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// Currently updated for October 
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day = new Date()
dy = day.getDate()

if (dy == 1) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>God works througth the minority</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;The Holy Spirit always works through minorities, never through majorities. Remember when Moses had just left Egypt with his Israelites, and he sent two of his trusted men, Caleb and Joshua, into the land of Canaan He sent them with ten others &ndash; there were twelve spies in all &ndash; and he asked them to make inquiries about the army, the size of the cities, and so forth. They came back with a double report: a majority report and a minority report. The majority report of ten was, 'We cannot take the land. The men there are so tall we look like grasshoppers beside them.' Caleb and Joshua then spoke and said, 'No, God said that we could take it.' And the multitude, the church, turned on Caleb and Joshua and would have killed them had Moses not interceded. The majority was wrong the minority with God can do anything.&quot; - <b>Bishop Sheen</b></a>")

if (dy == 2) document.write("<a class=col4><center><u>We draw strength from our suffering brothers</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Our church today is a tested church, in which we have to be better than we ever were before. We need to recognize that we are part of a very large mystical body that is all over the world, and that we who are weak, in this Western civilization, are drawing strength from great spiritual heroes in other parts of the world, particularly in Russia What a great heart for Christ there is in that land, where one out of six has at least an indirect contact with Christianity! The bravery of their affirming the faith, the readiness to suffer for it!&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 3) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>The argument of holiness</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Behind the iron curtain and in other parts of the world, our brothers in Christ are suffering for their faith And here we are at ease, just undergoing a slight test and dividing our loyalty between Christ and the world.<br><br>We must realize in minds and hearts that this is a new age, that we will have to be a creative minority, and that the only argument that is left to convince others is holiness.  The world has heard every other argument,  and it is ready to reject them all, all except one: holiness.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 4) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Doe the crucific mean anything to us?</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a  class=colb4>&quot;This silver crucifix that I wear, I wear in reparation. I was in a Jewish jewelry store one day in New York, where I had known the jeweler for twenty or twenty-five years.  He said to me, 'I have some silver crucifixes for you.'  And he gave me a bag of silver crucifixes, over a hundred of them. I said, 'Where did you get them?'  'Oh', he said, 'From sisters, they brought them in. They told me, 'We're not going to wear the crucifix any more; it divides us from the world. How much will you give us for the silver?' The jeweler said, 'I weighed them out thirty pieces of silver.' Then he said, 'What's wrong with your Church? I thought that meant something to you?' So I told him what was wrong. Three months later I received him into the Church.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 5) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Do not neglect so great a salvation</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;If a man takes a poison and is given an antidote, it makes no difference whether he throws the antidote out of the window or whether he just neglects it. Because the poison is operating in his system, death is certain. Scripture asks us, 'How shall we escape if we neglect?' &ndash; just <i>neglect</i>. How often in the gospels, for example, it is said, 'Thou didst not, thou didst not, thou didst not' &ndash; the refusal to walk the extra mile.<br><br>The mole once had eyes to see, but it grovelled down in the bowels of the earth, and nature, as if seated in judgment, said, 'Take the talent away!'  And the talent that is not used as taken away. This is the first reason we have to begin to act differently, to resist the forces of evil.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 6) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Drawing closer to the light of Christ</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Christ is our light. If we are walking away from the sun (for the sun is the symbol of Christ), the shadows are before us. This is one of the reasons why we have Catholics afflicted with every manner of psychosis and neurosis, afraid of these lengthening shadows, of these phantoms and fears and dreads. As we walk away from Christ, the further we go, the longer the shadows that appear before us &ndash; the resentment, the aggressiveness, just as soon as we are checked and told that we are walking from the light.<br><br>If however, we walk toward the sun, and intensify our love of Christ, then all the shadows are behind us &ndash; all the remorse and regrets. As the sun comes more and more into our life, all these things pass away. Fears are gone, remorse is swallowed up in the intense love of Christ.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 7) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>The danger of indifference</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;As time goes on, the good and the bad have different attitudes. The good are less conscious of their goodness. They strive to be  zealous, close to the Lord; they're more conscious of their failings. But evil people, and those that are not living up to their full commitment to Christ, they're very satisfied. Samson did not know that his strength had left him. Saul, the first king the Israelites, did not know that the Lord had left him. We become self-satisfied and resent any challenge to change.