Meditations

The new meditations series is uploaded.

Meditations for Lent, Advent, and all times are uploaded -- I recommend ignoring the times and making use of all of them at any time, normally, and then especially using the timely ones when the seasons roll around.

Meditations are like good food that you think looks unappetizing. People who love candy and hate anything suspicious will never try it, and lose their health. But if you try these meditations you'll find them sweeter than candy, and they will improve your spiritual health magnificently, so that you will wonder how you ever lived without them.

The two different 'How to Meditate' instructions I will add to further, but no more than one is truly needed, they are some of the simplest best instructions out there, that unlike modern ones, truly inform you how to do it in a way that is easy to understand.

Here is a sample of the meditations.

The Heart of the Infant Jesus, Our Coming Light

from the book 'Meditations for Advent & Easter'


"Behold, the Lord cometh, and all His saints with Him; and in that day there shall be a great light." All. Ant. at Lauds.

"And the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord shall bind up the wound of His people, and shall heal the stroke of their wound." (Is. xxx. 26.)

1st Prelude. - Represent to yourself the Heart of the Infant Jesus in the womb of Mary as a flame of clear and beautiful light coming to enlighten all nations. Represent also to yourself the terrible light of the second coming, which will be open and manifest to all.

2nd Prelude. - Pray that you may be so enlightened by the light of the first coming, that you may not be terrified by the light of the second coming.

1st Point. - Look at the Heart of the Infant Jesus. It lies hidden in the womb of Mary, even as his blessed Humanity will be hidden hereafter in the tabernacle. Oh, what a holy, beautiful, peaceful light is the light of the Infant Heart of Jesus! How it longs to come forth and manifest itself to all, to console, to instruct, to illuminate! Are we, also, longing to receive this light? Are we praying with our whole hearts that it may come to us, and that we may be prepared to receive it? However great our spiritual enlightenment may be, we are still, in some measure, "sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death." But the light is coming; already we can see the dawn upon the mountain. When Mary was born, the first ray of light tinged the eastern sky; when Jesus was born, the light of this mystic moon was as the light of the true sun, because of her perfect union with Him; and the light of the sun was sevenfold, as the light of seven days. The light was sevenfold; that is, the light was perfect, for it was the light of God.

2nd Point. - Let us beseech the Infant Jesus to enlighten us in that particular way in which we most need light. We are all "born blind" through the sin of our parents; and, unhappily, though we have obtained light in the waters of baptism, we too often, by our own fault, relapse into blindness more or less intense. Sometimes we do not wish to see the sin we should forsake, or the virtue we should practise, because it would cost us something to act upon this light; sometimes we profit so little by the light, that it is withdrawn from us, or it is not imparted in the fullness and brightness with which more faithful souls are favoured. There are souls in whom the light of God shines so brightly, that they cannot commit the shadow of an imperfection without perceiving it immediately; there are souls in whom that light shines so resplendently, that they see even the shadow of an imperfect motive in the best action they perform. Why should we not be thus favoured? It is not because the light is unwilling to come, but because we are unwilling to receive it.

3rd Point. - What shall we do to obtain this great grace? Let us go to Mary. Let us devote our Advent to Mary. Let us consecrate every thought, word, and action to Mary during this holy season; and then, on the blessed Christmas morning, she will herself place her Infant in our arms; nay, rather, she will lay Him down to rest in our hearts; and He is so obedient to His sweet mother, that He will never stir from the heart wherein she places Him, unless she comes to take Him away. Surely we will not oblige her to do so? Advent should be a time of special devotion to Mary. Jesus again lies mystically in her womb. Again she pleads unweariedly for her people, as she pleaded in that blessed Advent when He took flesh of her flesh, and bone of her bone. Oh, let us kneel before her now as we would have knelt before her then, and implore her to intercede for us with Jesus, to obtain for us that He may indeed be our light, and that we may never be of the number of those who prefer darkness. Then, indeed, may we hope that the light of His second coming will be a light of glory to us, and not a light of condemnation.

Aspiration. - Come and enlighten us, O sweet Infant Jesus.

Form your resolution, and place it in the Heart of the Infant Jesus. Examen of Meditation.

Proceed to the next meditation.

I will be I pray making many more meditations available before long, of similar quality.

As He...

My thought for the day:

God desires people to love Him as He should be loved.

We need to love Him as He should be loved.

'He who labors as he prays lifts his heart to God with his hands.'

