Fasting Well

First Sunday of Lent
St. Scholastica - Virgin
J.M.J.


FASTING

From "The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent"
Chapter 1- Fasting, abridged.

To treat of fasting and of what is required to fast well, we must, at the
start, understand that of itself fasting is not a virtue. The good and the
bad, as well as Christians and pagans, observe it. The ancient philosophers
observed it and recommended it. They were not virtuous for that reason, nor
did they practice virtue in fasting. Oh, no, fasting is a virtue only when
it is accompanied by conditions which render it pleasing to God. Thus it
happens that it profits some and not others, because it is not undertaken by
all in the same manner.

We find some people who think that to fast well during the holy season of
Lent it is enough to abstain from eating some prohibited food. But this
thought is too gross to enter into the hearts of religious, for it is to you
I speak, as well as persons dedicated to Our Lord. We know very well that it
is not enough to fast exteriorly if we do not also fast interiorly and if we
do not accompany the fast of the body with that of the spirit.

It will be very helpful to state clearly what must be done to fast well
these forty days. For although everyone is bound to know it and to practice
it, religious and persons dedicated to Our Lord are more particularly
obliged to it. Now, among all the conditions required for fasting well, I
will select three principal ones and speak familiarly about them.

The FIRST condition is that we must fast with our whole heart, that is to
say, willingly, whole-heartedly, universally and entirely. If I recount to
you St. Bernard's words regarding fasting, you will know not only why it is
instituted but also how it ought to be kept.

He says that fasting was instituted by Our Lord as a remedy for our
mouth, for our gourmandizing and for our gluttony. Since sin entered the
world through the mouth, the mouth must do penance by being deprived of
foods prohibited and forbidden by the Church, abstaining from them for the
space of forty days. But this glorious saint adds that, as it is not our
mouth alone which has sinned, but also all our other senses, our fast must
be general and entire, that is, all the members of our body must fast.

The SECOND condition is never to fast through vanity but always through
humility. If our fast is not performed with humility, it will not be
pleasing to God. Prepare yourselves to fast with charity, for if your fast
is performed without it, it will be vain and useless, since fasting, like
all other good works, is not pleasing to God unless it is done in charity
and through charity. When you discipline yourself, when you say long
prayers, if you have not charity, all that is nothing.

The THIRD condition necessary for fasting well is to look to God and to
do everything to please Him, withdrawing within ourselves in imitation of a
great saint, St. Gregory the Great, who withdrew into a secret and
out-of-the-way place where he remained for some time without anyone knowing
where he was, being content that the Lord and His angels knew it.

("The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent" is available from
www.tanbooks.com)

--
Sincerely in Christ,
Our Lady of the Rosary Library
"Pray and work for souls"
olrl.org

--  Instaurare Omnia in Christo,  ROMEO K. ESCUYOS JR. http://romeoescuyos.multiply.com efax: 1-916-415-2239  Home based business for free http://romeoescuyos.cognigen.org  Excellent PC Tech Support Plus Products To Improve Your Life http://romeoescuyos.juvio.com  High quality health and beauty care products at competitive prices Visit - http://takeoff.to/juvio   --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lift Up Your Hearts

Second Sunday of Advent
J.M.J.

"The Rector's Letter"

SURSUM CORDA

We are temples of the Holy Ghost, and the Trinity lives in our souls as in
its sanctuary. Our Christian vocation is noble, calling us to adore God in
spirit and truth, to aim well above transitory things, and to refuse to be
satisfied by the momentary pleasures that the world promises to those who
submit to its yoke.

Our hope is in eternity, our inalienable happiness. The world parades its
attractions, but we know that all they are nothing and we are able to
distinguish, behind the fire of the passions, the inanity of such things.
The world is rich in promises and - in the same manner as a seasoned
politician - keeps none of them. It leaves behind, victims of their naivety,
those who believed it. Or perhaps they become its accomplices, because a man
whose hopes have been crushed often becomes cruel and enjoys dragging others
into a loss similar to his own, out of a desire for revenge.

The call to baptized souls that resounded from the Cross still resonates in
our souls. The "sitio" of the dying Christ cannot leave us indifferent. And
the Christian who walks away from it, in order to drink from the bitter cup
of this world, will be punished.

Soon a cloud of sadness falls upon him. As the drunkard who immerses himself
in his vice to forget, the Christian, wounded by the frenzy of the world,
seeks in ruinous pleasures a consolation for his disappointments.

