Today’s ✠Challoner Meditation: January 24th On the vanity of all those things, that keep worldlings from the service of God
Meditations for every day of the year by Bishop ✠Richard Challoner
Month: January 2024
Carissimi; Today’s Mass: St Timothy of Ephesus
Saint Timothy was a convert of Saint Paul, born at Lystra in Asia Minor. His mother was a daughter of Israel, but his father was a pagan, and though Timothy had read the Scriptures from his childhood, he had never been circumcised. On the arrival of Saint Paul at Lystra the youthful Timothy, with his mother and grandmother, eagerly embraced the faith…
Spiritual Reading for the Third Wednesday after Epiphany ~ St Alphonsus Liguori
O ye atheists who believe not in God, fools that you are! If you do not believe that there is a God, tell me who created you? How can you imagine that there are creatures existing, without a previous Power having created them? This world which you admire, governed as it is in so beautiful and constant an order, — could chance, which has neither order nor mind, ever have made it?
Morning Meditation for the Third Wednesday after Epiphany ~ St Alphonsus Liguori
What will be the feelings of the worldling when he is told that death is at hand? What pain will he feel in hearing these words: Your illness is mortal. It is necessary to receive the Last Sacraments, to unite yourself to God, to prepare to bid farewell to the world. What! exclaims the sick man, must I leave all? Yes, you must leave all! Thou shalt die and not live!
Evening Meditations for the Third Tuesday after Epiphany ~ Alphonsus Liguori
Does Jesus Christ, perhaps, claim too much in asking us to give ourselves wholly to Him, after He has given us all His Blood and His life, in dying for us upon the Cross? The charity of Christ presseth us (2 Cor. v. 14). Let us hear what St. Francis de Sales says upon these words: “To know that Jesus has loved us unto death, and even the death of the Cross, is not this to feel our hearts constrained by a violence which is all the stronger in proportion to its loveliness?”
Today’s ✠Challoner Meditation: January 23rd On the happiness of serving God
Meditations for every day of the year by Bishop ✠Richard Challoner
Carissimi; Today’s Mass: The Espousal of the Blessed Virgin Mary with St Joseph
January 23rd is the traditional day of the feast called “The Espousal of the Virgin Mary with St Joseph.” Although never on the general Calendar, it was kept by many religious orders, especially those with a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary, and on many local calendars…
Spiritual Reading for the Third Tuesday after Epiphany ~ St Alphonsus Liguori
Father Balthassar Alvarez, a great servant of God, used to say that we must not think we have made any progress in the way of God until we have come to keep Jesus crucified ever in our heart. And St. Francis de Sales said that “the love which does not spring from the Passion is feeble.” Yes, because we cannot have a more powerful motive for loving God than the Passion of Jesus Christ, by which we know that the Eternal Father, to prove His exceeding love for us, was pleased to send His only-begotten Son upon earth to die for us sinners.
Morning Meditation for the Third Tuesday after Epiphany ~ St Alphonsus Liguori
St. Teresa used to say that nothing that ends ought to be considered of any consequence. Death approaches, the curtain falls, the scene closes, and thus all things come to an end. Let us therefore strive to gain that fortune which will not fail with time.
Evening Meditations for the Third Monday after Epiphany ~ Alphonsus Liguori
God is that strong One Who alone can be called strong, because He is Strength itself; and whoever is strong derives strength from Him: Strength is mine, and by me kings reign (Prov. viii. 14), says the Lord. God is that mighty One Who can do whatsoever He will; and He can do this with ease; He has merely to wish it: Behold, thou hast made heaven and earth by thy great power, and no word shall be hard to thee (Jer. xxxii.