<br><br>Take a frog; put that frog in water. Then heat the water imperceptibly, day by day increasing the temperature until the water is boiling. At no point during the increase of temperature  will the frog ever offer resistance. It will never realize that the water is too hot &ndash; until it's dead. That's the way we are spiritually. We just become used to the temperature of the world. And we don't realize that it is gradually possessing us until we are in its grip. So we are doing battle therefore with  triteness, shallowness, and dullness, and we have to resist and begin to go in the other direction.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 8) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Do good people know they are good</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Truly good people are always unconscious of their goodness.  Nothing embarasses a spiritual person as much as to be to told that he is spiritual. The closer we get to God, the less we aware of being pleasing to God. Let me explain. If you take a painting and examine it by candlelight, the definitions seem rather good and the colors well chosen.<br><br>But if you put it in the light of the sun, then all the defects stand out When we compare ourselves with other people, we seem good; when we compare ourselves with God, we are nothing.</a>")

if (dy == 9) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Has our love grown cold?</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;See how often sacred scripture indicates the decay of love among us. For example, the Jewish people had sworn to God that they would keep all the commandments, that they would accept the covenant, that they would do what God ordered them to do. They said the God of Israel would be their God. In six weeks they were prostrate before the golden calf. Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the law in his hands.<br><br>Joshua, hearing the uproar the people were making said to Moses, 'Listen! There's fighting in the camp' Moses replied, 'This is not the clamor of warriors or the elamof of a defeated people. It is the sound of singing that I hear.'<br><br>As he approached the camp, Moses saw the bull calf and the dancing, and he was angry. He flung the tablets down and they were shattered to pieces at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf that they had made and burnt it. He ground it to powder and sprinkled it upon the water and made the Israelites drink it. Then he said to his brother Aaron, the high priest, 'Why did you do this?' &nbsp;This shows what happens when there's not strong leadership. 'Why did you do this?' &nbsp;We can rationalize anything; and here comes the lamest excuse that is recorded in all history. Aaron said, 'Well, I took the gold offerings that were given to me. I put it in the furnace, and it came out a calf'.&nbsp; It came out a calf? And they said this was the god that led them out of Egypt. Love quickly decays.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 10) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Peter got wiser</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;The closer we get to Christ, the less certain we are of any merit of our own. Just study the way St. Paul characterizes himself in his epistles, in intervals of four, five, and six years between the letters. At first he says, 'I am the chief of the apostles, I have labored more abundantly than any of them'. He works a little longer and then he says, 'I am not worthy to be called a member of the Church, and the least worthy of all of the apostles'. Finally he ends up by calling himself the chief of sinners.  St. Peter, too became wiser, his first letter begins, 'Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ'.  Here's a clear-cut affirmation of what he is.  A few years later, Peter changes and he begins his letter, 'Simon Peter'.  Simon, poor weak human nature &ndash; 'Simon Peter, apostle servant of Christ'.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 11) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>The older we get, the better we see ourselves</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;When we're young we think we're doing well. When we older, we're sure we're not. Hence, when the adulteress was before our Lord, the woman whom the people wanted to stone who left first, as Jesus wrote in the sand the sins of those were there?  The eldest: 'They began to leave, beginning with the eldest'.<br><br>As we grow older, we know that we have done little service.  I've been a priest for fifty-five years, for which I thank God. I was doing much better thirty years ago in my own mind than I am now. Now I feel as if I have done so little.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 12) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>We can hate truth and fear goodness</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Evil works in us.  Love declines. And then we hesitate about changing. St. Thomas says we can hate truth and fear goodness.  We can hate truth because it means a change. For that reason we often resent the truth that is told about ourselves. We rationalize what we have done. We will stay away from a doctor, lest he find cancer.  We do not want to know the truth. We like to hear about social action and political-moral problems, but we're not too keen on hearing the truth about ourselves. Truth hurts.<br><br>We fear goodness because we like to keep our own standard. We have moved away from the standard of Christ to the standard of the world. We do not ask ourselves, 'Does this please Christ?', but, 'Does this please the world?'  So I will dress and act in such a way that I will not be separate from the world; I want to be with it. We marry this age, and we become a widow in the next one. We take on its verbiage, its fashions. This is one reason for so much instability in the church today: the sand on which we are walking is shifting. We've given up the rock which is Christ.