   spiritual role in the life of this remarkable religious.   
      
   The sale of alcoholic beverages to the Indians in exchange for furs   
   was a grievous abuse which the saintly first bishop of Quebec,   
   Monsignor Francis Montmorency de Laval, was striving to abolish; sins   
   of the tongue, immodesty and impiety were rampant in the city and   
   surroundings. Monsignor de Laval recognized in Sister Catherine a soul   
   of predilection, and he often asked her intercession for particular   
   persons, for the colony and the Indians, whose souls were his great   
   concern, as they were also of his clergy and missionaries. She, for   
   her part, complied by her prayers and sacrifices, and saw in a vision   
   how the demons of hell were working for the ruin of the colony, in   
   various places and in various ways. A spiritual battle of great   
   proportions was underway, to win Canada for Christ.   
      
   Blessed Catherine died at the age of 36, saying shortly before she   
   expired: “My God, I adore Your divine perfections; I adore Your divine   
   Justice; I abandon myself to it with my whole heart.” One of the great   
   mystics of the Church, her life remains a prodigy of sacrifice and   
   love, a gold mine of doctrine for those who seek understanding of   
   God’s ways with His Saints and His people.   
      
   Source: Fr. Paul Ragueneau, S.J., La vie de la Mère Catherine de Saint   
   Augustin, (F. Lambert: Paris, 1671). Reprinted in Quebec City, 1923,   
   by the Augustinian nuns.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   When anyone has really given up his sins, he must not be content   
   simply with bewailing them.  He must give up, leave far behind, and   
   fly from anything which is capable of leading him in the direction of   
   them again.  In other words, my dear brethren, we must be ready to   
   suffer anything rather than fall back into those sins which we have   
   just confessed.   
   --St. John Baptiste Marie Vianney   
      
   Bible Quote:   
    He who seeks the glory of the One who sent him is truthful, and there   
   is no injustice in him.  (John 7:18)   
      
      
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   The bread of life   
      
      Jesus said to the people: "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to   
   me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst."   
   He did not say "the bread of bodily nourishment," but "the bread of   
   life." For when everything had been reduced to a condition of   
   spiritual death, the Lord gave us life through himself, who is bread   
   because, as we believe, the leaven in the dough of our humanity was   
   baked through and through by the fire of his divinity. He is the bread   
   not of this ordinary life, but of a very different kind of life which   
   death will never cut short.   
      Whoever believes in this bread will never hunger, will never be   
   famished for want of hearing the word of God; nor will such a person   
   be parched by spiritual thirst through lack of the waters of baptism   
   and the consecration imparted by the Spirit. The unbaptized, deprived   
   of the refreshment afforded by the sacred water, suffer thirst and   
   great aridity. The baptized, on the other hand, being possessed of the   
   Spirit, enjoy its continual consolation.   
   --Theophylact of Ochrida   
   (Theophylact (1050 - 1109), archbishop of Ochrida, theologian and   
   language scholar, taught rhetoric and was tutor to the imperial heir   
   presumptive. He wrote commentaries on many books of the bible.)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)