April 4, 2025

Daily Thought from the Saints

"O Holy Mary! My Mother; into thy blessed trust and special custody, and into the bosom of thy mercy, I this day, and every day, and in the hour of my death, commend my soul and body. To thee I commit all my anxieties and sorrows, my life and the end of my life, that by thy most holy intercession, and by thy merits, all my actions may be directed and governed by thy will and that of thy Son."

— St. Aloysius Gonzaga

Daily Scripture Verse

"God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like hinds’ feet, he makes me tread upon my high places."

Habakkuk 3:19

Daily Meditation

"There is good reason to be astonished that men should sin so boldly in the sight of Heaven and earth and show so little fear of the most high God. Yet it is a much greater cause of astonishment that while we multiply our iniquities beyond the sands of the sea and have so great a need for God to be kind and indulgent, we are nevertheless so demanding ourselves. Such indignity and such injustice! We want God to suffer everything from us, and we are not able to suffer anything from anyone. We exaggerate beyond measure the faults committed against us; worms that we are, we take the slightest pressure exerted on us to be an enormous attack. Meanwhile, we count as nothing what we undertake proudly against the sovereign majesty of God and the rights of his empire! Blind and wretched mortals: will we always be so sensitive and delicate? Will we never open our eyes to the truth? Will we never understand that the one who does injury to us is always much more to be pitied than are we who receive the injury? . . . Since those who do evil to us are unhealthy in mind, why do we embitter them by our cruel vengeance? Why do we not rather seek to bring them back to reason by our patience and mildness? Yet we are far removed from these charitable dispositions. Far from making the effort at self-command that would enable us to endure an injury, we think that we are lowering ourselves if we do not take pride in being delicate in points of honor. We even think well of ourselves for our extreme sensitivity. And we carry our resentment beyond all measure . . . All of this must stop . . . We must take care of what we say and bridle our malicious anger and unruly tongues. For there is a God in Heaven who has told us that he will demand a reckoning of our 'careless words' (Matt. 12:36): what recompense shall he exact for those which are harmful and malicious? We ought, therefore, to revere his eyes and his presence. Let us ponder the fact that he will judge us as we have judged our neighbor."

— Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet

Daily Catholic Wisdom

The parable of the lost sheep would be unintelligible if God did not care about the individual as an individual. Christ’s command to ‘follow me’ is not the slogan of a mass movement but a personal call: Christ encounters each one of us in a unique situation, which is established both by Christ’s unique act of free initiative and by our unique, free response to it.

—Fr. Roch A. Kereszty and Fr. Denis Farkasfalvy
from their book “Theology in Practice”

A Prayer from Notre Dame University

Rev. Paul Kollman, C.S.C.

Jesus, Son of God the most high, you live in intimate union with the Father and you invite us to share in your life. May the fruits of our own baptism be more evident than ever these Lenten days, that we may celebrate Easter with unrestrained rejoicing. You live and reign with the Father and the Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.