Day: August 3, 2023

How pleasing it is to Jesus Christ that we should often remember His Passion, and the shameful death He suffered for us, can be well undersood from His having instituted the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar for this very end, that there might ever dwell in us the lively memory of the love He bore to us in sacrificing Himself on the Cross for our salvation.

Worn out by a constant succession of labours, and weakened by the austerities of his life, Alphonsus withdrew with some of the companions of his apostolate, for the sake of a little rest, into a solitary spot called Santa Maria dei Monti, near Scala. This was in the month of May in the year 1731. The inhabitants of the place were poor peasants and shepherds, whose knowledge of religion was very small, and whose spiritual destitution was extreme. Alphonsus was moved with pity on learning their sad state

To be in tribulation in this world is a great sign of predestination. “To be afflicted here on earth,” says St. Gregory, “belongs to the elect for whom is reserved the beatitude of eternity.” Hence we find in the Lives of the Saints that all, without exception, had been loaded with crosses.