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 13) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Why did the strong man lose his strength?</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Samson, the strong man, fell in love with a woman named Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines went up to the country to see her and said, 'Coax him and find out what gives him his great strength, and how we can master him, bind him, and hold him captive'. And Delilah tried to find out what gave Samson strength, until finally he told her the secret. He said, 'If my head were shaved, then my strength would leave me and I should become as weak as any other man'. Delilah then told the Philistines.  She lulled Samson to sleep on her knees and summoned a man, and he shaved the seven locks of Samson's hair for her, and they made him captive. And Samson's strength left him. But the strength was not in the hair, as is so often erroneously said. Samson had taken the Nazirite vow which committed him first to totally abstain from women and from strong wine. The growing of the hair was a symbol of that vow, so that the cutting of the hair was also the symbol of the breaking of the vow.  And then Delilah cried, 'The Philistines are upon you, Samson'.  He woke from his sleep and said, 'I will go out as usual and shake myself'.  In other words, 'I'm as strong as I ever was'.  He did not know that the Lord had left him. We're not as strong as we were.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 14) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Did God make a mistake?</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;As we read over the gospels, particularly the first part of the gospel story, we sometimes feel that Jesus made a mistake in choosing Peter. Peter was impetuous, cowardly &ndash; making promises that he could never keep and did not intend to keep, even denying the Lord. Yet the Lord never said to him, 'I told you. I told you you would fall.' Never that. Our Lord was patient with Peter, and Peter became a saint.<br><br>Our Lord did not make a mistake. Our Lord did not make a mistake in choosing any one of us. He knew what we would be, what we would become. Maybe we have not become all that he expected, but He knew the sanctity that was in us. What he said to Peter the week after the resurrection, he says to us, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?' That question is answered in silence.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 15) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Mary and Christ's suffering</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Mary's participation in Christ's suffering began with the annunciation, when she was asked to give God a human body, more properly, a human nature. In other words, will you make God capable of suffering? God though he was, He learned obedience in the school of suffering. God could know experimentally what suffering was only by taking a body. So the Blessed Mother is asked, 'Will you make it possible for your creator to suffer?'<br><br>Think of a mother, for example, who gives to a young son or daughter an automobile at the age of nineteen, which a short time afterwards is the cause of a wreck and permanent injury. Would the mother ever forgive herself? And here Mary has to say yes, I will let him suffer.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 16) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>A summary of our life</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Have you ever noticed in the Apostles&#8217; Creed how quickly we pass over the earthly life of our Lord? Born, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, rose from the dead. We say nothing about the beatitudes, nothing about miracles. Just he was born, suffered, died, and rose again. Just those three. That&#8217;s all there is in life. We&#8217;re born; the earthly life is passed over, because all that matters concerning an earthly life is whether we are doing the will of God. And then, resurrection. First, we are born to Christ in baptism. Remember that our Lord was born into a sinful, sorrowful humanity. If we follow him as a rule of life, we are born into that kind of a world: the poor, the afflicted, the sick, the ignorant.<br /><br />That is why Jesus&#8217; birth was in a stable. He identified with the poor. Here is the second great commandment: love your neighbor. The fundamental reason for loving our neighbor is because we&#8217;re born into the same humanity that our Lord was born into, and we must help redeem it. Second, he suffered and was crucified. We suffer. Our Lord said, 'In this world you will have tribulation.' We are given crosses. We bear the cross for him and with him, recalling always what he did for us, And finally, he rose from the dead. Scripture says of our blessed Lord, 'having joy set before him, he endured the cross.' That means that in any kind of trial which we have, there should be a hidden gladness. Why? Because we&#8217;re assured of the resurrection. Even though God does send us some kind of trial, if we&#8217;ve borne his cross, we can be absolutely sure of the crown.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 17) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Suffering and joy</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;In the course of my life I have dealt with all kinds of people, with those who have been sinners and returned to the Lord and suffered much and had an indescribable joy. One of the most joyful figures lever met in my life was a leper woman in Jamaica.  She had lost her arms and half of her legs, but she was always smiling and happy and saying, 'But there&#8217;s going to be a resurrection, and I will then have a glorified body.' That must be our attitude.