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David is on the run from King Saul who has just had all the priests killed.

I was known to one of them who caught me by the hem & cried out, ‘What a wonder!’ While he held his arm outstretched to me, I fixed my eyes on his scorched face 'til beneath the charred disfigurement I could discern features that I knew, lowering my hand toward his face, asked: ‘Are You here, Ser Brunetto?’ He:‘O my son, let it not displease you if Brunetto Latini for a while turns back w/you & lets the troop go on.’

On the part of the understanding there is 1° ignorance of the supernatural life. The remedy is the word of God which we can find in instructions and in pious reading. To listen attentively to the word of God or to read it carefully is already a beginning of meditation.

For the bases of each single soul are its intentions. For as the fabric rests on columns, but the columns on bases, so is our life based upon its virtues, but our virtues on our inmost intention. And because it is written, other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ; [1 Cor. 3, 11] the bases are then on the foundation, when our intentions are firmly fixed on Christ.

Finished the Books of Judges and Ruth. Ruth is lovely. Judges is horrifying. But as Father said, the last line says it all: "In those days there was not king in Israel; everyone did what he thought best."

Listening to the Books of Judges and Ruth at the same time. I have read Judges before but do not remember it and it is fascinating. Want to come back to it!

Chapter V: The Trace

The minds of the arrogant are doubtless so very mad, that even in what they think rightly, they are disfigured by the deformity of their pride. And hence even their sound opinions do not instruct their hearers, because in truth they lead them by their haughty sentiments not to reverence but to despise them.

When self-knowledge arouses in a soul sorrowful contrition at the same time as ardent love, profound adoration and the most elevated aspirations, the feeling of its own powerlessness w/most generous resolutions, one can declare it authentic: it bears the divine mark of its origin, which is peace, spiritual balance, freedom and fecundity.

Often, by the marvelous regulating of our Ruler, we're allowed to be torn in pieces by calumnies even, so when the voice of one commending lifts up the heart, the tongue of one calumniating should abase it, because the tree too often, which is so driven by the impulse of one wind as to seem now that it might well-nigh be rooted out of its place, is set up again by a blast of another wind from an opposite quarter.

Chapter III< El Camino Real

Although this record will go back again once Lent starts, we jumped ahead when we moved into Ordinary Time. This is the 3rd Sunday in OT, Feast of Word of God, since 2019. Biblemas? Excellent exegesis on this new feast.

‘O sun, you who heal all troubled sight, you so content me by resolving doubts it pleases me no less to question than to know. But go back a little way, I said, to where you told me usury offends God’s goodness, and untie that knot for me. ... The usurer, who takes another path, scorns nature in herself and in her follower, and elsewhere sets his hopes.

They that in Holy Church are truly humble, and truly instructed, are taught touching heavenly mysteries, both some things when viewed to understand, and some things not understood to reverence, that so what they understand they may hold with reverence, and what they do not as yet understand they may look forward to with humility.

In addition to recording the names and death anniversaries of family and friends, I was bothered by Oklahoma's continued death row executions. So, I went back through the list of all those who had been murdered by my state from the very beginning and added them plus the names of their victims (where they were given) on the dates of the executions. Eternal rest grant unto them, O LORD, may they rest in peace.

The “Battle of the Sea of Japan” was a turning point in modern history.

While I was reading this here, I was also reading about this same war in the novel, The Lady of the Decoration! 😁 As a reader, that is really fun!

Let this, then, be the first principle in the practice of self-discipline: to refuse to the body all that can weaken or delay the soul's union with our Lord.

With the voice then and the faith of Peter, Holy Church passed by the watchmen she found, in that she disdained to believe the Lord Who had been prophesied to be anyone of the number of the prophets.  Thus, let it be said, nor shall vessels of gold high and overtopping be exchanged for it.  Because the Elect severally both venerate the life of the Saints for their loftiness and yet do not take up with it for error.

There is no more amazing or portentous phenomenon in modern history than the way in which sleeping Japan, roughly awakened by the cannon of the West, leaped to the lesson, bettered the instruction, accepted science, industry and war, defeated all her competitors either in battle or in trade, and became, within two generations, the most aggressive nation in the contemporary world.

For the wicked while they neglect in heart to go on to the things of eternity, and do not observe that all things present are fleeting, fix their heart on the love of the present life, and as it were therein construct for themselves the foundation of a long abode, because by desire they are established in earthly things.

About one of Japan's greatest Confucian philosophers: "Togai’s pupils pointed out that he had written two hundred and forty-two books without saying an unkind word of any other philosopher. When he died, they placed this enviable epitaph upon his tomb: He did not talk about the faults of others... He cared for nothing but books. His life was uneventful."

Exodus, Chapter 11., Finished Book of Job, Reading Leviticus and Proverbs and Psalms.

Holy Church, when she withdraws her weak members from sins, and conducts them to the remedy of penance, these she surely aids with her tears, that they may recover strength to receive the grace of their Maker, and in the strong she bewails what she has not done, which yet in her weak members she has as it were done herself.

It is the office of mental discipline to recover the powers of the mind for the work for which they were given and to restore to them their proper balance and unity.

When the priest does not do the good that he tells, even the very word of his lips is withdrawn from him, that he may not dare to speak what he does not practice; as where it is said by the Prophet, But unto the wicked God saith, ‘What hast thou to do, to declare My statutes, or that thou takest My covenant in thy mouth? [Ps. 50, 16]

Fashionable ladies rouged their cheeks, colored their nails, & occasionally gilded the lower lip; to complete their toilette 16 articles were required in the 17th century, & 20 in the 18th. They recognized 15 styles of front hair & 12 styles of back hair; they shaved their eyebrows, painted crescent moons or substituted for them 2 little black spots high up on the forehead to match their artificially blackened teeth.