Let the example of this saint encourage you to be moderate in your words and actions. Roughness and passion destroy all society, and break peace: they are proofs of a weak mind, and a bad education. Labor to avoid them by a softer and more gentle method, as you desire to preserve your reputation, either as to this world, or the next. A warm reproof may sometimes be necessary; but a moderate remonstrance will be more to your purpose than unseasonable heats. Suspect yourself as often as you are disturbed: deliberate, rather than follow disordered reason. Thus governing yourself, you will be in the best disposition for governing others." The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother

Touch me not by Jacques Tissot

"Blessed, O Lord, are those who dwell in Thy house: they shall praise Thee for ever and ever."

To dwell in the house of the good God, to enjoy the presence of the good God, to be happy with the happiness of the good God - oh, what happiness, my children! Who can understand all the joy and consolation with which the saints are inebriated in Paradise? St. Paul, who was taken up into the third heaven, tells us that there are things above which he cannot reveal to us, and which we cannot comprehend.... Indeed, my children, we can never form a true idea of Heaven till we shall be there. It is a hidden treasure, an abundance of secret sweetness, a plenitude of joy, which may be felt, but which our poor tongue cannot explain. What can we imagine greater? The good God Himself will be our recompense: Ego merces tua magna nimis - I am thy reward exceeding great. O God! the happiness Thou promisest us is such that the eyes of man cannot see it, his ears cannot hear it, nor his heart conceive it.

Yes, my children, the happiness of Heaven is incomprehensible; it is the last effort of the good God, who wishes to reward us. God, being admirable in all His works, will be so too when He recompenses the good Christians who have made all their happiness consist in the possession of Heaven. This possession contains all good, and excludes all evil; sin being far from Heaven, all the pains and miseries which are the consequences of sin are also banished from it. No more death! The good God will be in us the Principle of everlasting life. No more sickness, no more sadness, no more pains, no more grief. You who are afflicted, rejoice! Your fears and your weeping will not extend beyond the grave. . . . The good God will Himself wipe away your tears! Rejoice, O you whom the world persecutes! your sorrows will soon be over, and for a moment of tribulation, you will have in Heaven an immense weight of glory. Rejoice! for you possess all good things in one - the source of all good, the good God Himself.

Can anyone be unhappy when he is with the good God; when he is happy with the happiness of the good God, of the good God Himself; when he sees the good God as he sees himself? As St. Paul says, my children, we shall see God face to face, because then there will be no veil between Him and us. We shall possess Him without uneasiness, for we shall no longer fear to lose Him. We shall love Him with an uninterrupted and undivided love, because He alone will occupy our whole heart. We shall enjoy Him without weariness, because we shall discover in Him ever new perfections; and in proportion as we penetrate into that immense abyss of wisdom, of goodness, of mercy, of justice, of grandeur, and of holiness, we shall plunge ourselves in it with fresh eagerness. If an interior consolation, if a grace from the good God, gives us so much pleasure in this world that it diminishes our troubles, that it helps us to bear our crosses, that it gives to so many martyrs strength to suffer the most cruel torments - what will be the happiness of Heaven, where consolations and delights are given, not drop by drop, but by torrents!

Let us represent to ourselves, my children, an everlasting day always new, a day always serene, always calm; the most delicious, the most perfect society. What joy, what happiness, if we could possess on earth, only for a few minutes, the angels, the Blessed Virgin, Jesus Christi In Heaven we shall eternally see, not only the Blessed Virgin and Jesus Christ, we shall see the good God Himself! We shall see Him no longer through the darkness of faith, but in the light of day, in all His Majesty! What happiness thus to see the good God! The angels have contemplated Him since the beginning of the world, and they are not satiated; it would be the greatest misfortune to them to be deprived of Him for a single moment. The possession of Heaven, my children, can never weary us; we possess the good God, the Author of all perfections. See, the more we possess God, the more He pleases; the more we know Him, the more attractions and charms we find in the knowledge of Him. We shall always see Him and shall always desire to see Him; we shall always taste the pleasure there is in enjoying the good God, and we shall never be satiated with it. The blessed will be enveloped in the Divine Immensity, they will revel in delights and be all surrounded with them, and, as it were, inebriated. Such is the happiness which the good God destines for us.