Dyed with the royal purple of the Blood of Christ, the soul that
unrestrainedly seeks the pleasures of this world, takes with it - as macabre
partners for its journey - not only a mortal sadness, but also the
excruciating memory of its rejection of Calvary. The Christian soul that
takes pleasure in the call of this world cannot stifle the remorse that
brings back to its memory the happy days when it remained faithful to the
terrible demands of God offering his Only-Begotten Son as propitiatory
Victim.

On the other hand, the soul that follows the hard path of fidelity keeps in
its heart the joy of a righteous soul fixed upon God by its trials, as the
nails fixed Christ to the cross. For the Christian soul, these trials, far
from bringing it down or astonishing or scandalizing it, are friends
ardently wished for, because behind the hardness of their blows, the soul
can discern the presence of Christ Who wants to assimilate it to Himself,
making it worthy to share in His sorrow for love of His Father.

Joy is the prerogative of the Christian soul. Its source is the pierced
heart of Christ. This joy will keep our hearts well above the seductive
disorders of a vulgar world, whose acknowledged goal is our degradation and
which makes itself the instrument of Satan for the perdition of souls.

Christian joy consists in keeping our souls under the mild yoke of our
Savior, giving us strength and balance for our conquest of Heaven and
sheltering us from diabolical attacks.

It has a price, however. And this price makes us back away from it. We
prefer coarse and immediate pleasures to the chalice of the Cross - a
disastrous error that destroys and blinds our souls. Christian joy, daughter
of the Cross, is a powerful weapon that obliges the Devil to back off and
then to retreat! Christian joy has the brilliance of crystal and its pure,
clear beauty prevents the Devil from injecting his hidden venom into our
souls, because he can only infect those sad souls obligingly turned in upon
themselves.

Lift up your souls! The fire that burns in our souls is more luminous and
more certain than error, and the foul air that we breathe by no means
prevents us from living joyously - quite the contrary. Victory belongs to
the joyous souls that radiate, in everyday life, the Divine Presence
impressed in the depth of their being.

Wishing you a good and holy Advent, in the joy and hope of the coming of the
Child-God!

Fr. Yves le Roux

NEWS FROM THE SEMINARY

For two years, we have been unsuccessfully searching for a religious house
ample enough to accommodate the increasingly numerous vocations that, thanks
be to God, come to us. The buildings that we looked at were either
inadequate, overpriced or still occupied! For financial reasons, we have to
abandon the project of building a new seminary. Thus, we must consider how
to prepare our existing buildings to receive the young men who will come
knocking at our doors in the fall of 2008. We will let you know more about
our expansion project when it becomes a bit more concrete!

For the time being, we are enlarging our recreation room. The seminarians
like to meet there in the evenings after dining or when polar temperatures
prevent them from walking outside during recreation time, but it had become
already too small to accommodate everyone. This work, which is for the most
part done by the seminarians themselves, is costing us however money and...
scares! During a Wednesday afternoon welding session, sparks burnt part of
the insulation of a heating pipe. Our good seminarian, not realizing
anything, went away satisfied with his work... The other seminarians,
returning from their recreation, were delighted to perceive a pleasing
wood-smoke smell - for them a sure sign that the Seminary rector, becoming
suddenly human, had turned on the heating! But after three hours of waiting,
the continued freezing temperature of the building forced them to admit that
the rector had not changed. Our young philosophers, certain that their
senses could not deceive them, began to use their logic (see how the cold
not only preserves, but stimulates also!) and applied the good old law of
causality that says that there cannot be smoke without fire!

But we could not find where the fire was, as it was quietly following the
sheath of insulation and was spreading slowly and surreptitiously inside the
wall. Thus, we called the firemen, who located and easily put out the fire.
We ask you now to pray that our seminarians abandon their far too literal
interpretation of the Gospel and understand that the fire that Our Lord
wants them to propagate is that of His divine charity!

-----------------------------
From "The Rector's Letter" - December 1, 2007
(www.stas.org/publications/letter/)


--
Sincerely in Christ,
Our Lady of the Rosary Library
"Pray and work for souls"
olrl.org

--  Instaurare Omnia in Christo,  ROMEO K. ESCUYOS JR. http://romeoescuyos.multiply.com efax: 1-916-415-2239  Home based business for free http://romeoescuyos.cognigen.org  Excellent PC Tech Support Plus Products To Improve Your Life http://romeoescuyos.juvio.com  High quality health and beauty care products at competitive prices Visit - http://takeoff.to/juvio   --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------