Best

"We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our roof tight and our clothing sufficient, but who provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best property of all--friends."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

(The picture is of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis Xavier in Paris.)

Riches

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”

--Oscar Wilde

God's Champion

"And touching our Societie, be it known to you that we have made a
league----all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude
must overreach all the practices of England----cheerfully to carry the
cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while
we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your
torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned,
the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood.
So the Faith was planted: so it must be restored."

--Saint Edmund Campion's Challenge to the Privy Council, also known as Campion's Brag

Please follow these links to two excellent posts on Saint Edmund Campion who was martyred on December 1, 1581:

http://www.catholictradition.org/Saints/campion.htm

http://cantuar.blogspot.com/2009/12/st-edmund-campion-saint-for-anglican.html

(Two other saints were also martyred with Saint Edmund Campion at Tyburn on this day in 1581. They are Saint Ralph Sherwin, a convert and secular priest, and Saint Alexander Briant, a Jesuit priest. Henry Walpole, a lapsed Catholic who was at the execution, was spattered there by a drop of Saint Edmund Campion's blood. Walpole soon after left England to become a Jesuit priest, and was himself later martyred at Tyburn.)

All you holy English martyrs, pray for us.

Salvete flores martyrum!

Kindness

"An act of kindness, no matter how small, is never wasted."

--Aesop, The Lion And The Mouse

Pope Benedict XVI's beautiful words on Advent

Please follow this link to read some of them: http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/11/benedict-xvi-advent-invites-us-to-remain-silent-as-we-come-to-appreciate-a-presence.html

(Thank you, Carl Olson.)

Joy

"There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and leaving it behind when they go."

--Father Frederick Faber

The Feast of Saint Andrew

And so begins "the Christmas novena", as it is known:

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother.

Amen.

Imprimatur: +MICHAEL AUGUSTINE, Archbishop of New York, New York, February 6, 1897.

(It is piously believed that whoever recites this prayer fifteen times a day from the feast of Saint Andrew on November 30th until Christmas will obtain what is asked.)

Saint Andrew, pray for us.