We can all, my children, acquire this happiness. The good God wills the salvation of the whole world; He has merited Heaven for us by His death, and by the effusion of all His Blood. What a happiness to be able to say, "Jesus Christ died for me; He has opened Heaven for me; it is my inheritance. . . . Jesus has prepared a place for me; it only depends on me to go and occupy it. Vado vobis parare locum - I go to prepare a place for you. The good God has given us faith, and with this virtue we can attain to eternal life. For, though the good God wills the salvation of all men, He particularly wills that of the Christians who believe in Him: Qui credit, habeat vitam aeternam - He that believeth hath life everlasting. Let us, then, thank the good God, my children; let us rejoice - our names are written in Heaven, like those of the Apostles. Yes, they are written in the Book of Life: if we choose, they will be there forever, since we have the means of reaching Heaven.

The happiness of Heaven, my children, is easy to acquire; the good God has furnished us with so many means of doing it! See, there is not a single creature which does not furnish us with the means of attaining to the good God; if any of them become an obstacle, it is only by our abuse of them. The goods and the miseries of this life, even the chastisements made use of by the good God to punish our infidelities, serve to our salvation. The good God, as St. Paul says, makes all things turn to the good of His elect; even our very faults may be useful to us; even bad examples and temptations. Job was saved in the midst of an idolatrous people. All the saints have been tempted. If these things are, in the hands of God, an assistance in reaching Heaven, what will happen if we have recourse to the Sacraments, to that never-failing source of all good, to that fountain of grace supplied by the good God Himself! It was easy for the disciples of Jesus to be saved, having the Divine Savior constantly with them. Is it more difficult for us to secure our salvation, having Him constantly with us? They were happy in obtaining whatever they wished for, whatever they chose; are we less so?

We possess Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; He is continually with us, He is ready to grant us whatever we ask, He is waiting for us; we have only to ask. O my children! the poor know how to express their wants to the rich; we have only our indifference, then, to accuse, if assistance and graces are wanting to us. If an ambitious or a covetous man had as ample means of enriching himself, would he hesitate a moment, would he let so favorable an opportunity escape? Alas! we do everything for this world, and nothing for the other? What labor, what trouble, what cares, what sorrows, in order to gather up a little fortune! See, my children, of what use are our perishable goods? Solomon, the greatest, the richest, the most fortunate of kings, said, in the height of the most brilliant fortune: "I have seen all things that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. " And these are the goods to acquire which we labor so much, whilst we never think of the goods of Heaven!

How shameful for us not to labor to acquire it, and to neglect so many means of reaching it! If the fig tree was cast into the fire for not having profited by the care that had been taken to render it fertile; if the unprofitable servant was reproved for having hidden the talent that he had received, what fate awaits us, who have so often abused the aids which might have taken us to Heaven? If we have abused the graces that the good God has given us, let us make haste to repair the past by great fidelity, and let us endeavor to acquire merits worthy of eternal life!"

Source:The Blessed Curé of Ars in His Catechetical Instructions  (1951) 

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

Source: Lent with the Cure d'Ars Compiled by the CAPG

"Why, my dear brethren, are our lives full of so many miseries? If we consider the life of man carefully, it is nothing other than a succession of evils: the illnesses, the disappointments, the persecutions, and indeed the losses of goods fall unceasingly upon us so that whatever side the worldly man turns to or examines, he finds only crosses and afflictions. Go and ask anyone, from the humblest to the greatest, and they will all tell you the same thing. Indeed, my dear brethren, man on earth, unless he turns to the side of God, cannot be other than unhappy. Do you know why my friends? No, you tell me. Well, here is the real reason. It is that God, having put us into this world as into a place of exile and of banishment, wishes to force us, by so many evils, not to attach our hearts to it but to aspire to greater, purer, and more lasting joys than those we can find in this life. To make us appreciate more keenly the necessity to turn our eyes to eternal blessings, God has filled our hearts with desires so vast and so magnificent that nothing in creation is capable of satisfying them. Thus it is that in the hope of finding some pleasure, we attach ourselves to created objects and that we have no sooner possessed and sampled that which we have so ardently desired than we turn to something else, hoping to find what we wanted. We are, then, through our own experience, constrained to admit that it is but useless for us to want to derive our happiness here below from transient things.