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 18) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>The judge and his son</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Imagine a judge having before him his own son who committed murder. He killed a boy. Now there&#8217;s no doubt whatever of the son&#8217;s guilt. The father-judge, bound to execute justice, sentenc his son to death, That is justice. Then he says to the son, No one will take your place, I will die for you.' That would be mercy. But that is not the complete picture.  Suppose that at the moment the son was sentenced to death  the boy that the son had murdered walked in alive. The son would say, 'How can you condemn me for murder? You said killed this boy? You see, he&#8217;s alive. I&#8217;m innocent, I should be free. That&#8217;s precisely the condition that we are in. We were guilty of sin but our Lord rose from the dead, took our guilt upon himself and washed it away. Now we can say, See,  he&#8217;s alive, he&#8217;s not dead. I'm free.' So that&#8217;s why he came.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 19) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>A new birth</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;It is common for a creature in one stage of its existence to have capacity for passing into a higher stage. But it is unusual for a creature to have a capacity which can be developed only by some agency outside of it and adapted to it. It is in this condition that man is born of his human parents. He is born with the capacity for life higher than that which he lives as an animal in this world. There is in him a capacity for becoming something different and higher. That capacity lies dormant and dead until the Holy Spirit comes and quickens it. The influence has to come from without. There must be the efficient touch of the Holy Spirit, the impartation of his life. The capacity to be a child of God is man&#8217;s, but the development of this lies with God. We have to be quickened from without. We cannot give physical birth to ourselves, and we cannot give divine birth to ourselves.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 20) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Mass in a Chinese prison</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;A bishop was put into a communist prison in China, After beatings and persecution his weight fell to about ninety pounds. Covered with vermin, prison sores, wearing a black stocking cap and a black kimono, he was unable to walk by himself. He always had to be supported by two fellow prisoners. Providentially, however, he was the only one in prison that was ever given bread and wine. The communists did not know why they gave it to him, but at any rate he had it. If they knew that he was going to say Mass with the bread and wine, they certainly never would have given it to him. Mass in a gothic cathedral, with all the pomp and splendor of liturgy, could never equal the beauty of that Mass that was said by the bishop as he leaned against the prison wall, with the tray before him, as he moved his fingers, saying over the bread, 'This is my body,' and over the wine, 'This is my blood,' and then secretly passing out communion to those who shared his faith.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 21) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Example that overcomes the world</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;After the communist revolution in China, a bishop was put in the death march where later he perished. A communist colonel who was in charge of the march put a sack around his neck. It weighed about thirty pounds. It was so tied that the rope would gradually tighten as he marched; the sack would become heavier, and the bishop would eventually be choked to death. As the march began, a fellow prisoner who later told me the story, broke ranks, went up to the communist colonel, and shouted at him, 'Don&#8217;t do that! Look at the man!' The communist colonel looked at him as if for the first time in his life he really saw suffering, and then he said to the one who interrupted him, 'Get back in line, you dog!'  The death march began, and this friend of mine said that he tried to peer through the marching lines of the prisoners to see if he could catch a sight of the bishop, supported by two fellow prisoners. After about a mile he saw him. The bishop was still standing, but the sack was not on his back. The sack was on the back of the Communist colonel. I asked, ‘What happened?'  He said the Communist colonel put it on his own back. And why? He said, 'I think he was edified by the patience and resignation of the good bishop. In any case the communist was arrested for having done that service, and the last we heard he was in prison.'&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 22) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>We belong to another world</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Someone gave me a canary to be my companion during a long sickness, If I told that bird, 'You are in this tiny, little cage and you have wings, but this is the right place for you,' I&#8217;m sure the bird would be depressed. If, however, the bird could understand, and I said to him, 'You&#8217;re in the wrong place. You have a gift of song that should mount to the heavens, and you have wings that should fly,' the bird would then be happier. So we are unhappy when we are locked in this little cosmos, which could be shattered by a bomb. But if we are told that there is another world, then life becomes a little bit happier.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 23) document.write("<a class=col4><center><u>We need to fall in love with the Lord</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;There was a priest who had a high office in one diocese. He was removed from office principally because of alcoholism. He went to another diocese but continued to give scandal. He happened to come into a retreat when I was talking about the Holy Hour, and he made the Holy Hour from that time on. He died in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament a month or two later.