DECEMBER 22 – ST. ISCHYRION, MARTYR.

ISCHYRION was an inferior officer who attended on a magistrate of a certain city in Egypt. His master commanded him to offer sacrifice to the idols; and because he refused to commit that sacrilege, reproached him with the most abusive and threatening speeches. By giving way to passion and superstition, the officer at length worked himself up to such a degree of frenzy as to run a stake into the bowels of the meek servant of Christ, who, by his patient constancy, attained to the glory of martyrdom.

REFLECTION: It is not a man’s condition, but virtue, that can make him truly great or truly happy. How mean soever a person’s station or circumstances may be, the road to both is open to him; and there is not a servant or slave who ought not to be enkindled with a laudable ambition of arriving at this greatness, which will set him on the same level with the rich and the most powerful

WORD OF THE DAY

REALITY. That which exists objectively, and independently of the mind, as opposed to the unreal, which is merely subjective or fanciful. Reality is that to which the mind conforms when it possesses the truth. (Etym. Latin realis, of the thing itself; extramental.) 

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)

ST. ANDREW NOVENA

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, o my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

(It is piously believed that whoever recites the above prayer fifteen times a day from the feast of St. Andrew (Nov. 30th) until Christmas, will obtain what is asked). This formula of the prayer bears an Imprimatur from † Michael Augustine, Archbishop of New York. New York, February 6, 1897.

DAILY ADVENT MEDITATIONS

Deepen your appreciation of the Incarnation and our salvation with The Great Truths Series by Fr. Richard Clarke S.J. Read today’s “O Rex Gentium & The Temporal Consequences of Adam’s Sin” but consider this:

All the wars, famines, pestilences, all the broken hearts, all the wretched lives of millions, had their source in this one sin. How almost infinite the consequences of sin are! Yet I think so little of my sins, and of the punishment that I shall have to pay for them. 

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