If we hope to have any consolation in this world, it will only be by despising the things which are passing and which have no lasting value and in striving towards the noble and happy end for which God has created us.

Do you want to be happy, my friends? Fix your eyes on Heaven; it is there that your hearts will find that which will satisfy them completely. All the evils which you experience are the real means of leading you there. That is what I am going to show you, in as clear and brilliant way as shines the noon-day sun.

First of all, I am going to tell you that Jesus Christ, by His sufferings and His death, has made all our actions meritorious, so that for the good Christian there is no motion of our hearts or of our bodies which will not be rewarded if we perform them for Him. Perhaps you are already thinking: "That is not so very clear." Very well! If that will not do you, let us put it more simply. Follow me for a moment and you will know the way in which to make all your actions meritorious for eternal life without changing anything in your way of behaving. All you have to do is to have in view the object of pleasing God in everything you do, and I will add that instead of making your actions more difficult by doing them for God, you will make them, on the contrary, much more pleasant and less arduous. In the morning, when you awake, think at once of God and quickly make the Sign of the Cross, saying to Him: "My God, I give you my heart, and since You are so good as to give me another day, give me the grace that everything I do will be for Your honor and for the salvation of my soul."

Source: The Sermons of the Cure d'Ars

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

Source: Lent with the Cure d'Ars Compiled by the CAPG

James Tissot - Holy Saturday

St. Alphege

"Our catechism tells us, my children, that all men will undergo a particular judgment on the day of their death. No sooner shall we have breathed our last sigh than our soul, without leaving the place where it has expired, will be presented before the tribunal of God. Wherever we may die, God is there to exercise His justice. The good God, my children, has measured out our years, and of those years that He has resolved to leave us on this earth, He has marked out one which shall be our last; one day which we shall not see succeeded by other days; one hour after which there will be for us no more time. What distance is there between that moment and this - the space of an instant. Life, my children, is a smoke, a light vapour; it disappears more quickly than a bird that darts through the air, or a ship that sails on the sea, and leaves no trace of its course!

When shall we die? Alas! will it be in a year, in a month? Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps today! May not that happen to us which happens to so many others? It may be that at a moment when you are thinking of nothing but amusing yourself, you may be summoned to the judgment of God, like the impious Baltassar. What will then be the astonishment of that soul entering on its eternity? Surprised, bewildered, separated thenceforth from its relations and friends, and, as it were, surrounded with Divine light, it will find in its Creator no longer a merciful Father, but an inflexible Judge. Imagine to yourselves, my children, a soul at its departure from this life. It is going to appear before the tribunal of its Judge, alone with God; there is Heaven on one side, Hell on the other. What object presents itself before it? The picture of its whole life! All its thoughts, all its words, all its actions, are examined.

This examination will be terrible, my children, because nothing is hidden from God. His infinite wisdom knows our most inmost thoughts; it penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, and lays open their innermost folds. In vain sinners avoid the light of day that they may sin more freely; they spare themselves a little shame in the eyes of men, but it will be of no advantage to them at the day of judgment; God will make light the darkness under cover of which they thought to sin with impunity. The Holy Ghost, my children, says that we shall be examined on our words, our thoughts, our actions; we shall be examined even on the good we ought to have done, and have not done, on the sins of others of which we have been the cause. Alas! so many thoughts to which we abandon ourselves - to which the mind gives itself up; how many in one day! in a week! in a month! in a year! How many in the whole course of our life! Not one of this infinite number will escape the knowledge of our Judge.