<br><br>He had been battling drunkenness for years. But he overcame it in the end because of the expulsive power of the new affection. He fell in love with the Lord. Why do we not have zeal! &nbsp;Simply because we're not in love. Once we're on fire, we'll do anything. When we love the Lord, we want to be with him. That is love's first effect.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 24) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Developing our spiritual senses</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Another reason for praying the Holy Hour is that we need power. Power is born of silence and presence. As the Psalmist put it: 'Be still and know that I am God.' In prayer we shrug off the burdens of the world. We come in and spend an hour with the Lord and talk to him and listen and develop our senses of hearing and seeing and touching. Hearing, not doing all the talking. 'Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth.' Not listen, Lord, thy servant speaketh. &nbsp;And the Lord does talk to us.<br><br>Seeing: 'The things that are temporal are seen', says St. Paul.&nbsp; We have a different vision before the Blessed Sacrament. Remember the priest and the Levite that passed by the wounded man on the road to Jerusalem. They did not want to see him because seeing created responsibility. There will be a shrinking from the Blessed Sacrament whenever there is not a good spiritual attitude in the soul. But when we heighten our spiritual vision, then we're doing something that the apostles had to do. They had to see beyond the veil of the flesh of our Lord in order to comprehend his divinity. And we have to see behind the veil of the species of bread to see his divinity as well. When we are used to seeing his divinity through the species of bread, then we will be better at seeing the image of God in people.<br><br>And finally, touch: touch is the mark of intimacy. Touch is communion. After many hours there begins to be a presence before the eucharistic Lord, a deep sense of oneness with Christ. We are even reluctant at the end of many an hour to leave the Lord. Like the disciples of Emmaus we say, 'Stay with us Lord, the day is far spent.'&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 25) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>The less of self, the more of Christ</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a  class=colb4>&quot;The great battle the church has to fight today is the affirmation of self. This stands in the way of God using us as an instrument. Look at the way the prophet Elisha handled a good woman who was suffering from considerable poverty. The wife of a member of the company of prophets appealed to Elisha, 'My husband, your servant has died, and you know what a man he was. He feared the Lord, but a creditor has come to take my two boys as slaves'. Elisha said to her, 'How can I help you? Tell me what you have in the house'. &nbsp;'Nothing at all,' she said, 'except a flask of oil.'  'Go out then', he said,  and borrow vessels and pots from all your neighbors.<br><br>Get as many empty ones as you can and when you come home, shut yourself in with your sons and pour from the flask into these vessels, and as they are filled, set them aside.' &nbsp;She left him and shut herself in with her sons, and they brought her the pots. She filled them, and when they were all full she said to one of her sons, 'Bring me another pot. 'There is not one left', he said. And the flow of the oil ceased. Why is it that some of us have more of Christ than others? Is it because Christ cannot get in? The more empty of self we are, the more He can fill us.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 26) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>How God forms us</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;To learn how the Lord forms us as pots, we turn to the prophet Jeremiah.  These are the words which came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 'Go down at once to the potter's house and there I will tell you what I have to say.' So I went down to the potter's house and found him working at the wheel. Now and then a vessel he was making out of the clay would be spoilt in his hands, and then he would start again and mold it into another vessel to his liking. And then the word of the Lord came to me. &nbsp;'Can I not deal with you, Israel, says the Lord, as the potter deals with his clay?'<br><br>What the potter intended to do was to make a Ming vase. So here is the potter with the clay and the wheel, and he intends to make the best. And the clay somehow or other hardens, perhaps too rapidly, or it doesn't harden sufficiently and it falls down from the wheel. Does the potter neglect the clay? No, he picks it up and molds it into another vessel. God does not abandon us poor pots, he picks us up and makes us according to His liking whatever it happens to be. We are not abandoned. But He does have an ideal just the same.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 27) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Taking care of our treasure</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;Here we come to a lesson that God teaches us concerning our treasure. The treasure we hold in our earthen pot is grace. We turn here to the prophet Jeremiah in the forty-eighth chapter, 'All his life long Moab has lain undisturbed, like wine settled on lees, not emptied from vessel to vessel; he has not gone into exile. Therefore the taste of him is unaltered, and the flavor stays unchanged.'  Jeremiah is here describing the way the Jews made wine. They would pour the grape wine into a vessel, allow it to settle, an when the lees (the dregs) began to form, then the wine would poured into another vessel.