Friends at Court

New Zealand Tablet, 25 June 1914, Page 3

Friends at Court

GLEANINGS FOR NEXT WEEK’S CALENDAR

June 28, Sunday.—Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. Nativity of St. John the Baptist. ~ 29, Monday.SS. Fetor and Paul, Apostles. ~ 30, Tuesday.—Commemoration of St. Paul, Apostle. July 1, Wednesday.—St. Pumold, Bishop and Martyr. ~ 2, Thursday. Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. ~ 3, Friday. St. Paul 1., Pope and Confessor. ~ 4, Saturday.—St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr.

Nativity of St. John the Baptist.

St. Augustine remarks that while the Church celebrates the leasts of other saints on the day of their death, as being that of their entrance into eternal life, she keeps as a festival the day of St. John the Baptist’s birth, because he came into the world, not as a sinner, but as a saint, having been sanctified in his mother’s womb by our Blessed Lord. Of St. John the angel foretold, ‘ lie shall be great before the Lord,.and shall drink no wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb. And ho shall convert many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. And he shall go before them in the spirit and power of Elias ... to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people.’ The Son of God, speaking of St. John, says: ‘There hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist.

Commemoration of St. Paul, Apostle

The miraculous conversion of St. Paul is commemorated on January 25. After his baptism, he spent three years preparing himself in solitude and prayer for the work of the Apostolate. At the end of that time he proceeded to Jerusalem to confer with St. Peter. During the stay in the Holy City he preached in the synagogues with such success that the fanatical Jews endeavored to take away his life. The missionary career on which he thus entered terminated only with his death. The history of his labors, journeys, and sufferings occupies the greater part of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. In the midst of his labors he found time to write to different churches the fourteen epistles which form part of the New Testament, and which manifest so clearly his lively faith, his zeal for souls, and especially his ardent love of his crucified Lord. St. Paul was beheaded outside Rome, near the place where the magnificent basilica which bears his name now stands.

GRAINS OF GOLD

HOLY COMMUNION.

To come into a soul so stained with sin And meek and lowly, take Thy place within To come into a soul and gently rest And quell the turmoil in that weary breast ; To come into a soul so filled with care, And make that soul a citadel of prayer ; No pomp, no splendor, tend Thee on Thy way Yet coming, Thou turn’s! darkness into day.

If we ere all a little more charitable when we became involved in misunderstandings, we would be able to clear up the trouble twice as quickly.

Calumny hurts three persons—him who utters it, him who hears it, and him of whom it is spoken ; but the last, happily, not always, or not for a long time. Never attempt to bear more than one kind of trouble at once. Some people bear three kinds—all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.