The proud man must give an account of all his thoughts of presumption, of vanity, of ambition; the impure of all his evil thoughts, and of the criminal desires with which he has fed his imagination. Those young people who are incessantly occupied with their dress, who are seeking to please, to distinguish themselves, to attract attention and praise, and who dare not make themselves known in the tribunal of Penance, will they be able still to hide themselves at the day of the judgment of God? No, no! They will appear there such as they have been during their life, before Him who makes known all that is most secret in the heart of man.

We shall give an account, my children, of our oaths, of our imprecations, of our curses. God hears our slanders, our calumnies, our free conversations, our worldly and licentious songs; He hears also the discourse of the impious. This is not all, my children; God will also examine our actions. He will bring to light all our unfaithfulness in His service, our forgetfulness of His Commandments, our transgression of His law, the profanation of His churches, the attachment to the world, the ill-regulated love of pleasure and of the perishable goods of earth. All, my children, will be unveiled; those thefts, that injustice, that usury, that intemperance, that anger, those disputes, that tyranny, that revenge, those criminal liberties, those abominations that cannot be named without blushes...."

Source: The Sermons of the Cure d'Ars 1960

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

Source: Lent with the Cure d'Ars Compiled by the CAPG

Observe how far a soul goes, which is carried on by the force of truth, without any regard to present convenience, interest, honor, or life? If God ruled in your heart, and you did but look on your salvation as the great business of your life, these selfish considerations would not so often stand in the way of your best proposals. You have thoughts of being good, but have not courage to be so. In some cases, the apprehension of what the world will say; in others, the displeasure of friends; in others, the loss of some preferment or interest; in others, the fear of reproach, or retrenching of state, is a bar to the most essential duties: and the interest of the next world gives place to this. See if this be not your guilt; if not in great things, at least in your ordinary conduct and conversation. Accustom yourself to greater simplicity of mind; and let not little politics carry you on, when plain dealing would be much more to your purpose. Beg this holy apologist and martyr to intercede for you." The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother

Giuseppe Passeri - The Cleansing of the Temple

"On the small number of the elect."

1. There are few saved in the sanctuary: The sentence of our Savior, recorded in St. Matthew, applies to the sanctuary as well as to the Christian life. It is a terrible truth. It is a dreadful idea. It is an awful reflection to make - that, of God's greatest servants and ministers, many will fall down, to their eternal perdition. This is commonly believed. Of all those who offer sacrifice on God's altar, and who labor in his sanctuary, how many are there who never had any vocation, who perform the work of the ministry, but who were never invited to do so by God? They came of themselves, impelled by human motives, entering through the window and not through the door, and if their lives be not changed as well as their motives, God will say to them in the end as well as in the beginning, that He never knew them.

How many are there whom God himself led by the hand into the sanctuary, and who have trampled on His heavenly graces in the holy place?
What use was it for Luther to have been made a religious when he violated his vows, and preferred his passions and his pleasures to eternal life? What value was it to Photius to have been gifted with great learning, and to have been made a prince of the house of God, if he used his great abilities, and his high office, to introduce the evil of schism and heresy; to tear asunder, as far as he could, the seamless garment of Christ; and to waste and destroy that vineyard which God had planted? What utility was it to Nicholas to be one of the first seven deacons, if he allowed the spirit of impurity to seize upon him, body and soul, and to lead him to his destruction? What a misfortune for Judas to have been called to follow the person and doctrine of his Divine Savior, and to have been made an apostle by his side, when he, for the love of money, sold the life blood of his Master, and consummated his iniquity by the destruction of himself? How many are there who have been called to high places, in whose hands have been placed the graces and the treasures of heaven, who have been made rulers in Israel and princes among the people of God, and whose lives are not in accordance with their office, and who despising the graces of God neglect and betray the sacred interests which are committed to their care? How true is it of them that they have been called and that they are not chosen?

