Friends at Court

New Zealand Tablet, 20 January 1916, Page 3

Friends at Court

GLEANINGS FOR NEXT WEEK'S CALENDAR

January 23, Sunday.—Third Sunday after the Epiphany. ■ ~ 24, Monday. St. Timothy, Bishop and Martyr. „ 25, Tuesday. Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle. ~ * 26, Wednesday. St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr. ~ 27, Thursday.—St. John Chrysostom, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor. ~ 28, Friday.St. Agnes the Second, Virgin and Martyr. ~ 29, ; Saturday. —St. Francis de Sales, Bishop, .. Confessor, and Doctor. The Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle. St. Paul was at first a violent persecutor of , the Church. In fact, at the very moment when the grace of God touched his heart he was on his way to Damascus, with authority to seize any persons whom h© might find professing the new faith, and send them in chains to Jerusalem. After his conversion, St. Paul devoted all his energies to the propagation of the ChristianI’religion, 1 ’religion, and spent his life in carrying the glad tidings of redemption to the nations that till then had sat in darkness and in the shadow of death.’ St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr. St. Polycarp, a disciple of St. John the Evangelist, governed the important See of Smyrna for seventy years. He is believed to have been the Angel or Bishop of Smyrna commended by our Blessed Lord in the Apocalypse (chap. ii.). lie was martyred in 169, being then about one hundred years of age. St. John Chrysostom, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor., St. John, surnamed Chrysostom, or the goldenmouthed, on account of his eloquence, was born in Syria, A.D. 344. At first a lawyer, he afterwards became a priest, and was subsequently elected Archbishop of Constantinople. Undeterred by human respect, he boldly denounced the vices of the imperial court, thus making for himself many powerful enemies, at' whose instance he was banished to a remote district situated to the east of the Black Sea. The saint never reached his destination. Worn out by the exhausting journey, he died in Armenia, A.D. 407. GRAINS OF GOLD. THE GLEANING. This truth the heart can glean from vanished years : Beyond our darkest nights the fairest morns are found; No deed endures save that which love has crowned; Faith brings content as life’s calm closing nears. —Ave Maria. These marvellous achievements of man, /as the ship, the steam engine, the lightning telegraph, are no triumphs of mind over matter; as a storm at sea, the explosion of a boiler, a flash of lightning from a cloud, might very soon convince one. In this varied machinery, man simply avails himself of the great forces of nature by adapting his machine to them. The triumphs of mind over matter are when a man resists the solicitations of the flesh, curbs his temper, and maintains his equanimity in the midst of temptations and the varied vicissitudes of life.—Bi’ownson. A little clock in a jeweller’s window stopped one day for half an hour at fifteen minutes to nine. School children noticing the time, stopped to play;- people 'hurrying to the train, after a look at the clock, stopped to chat a minute with one another. And all were half an hour late, because one small clock stopped. Never had these people known how much they depended on that clock until it had led them astray. You may think you have no influence, but you can not go wrong in one little act. without leading others •stray. L...