<br><br>After the dregs had settled there, it would be poured into still another, and still another, an another, until it was perfect wine. God says here of Moab, the people that did not allow the Israelites to pass through their land, 'Moab has settled on its lees.' &nbsp;Moab never went into exile. There was no pouring out of a vessel, no change, no taking on a new challenge, and for that reason it lost its taste. This is the reason we should make a daily Holy Hour, so that we'll not settle on our lees. The rest of our life well consider as dregs. &nbsp;Now we'll begin to be poured from vessel to vessel in order to be enriched with grace.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 28) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>Peter and Judas</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;It is interesting to make a comparison between Peter and Judas. Our Lord warned both that they would fail. They both failed. They both denied or betrayed the Lord. They both repented. But the difference in the word repent is that Judas repented unto himself and Peter repented unto the Lord. They were the same up to that point. St. Paul, therefore, says there were two kinds of sorrow, the sorrow of the world and the sorrow of true faith. Judas no longer had any hope, having refused to return to the Savior.<br><br>He took a rope and went out to some rocky ground, we know not where it was. He walked over the rocky ground, and those rocks seemed just as hard and cruel as his own heart, and the limb of every tree seemed like a pointing finger. Traitor, traitor, traitor. And the knot in every tree seemed like an accusing eye. And he hanged himself. And as the Acts of the Apostles tells us, 'His bowels burst asunder.'And he went to his own place. That is all.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 29) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>The Agony in the Garden</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;When our Lord was in the garden, he was not suffering so much from pain, as from evil. Remember that only the innocent know what sin is. We can become so feverish that we think that we are well. Only the sinless really know guilt. So our Lord now reaches back into the past, not thinking of the pains that he has has endured since he put on this mortal frame, but he drags up to the present moment all the sins of the world.<br><br>The sin of Adam, Cain was there, purple in the sheet of his brother's blood. The abominations of Sodom and Gomorrah were there. The coarseness of the Jews and the sometimes even greater coarseness of the Gentiles. All those sins and abominations and idolatries were there. And then with his infinite mind looking into the future, Jesus dragged back upon himself all of the sins that would ever be committed until the end of time. Sins that rent Christ's mystical body, sins of the old, who should have passed the age of sinning.<br><br>Sins of the young for whom the heart of Christ is tenderly pierced. Sins committed in the city, in the city's fetid atmosphere of sin. Sins committed in the country that made all nature blush. Sins too awful to be mentioned, sins too terrible to be named. And Samson-like Jesus reached up and pulled down this horrible edifice of sin upon himself until the blood began to pour out from his body forming on the olive roots, red drops, the first red beads in the rosary of redemption.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 30) document.write("<a class=col4><center><u>Filling up the quota</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;St. Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, a letter which he wrote from prison, said. 'It is now my happiness to suffer for you. This is my way of helping to complete in my poor human nature the full tale of Christ's affliction still to be endured for the sake of His body, which is the Church.' Our Lord says, 'It is finished.' Paul says, 'It is not finished.' Certainly the sufferings of our blessed Lord were finished in him as the head of the Church but they are not finished in his body. The quota of the physical Christ is finished. The quota of the mystical Christ is not.<br><br>So St. Paul says: I am helping to fill up that quota. And so Christ's wounds are eternally fresh They're all over the world. They're in those who have the faith, and they're in those who do not have the faith. This vision will come to us as we live close to the cross and meditate on the passion of our Lord.<br><br>Nothing gives us so much understanding of the love of God, the sacrificial love, as God coming down to this world from heavenly headquarters and saying: I will take the pain as my own. This vicarious love is the <i>agape</i> love of Christianity. No wonder, then, St. John tells us about the lamb, the lamb with the marks of slaughter upon him. If Christ is in agony until the end of the world, and he is, then our vision changes. The passion is not a past history like the battle of Waterloo. So maybe we had better change our lives to more closely linked with the lamb who has the marks of slaughter upon him.&quot;</a>")

if (dy == 31) document.write("<br><a class=col4><center><u>An army like Gideon's</u></i><br><IMG SRC=0_spacer.gif width=2 height=4 border=0><br></center><a class=colb4>&quot;The Lord is testing his Church This testing is like the story of Gideon. Here's this great leader of the army of Israel, with an army of thirty thousand soldiers to do battle with an army of fifty thousand. What does God say to him? &nbsp;He said, 'Your army's too great. Tell the cowards to leave.' &nbsp;How many cowards were there? Twenty thousand: two out of three. God thins his ranks. Then he said to Gideon, 'Your army is still too great, for if you win it would seem it was through your own power. Send them to the river and watch them drink.'<br><br>Some of them threw themselves prone on their stomachs and drank leisurely, comfortably, and to the full. Others ran along the bank, lapping up the water with their hands, and drinking in the fashion of dogs. And God said,&nbsp;'That's your army, three hundred, and I'll be with you. So God is thinning our ranks now as then, because we preparing for a stronger and more holy Church.&quot;</a>")

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