From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Be a wise and faithful servant   
      
   Be careful to be found a wise and faithful servant, and communicate   
   the heavenly to your fellow servants without envy or idleness. Do not   
   take up the vain excuse of your rawness of inexperience which you may   
   imagine or assume. For sterile modesty is never pleasing, not that   
   humility laudable which passes the bounds of reason. Attend to your   
   work; drive out bashfulness by a sense of duty, and act as a master.   
   But I am not sufficient for these things, you say. As if your offering   
   were not accepted from what you have, and not from what you have not.   
   Be prepared to answer for the single talent committed to your charge,   
   and take no thought for the test. For he that is unjust in the least   
   is unjust also in much. Give all, as assuredly you shall pay to the   
   uttermost farthing; but of a truth out of what you have, not what you   
   have not.   
   --St. Bernard of Clairvaux   
      
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   May 17th - St. Possidius, Bishop and Confessor   
      
   HE was a native of the proconsular Africa, and had his education under   
   the great St. Augustine. In 397 he was chosen bishop of Calama in   
   Numidia, which diocese he found distracted by the factions both of   
   heathens and Donatists. In 404 a party of the latter dragged him out   
   of his house, beat him, and threatened his life. All the revenge he   
   took of them was to obtain their pardon from the emperor. Four years   
   after this, the idolaters in a riotous festival on the 1st of June,   
   had the insolence to dance round the church, throw stones into it, and   
   set it on fire, wounding several of the clergy, and killing one upon   
   the spot. Nectarius, a principal person among the heathens, who had no   
   share in this tumult, wrote to St. Augustine to beg him to intercede   
   with the emperor for the pardon of the rioters, observing to him that   
   it is the duty of the Christian pastors to employ themselves in works   
   of mercy and peace. By the interposition of Possidius their punishment   
   was only an order which the emperor sent for the breaking down their   
   idols, with a prohibition of their abominable festivals and   
   sacrifices. When the relics of St. Stephen were brought into Africa   
   about the year 410, our holy bishop was careful to enrich Calama with   
   a portion of them, by which several miracles were there wrought, as   
   St. Augustine informs us. [1] St. Possidius was doubtless one of those   
   bishops who established among the clergy of their cathedrals a   
   monastic regularity in imitation of St. Augustine, and according to   
   the rule by him instituted, as our saint mentions in the life of that   
   great doctor; and St. Augustine speaks of the poor religious men of   
   Calama.   
      
    The Vandals passed over from Spain into Africa with an army of   
   fourscore thousand veteran soldiers, long accustomed to blood and   
   plunder; and made themselves in a short time masters of Mauritania,   
   Numidia, and the proconsular province, except the strong fortresses of   
   Carthage, Cirta, and Hippo. They pillaged the whole country and the   
   towns which lay in their way; and among others Calama, which seems to   
   have never since lifted up its head. St. Possidius took refuge in   
   Hippo with his dear master, St. Augustine, who soon after died in his   
   arms in 430, during the siege of that city, which some time after fell   
   into the hands of the barbarians. These were severe trials to our   
   saint, who from that time lived in perpetual banishment from his   
   flock. He wrote the life of St. Augustine, with a catalogue of his   
   works. The Italians say, that from Africa he came into Italy, and died   
   at Mirandola. That city and Rhegio in Apulia honoured him as patron.   
   The regular canons keep his festival on the 17th of May, and regard   
   him as one of the most illustrious fathers of their Order.   
      
   See the life and works of St. Augustine and Papebroke, who show that   
   it is a mistake to confound St. Possidius with Possidonius, another   
   African bishop sometimes mentioned with him in the same councils, t.   
   4, Maij. p. 27. See also Ceillier, t. 12, p. 261.   
      
   Note 1. L. 22, de Civil, c. 8.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Labor without stopping; do all the good works you can while you still   
   have the time.   
   --Saint John of God   
      
   Bible Quote:   
    What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but   
   hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him? And if a brother or   
   sister be naked and want daily food:  And one of you say to them: Go   
   in peace, be ye warmed and filled; yet give them not those things that   
   are necessary for the body, what shall it profit? So faith also, if it   
   have not works, is dead in itself.  [James 2:14-17] DRB   
      
      
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   The easy roads are crowded   
      
   The easy roads are crowded,   
   And the level roads are jammed;   
   The pleasant little rivers   
   With the drifting folks are crammed,   
   But off yonder where it's rocky,   
   Where you get a better view,   
   You will find the ranks are thinning   
   And the travelers are few.   
   Where the going's smooth and pleasant   
   You will always find the throng,   
   For the many, more's the pity,   
   Seem to like to drift along.   
   But the steps that call for courage   
   And the task that's hard to do,   
   In the end results in glory   
   For the never-wavering few.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)