From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Let your light shine   
      
   Christ is the true light which enlightens every person who comes into   
   the world. This light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not   
   received the light. No one receives this light but those who are poor   
   in spirit and have stripped themselves of self-love and self-will.   
      Dear, dear children, you must strive after this, sparing no effort   
   of body or soul, so that you may taste this, so that this light may   
   shine in the depths of your souls, so that you may come back to your   
   true source, where this true light shines. Do all that you can, do   
   more than you can, to long and to pray that this may come to you. Do   
   everything in your power, and ask those who love God to help you.   
   Cling to those who cling to God, so that they may draw you with them   
   to God. And may our loving God himself help us to this end.   
   --John Tauler   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   May 22nd - St. Humility, Widow   
      
   THE foundress of the Vallombrosan nuns was born at Faenza in the   
   Romagna in the year 1226. Her parents, who were people of high rank   
   and considerable wealth, called her after the town of Rosana, with   
   which they were in some way connected, but she has always been known   
   by the name of Humility, which she adopted when she entered religion.   
   Her parents practically compelled her when she was about 15 to marry a   
   local nobleman called Ugoletto, a young man as frivolous as his bride   
   was earnest and devout. She had the misfortune to lose both her sons   
   shortly after their baptism, and for nine years she strove, apparently   
   in vain, to appeal to her husband’s better nature. A dangerous   
   illness, however, then brought him to death’s door and upon his   
   recovery he was induced by his doctors to consent for his own benefit   
   to his wife’s request that they should from thenceforth live as   
   brother and sister. Soon afterwards they both joined the double   
   monastery of St. Perpetua, just outside Faenza, he becoming a   
   lay-brother and she a choir nun.   
      
   Humility was then 24 years of age. She discovered before long that the   
   rule afforded her insufficient opportunity for solitude and austerity,   
   and she withdrew first to a house of Poor Clares and then to a cell,   
   which was constructed for her by a kinsman whom she had cured of a   
   painful infirmity of the feet. It adjoined the church of St.   
   Apollinaris, and into this there was an opening--what archaeologists   
   call a “squint”--which enabled her to follow Mass and to receive holy   
   communion. The church seems to have been served by religious from a   
   priory dependent on the Vallombrosan abbey of St. Crispin, the abbot   
   of which, following the ceremonial provided for in such cases,   
   solemnly enclosed her in her cell. Her life was now one of heroic   
   mortification : she subsisted on a little bread and water with   
   occasionally some vegetables; she wore a cilicium of bristles, and the   
   short snatches of sleep she allowed herself were taken on her knees   
   with her head leaning against a wall. She had never consented to see   
   her husband after she had left the world, but he could not forget her;   
   and in order that he might keep in touch with her, he left St.   
   Perpetua’s to become a monk at St. Crispin’s, where he died three   
   years later. After Humility had lived 12 years as a recluse, the   
   Vallombrosan abbot general persuaded her to emerge from her retirement   
   to organize a foundation for women. At a place called Malta, outside   
   the walls of Faenza, she established the first Vallombrosan nunnery,   
   of which she became abbess and which was known as Santa Maria Novella   
   alla Malta. Long years afterwards, actually in 1501, the convent was   
   removed for safety into the city and occupied the site once covered by   
   the monastery of St. Perpetua. Before her death St. Humility founded   
   in Florence a second house, of which she was also abbess and where she   
   died at the age of eighty on May 22, 1310.   
      
   Tradition credits St. Humility with the authorship of several   
   treatises—she is said to have dictated them in Latin, a language she   
   had never studied. One of these deals with the angels and in it she   
   speaks of living in constant communion with two heavenly beings, one   
   of whom was her guardian angel.   
   A contemporary life is printed in the Acta Sanctorum, May, vol. v,   
   from a manuscript notarially attested in 1332 to be an exact copy.   
   There is a modern biography by M. Ercolani (1910), and a shorter one   
   by Dame M. E. Pietromarchi, S. Umilta Negusanti (1935). The Latin   
   tractates of St. Humility were edited by Torello Sala at Florence in   
   1884; they are said to be very obscure and the Latin to be stiff and   
   artificial.   
      
      
   Bible Quote   
   I give thanks to my God, always making a remembrance of thee in my   
   prayers. 5 Hearing of thy charity and faith, which thou hast in the   
   Lord Jesus, and towards all the saints: 6 That the communication of   
   thy faith may be made evident in the acknowledgment of every good   
   work, that is in you in Christ Jesus.  (Philemon 1:4-6)   
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Remember, that you must treat not only bodies, but also souls, with   
   counsel that appeals to their minds and hearts rather than with cold   
   prescriptions to be sent in to the pharmacist.   
   -- Saint Giuseppe Moscati from a letter to one of his students   
      
   Note: Saint Giuseppe Moscati was the first modern doctor to be canonized.   
      
   <><><><>   
   For the Most Forgotten Soul   
      
   O Lord God Almighty, I beseech Thee by the Precious Body   
   and Blood of Thy divine Son Jesus, which He Himself on the   
   night before His Passion gave as meat and drink to His   
   beloved Apostles and bequeathed to His Holy Church to be   
   the perpetual Sacrifice and life-giving nourishment of His   
   faithful people, deliver the souls in purgatory, but most of all,   
   that soul which was most devoted to this Mystery of infinite   
   love, in order that it may praise Thee therefore, together with   
   Thy Divine Son and the Holy Spirit in Thy glory for ever.   
   Amen.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)