Hear the sentiments of St. Chrysostom, one of the wisest and greatest saints of the Church, and one who does not express himself lightly or rashly on this important subject: "Non temere dico, sed ut affectus sum, sentio. Non arbitror inter Sacerdotes, plurimos ess qui salvi fiant; sed multo plures qui pereant. In Causa est qui res ista excelsum requirit animum." And hear also the words which are pronounced by the great St. Augustine upon those who undertake the sacred office, and who discharge its duties in a manner which is careless before God, and flattering to the world: "Nihil esse in hac vita, et maxime hoc tempore, facilius et laetis et hominibus acceptabilius Episcopi aut Prebyteri aut Diaconi Officio, si perfunctorie atque adulatorie res agatur, sed nihil apud Dum miserius, et tristius, et damnablius."

2. Reasons why so few are saved: One of the great reasons why there are so few ecclesiastics saved is that their lives are not in accordance with the sanctity of their state. They preach the Gospel, but they do not follow it. Their state is holy, but their lives are not so. They have upon theirs lips the word and wisdom of God, but there is no holiness in their life, nor no love in their hearts.
Look at the live of Ophni and Phinees, priests of the Old Law, and see did they walk worthy of their vocation. They were called by God to serve in His sanctuary and to labor in His house. They were the sons of the High Priest, and belonged to the peculiar family which God destined for the work of the ministry. But though Ophni and Phinees called to the altar, they had not the virtues of the altar. They oppressed the people, taking largely of their goods and substance, and they gave themselves over to the most wicked vices. They had not the virtues of the priesthood, no more than their father Heli, and God took visible vengeance upon them all for their sins. They increase the number of those unhappy ecclesiastics, who, though called with the many, are not chosen with the few.

Secondly, many ecclesiastics are lost because they come to offer sacrifice and to pray for the people although the voice of God has forbidden them to do so, and His hand pushes them off the altar. Their fate is as certain as their presumption. What could they be in the house of God but "fures and latrones"? What are they but wolves in the clothing of sheep, wolves who ravage and destroy the flock of Christ? Do they no turn the Temple of God, which is the gate of heaven and the place of prayer, into a house of traffic, and would they not change the sanctuary, which is the seat of God's mercy, where He receives the homage and love of the people, into a cavern of Satan, and a den of thieves? They surely are neither called nor chosen.

Besides the want of co-operation with their vocation, and besides the want of vocation itself, there is a third cause which contributes to increase the number of those ecclesiastics who will never see the face of God. It is this, that the sins of ecclesiastics are greater than the sins of other men, and that the repentance of their hearts, and their return to God, are very rare and very difficult. St. Jerome says, "that if a monk sin, the priest will pray for him, but if a priest fall, who will entreat God for him." See what the Scripture (1 Reg. ii, 26) says with regard to those evil priests, whom God on account of their wickedness slew with the sword of the enemy: "Si peccaverit vir in virum placari ei potest Deus, si autem in Dominum peccaverit vir, quis orabit pro eo?"

The sin of the priest is peculiarly against God. The ways and workings of grace are more known to him, and yet with that knowledge he commits the evil in which his heart delights. What changes and touches the minds of others has no effect upon his. In the midst of the proofs of God's love, which surround the priest in the sanctuary, the sinful ecclesiastic loses all feeling of gratitude, and sense of shame. His faith has become so cold or dead that he cannot realize to himself the terrors of the judgment and of the justice of God, and if the Almighty do not save his soul by a miracle of grace, his eyes are blinded for ever, and his heart is hardened. Though he was among the called he will never be among the chosen.

Let us admire and adore the incomprehensible wisdom, and the inscrutable ways of God. Let us bow down before the goodness of Him who loves to exalt His mercy above His justice, and through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin let us beg of Him that our whole lives would be a continual struggle to enter by the narrow gate, and that we might be of those happy few who find it."  Ecclesiastical meditations suitable for priests on the mission and students in diocesan seminaries, by a Catholic clergyman James Duffy, 1866