Friends at Court

New Zealand Tablet, 13 August 1914, Page 3

Friends at Court

GLEANINGS FOR NEXT WEEK’S CALENDAR

August 16, Sunday.— Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost. St. Joachim, Father of the Blessed Virgin Mary. ~ 17, Monday. —Octave of St. Lawrence, Martyr ~ 18, Tuesday.— St. Hyacinth, Confessor. ~ 19, Wednesday. — St. Elizabeth, Queen, Widow ~ 20, Thursday. — St. Bernard, Abbot, Doctor. ~ 21, Friday.— St. Jane Frances do Chantal, Widow. ~ 22, Saturday. — Octave of Assumption. St. Joachim, Father of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Fathers of the Church unite in extolling the sanctity of St. Joachim and St. Anne, whose privilege it was to be the parents of the Most Pure Mother of God. St. Jane Frances of Chantal, Widow, This saint was born at Dijon in 1573. She was married at the age of twenty to the Baron do Chantal, but eight years later she had the misfortune to lose her husband through an accident. Having completed the education of her children, she founded, under the direction of St. Francis de Sales, and with the co-operation of some other ladies of rank, the religious Order of the Visitation. She died in 1641. GRAINS OF GOLD. A PRAYER. To Thee, dear Lord, I come to-day with humble heart; »Oh, hear my prayer ! Unto me, Lord, Thy grace impart. From out the depths of hopelessness and misery J call and trust that Thou wilt hearken unto me. 'Without Thee nothing can I do. Behold my needs ! To Thy great everlasting strength my weakness pleads. As when Thou walk’st on earth the sons of men among, iHeal’st Thou the sick, the lame, the palsied, ’midst tho throng ; Heard’st Thou the leper’s cry of ‘ Master, pity me!’ The blind man’s fond appeal of ‘ Lord, that I may see !’ Bo wilt thou hear me, Lord, and small my faith would be. Were I to fear lest my poor prayer unanswered be. Securely in Thy Sacred Heart let me abide; Safe from the dangers that beset on every side. Into Thy hands entirely I myself resign ; Oh, keep me as I wish to be, securely Thine ! With Thy accustomed clemency, Lord, deal with me; .And in Thy courts Oh, may I serve eternally. -— Catholic News. ‘ If every night, before we go to sleep,’ says Father ’Faber, ‘ we begged our dear Lady to offer up to God the Precious Blood of her Divine Son for grace to hinder one mortal sin somewhere in the world during '.that night, and then renewed the same offering in the unorning for the hours of daylight, surely such an •offering could not fail to win the grace desired, and •thus each one of us might probably hinder numbers •of mortal sins every year.' What we need is eyes to see. The presence of the benevolent Qod is evidenced in a thousand ways, but we lack the power or the disposition to appreciate this marvellous fact. Many a man has seen a country graveyard, but it required a Gray to see in it a great poem. Literature is filled with gems that genius has rescued from the rubbish heaps. So a cultivated spiritual sense may see everywhere tokens of the Divine Presence, and the common is transformed into the uncommon by the glory of it.