In today's Gospel, John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Our Lord some questions. We know that it's not because John doesn't know Who Our Lord is...but rather because he is humbly sending his followers to be converted to follow Jesus. Do we always use our gifts to guide people to God, or do we try to get people to follow and admire us instead? Do we guide our children to love God, or just to love us, and go to church to please us? Do we guide our friends and acquaintances to turn to God in their troubles, or merely to lean on us because we have all the answers? Let us be like John the Baptist and always lead others to the one true God...to always say, "Behold the Lamb of God."

"Bestow upon my soul, sweet Jesus, the faith which John the Baptist sent his disciples to find near Thee, and augment it each day more and more. I shall soon have the happiness of approaching Thy crib and of hearing and seeing Thee on that blessed night of Christmas which is so near. Grant, by Thy grace, that I may kneel before Thee with a faith dimmed by no shadow of doubt, and proclaim that Thou art He that is to come. Amen."

~ taken from a meditation for the 2nd Sunday of Advent in

"The Expectation of Jesus" by L'Abbe Max Caron.

(Shrine of Mother Cabrini in Golden, Colorado)

"December 3rd. Feast of St. Xavier! What a great day!...Let us imagine we are like Saint Francis Xavier, and always keep Our Divine Lord before us, beholding His mild gravity, His quiet amiability, His unalterable evenness of temper. In thus copying His Divine Model, we shall see how he [St. Francis Xavier] worked, walked, spoke and taught. Let us think of the perfection that accompanied every act, and let us force ourselves to imitate Him [Our Lord] at all times and in every moment with the fidelity which is possible to us."

~ Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, "Travels of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini."

"You are submerged by a flood of troubles that the size of your household places on your shoulders. You must, then, call upon Our Lord all the more and beg for His holy help, so that the work you must do will be agreeable to Him and so that you will embrace it for His honor and glory. Our days are few, and consequently our labor cannot be overlong. By means of a little patience, we will get through it with honor and contentment, for we have no greater consolation at the end of the day than to have worked hard and shouldered its pains."

~ St. Francis de Sales

Whatever troubles are submerging us, let call upon God, and be consoled at the end of the day to have worked hard, and shouldered our crosses bravely.

On this date in 1581, 

Father Edmund Campion, the great Jesuit martyr, went to Heaven.

Imagine what it would have been like to have to hide to hear Mass! What was it like to know that if someone found out that Mr. so-and-so was a Catholic priest, he would lose his life, and so would you for hiding him in your home. It took great courage to be a Catholic in Elizabethan England! One of the greatest was Edmund Campion. I tried to find my picture of the chapel in the Tower of London where he debated with the Queen's ministers, and successfully defeated them repeatedly, although he was short on food and sleep because of his imprisonment... but unfortunately I couldn't lay hands on the picture.

His contemporary, William Cardinal Allen wrote in a letter, "About our brothers and yours, who have lately been murdered, I have already written to you; and deeply grieved though I am, I am now constrained to compose the history of their deaths and of the others...You will see in it a constancy quite equal to that of the ancient martyrs. Their fortitude has marvelously moved and changed all hearts. Men of good will and moderation are repentant, the wicked and the enemies are amazed. Loud, indeed, is the cry of sacred blood so copiously shed. Ten thousand sermons would not have published our apostolic faith and religion so winningly as the fragrance of these victims, most sweet both to God and to men. The other prisoners have become more courageous, our men are more ready, the harvest increases. With labor and constancy, and God as our leader, we shall conquer."

This letter is quoted in the introduction to "A Briefe Historie of the Glorious Martyrdom of 12 Reverend Priests: Father Edmund Campion and His Companions" by William Cardinal Allen, originally published in 1582 A.D.

Happy St. Andrew's Day!

I took these pictures of St. Andrew's foot in the church of Saint-Saveur in Aix-en-Provence, France. This foot climbed into the boat with Jesus! This foot climbed out of the boat to follow Him when He said, "Come, I will make you fishers of men."



And this is a hunk of the cross on which St. Andrew was martyred. I photographed it in the Abbey of St. Victor in Marseilles, France.



The Telegraph UK reports:

"Today is St Andrew's Day (or in Scottish Gaelic 'Là Naomh Anndrais'), marking the country's patron saint.... 

"Who was St Andrew? St Andrew, according to Christianity's teachings, was one of Jesus Christ's apostles, the twelve followers chosen by him....He was revered in Scotland from around 1,000 AD but didn't become its official patron saint until the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.

"Like Jesus, Andrew died a martyr, and was crucified in Greece on an X-shaped cross in 60 AD, rather than the 'T' shape cross that Jesus was crucified on. This type of cross is also known as a saltire - the symbol that makes up the Scottish flag.

"St Andrew's links with Scotland come from the Pictish King Oengus I, who built a monastery in what is now the town of St Andrews - where the Scottish university now stands - after the relics of the saint were brought to the town in the eighth century.

"But he was made the patron saint of Scotland after the king's descendant, Oengus II, prayed to St. Andrew on the eve of a crucial battle against English warriors from Northumberland, around 20 miles east of Edinburgh.

"Legend has it that, heavily outnumbered, Oengus II told St. Andrew that he would become the patron saint of Scotland if he were granted victory. On the day of the battle, clouds are said to have formed a saltire in the sky, and Oengus's army of Picts and Scots were victorious....

"The Saltire flag - a white cross on a blue background - is said to have come from this divine intervention and has been used to represent Scotland since 1385."

This story (in quotes) is credited to Telegraph Reporters. The entire story is published here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/st-andrews-day-patron-saint-scotland-day-celebrated-today/.

(Sailing in New York Harbor)

 "It doesn't do to make the pursuit of happiness our main concern. There is the danger that we may not know it when we've got it. We can't help wanting it, but as to our having it, that is God's affair. For us to get on with the business of living. Happiness is a by-product."

~ Dom Hubert van Zeller, OSB, "We Live with Our Eyes Open," imprimatur 1949.

Let us raise our sails, and go where the wind of the Holy Ghost leads us. But let us not seek for earthly happiness as our final destination. God's Will should be our goal: God's perfect plan for our lives...and ultimately perfect happiness in Heaven. If we find some earthly joys along the way, then that is the sunshine glinting on the waters of our hearts....bringing brightness and beauty, but not ultimate happiness.

Today is the feast of St. Catherine Laboure. This statue is located in the Shrine of the Miraculous Medal in Germantown (Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, but I was unable to discover the photographer of the image. This shows what it was like the first time that Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Laboure. The Blessed Mother sat in a chair (which is still revered in Paris) and St. Catherine knelt beside her and talked to her of everything in her heart.

Throughout Catherine's life:

"Everything she did bore the stamp of cheerful joyousness and ardent love for God and His Blessed Mother. She believed in the maxim that 'if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well.' She supernaturalized that maxim by adding the motive of doing everything for God; and the way she judged whether or not a thing was worth doing at all was whether or not God willed it."

~ Edward J. Farren, from the chapter on Catherine Laboure in Heroines of Christ edited by Joseph Husslein, SJ, Ph.D., imprimatur 1939.