St. Benedict

Meditations

I have a good gathering of Sermon and Meditation books which I am now previewing and reading through to see which are worth uploading and which can be used for new selections for the Meditations section of 'Saints Prayers'.

I've been adding new Meditations to it that have not yet been uploaded to the point where we have four series so far, before the next lot.

This I think, along with the books themselves will be very helpful to everyone. How many people find it difficult to meditate? I think, that most everyone will answer, "I do!" and yet, we are told how important meditation is, how it is a key to the spiritual life. For people who have not yet begun, for people struggling, for people who have given up and yet feel they need to start again..

These books will be the aids many have long been looking for, or would have looked for if they knew.

In these times, few books are produced that are worthwhile. But these meditation books from the past will last forever.

One of the more unusual and strict meditation books, 'Considerations and Devout Meditations for Every Day During the Holy Season of Lent' is on Saints' Books' Index already. Lent, the Sacred Heart, St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori.. .

There will be a bright future for meditation ahead.

Leaps. . .

Saints' Quotes has seen two great leaps forwards recently.. if you will pardon the often misused expression.

Two books of quotations of the saints in the public domain have been added.. Normally progress is regular but slow, 5 or 10 quotes one day, perhaps 20 or 30 the next as I take quotations from the various books of the saints (or good old Lolly contributes a quote), then a pause as I turn to one of the other two sites..

But now and then I find an entire book of quotations of saints and I quickly go through it, normally putting in all or almost all the quotations, and then the database leaps forwards.

Of all the sites Saints' Prayers is in third place in construction progress.. or second, since Saints' Quotes truly is not under major construction anymore, though still awaiting some further features such as 'Selections' for meditation and reference on various subjects. I.E. if you're looking for everything that many saints have had to say on purity, the fewness of the saved, etc. a list of quotations on the topic.

But I have stalled on the Saints' Prayers prayerbook, and it is much more difficult to enter prayers in Saints' Prayers than it is to enter quotations in Saints' Quotes, as there tends to be much more formatting necessary for each prayer.

And the new prayerbook to replace (yes other one will be removed) the old is taking far more time than I anticipated for me to feel it is truly ready.

However, Saints' Prayers just received the entire Psalter of Mary into its database, all 160 Psalms of St. Bonaventure, edited and prepared. I looked and looked for the Latin to include but could not find it. It anyone finds it, let me know, I will make it available alongside the English.

This addition has outweighed the relatively small database of Saints' Prayers, so the Psalter frequently appears. I don't know whether to be pleased or concerned. Actually, I am both. I love the consistent Marian theme, I do however want a good representation of other prayers.

I can perform some tricks to make them appear more often (right now, not accounting for Providence's more direct nudges, each has an even chance), but will hold off for the moment.

Perhaps I will include the entire Psalms of the Scriptures in Latin and English. I wish Jerusalem Bible or some later edition of the Psalms were public domain. The Douay-Rheims is the best translation for content, but we could use some slightly updated language for the Psalms in some cases at least.

Yes, I think I will do this next. The Douay-Rheims Psalms and Clementine Vulgate would likely be a very fine addition. And then when I have finished the prayerbook, along with the entire prayer database, and explanations of various devotions (scapulars, etc.) it will be uploaded.

New Fix

The difficulties of dual webbrowsers strike again.

Hot-link protection software which I activited malfunctioned and made Internet Explorer downloads fail for Saints' Books for that browser. Firefox, the browser I use to edit the pages and test them mainly, worked fine.

I have now turned off this software, and am searching for alternative hot-link protection or a fix for the software.

Until I have PHP downloads enabled to force the save dialog, I continue to remind users to right-click and 'save as' for their downloads. The larger PDF files will not load in your web-browser, there is a bug that causes PDF files loaded that way to fail if they do not download in a certain swift time limit, which larger files do not.

I am going to spend the next few days testing further technical solutions and the reliability of the sites in general.

Edited & Fixed

To my surprise I found the version of 'Hell' by Fr. F.X. Schouppe, S.J. (a tremendous author, whose books change the lives and salvation of souls) was an incomplete and partially edited copy.

I vaguely recalled meaning to fix it, and could not remember if I had in fact done so and during site maintenance actually uploaded an old copy, or if I had forgotten and never done so.

I took a look at what I had, and decided I did not have a good enough complete copy to upload.

So now, 'Hell' is available for download in full, revised and edited for type. It is much more readable, and complete.

Tan Books publishes a version of this book, with additions not available here from other authors on the subject, and I recommend it.

Fr. F.X. Schouppe's 'Purgatory' is one of the best books for any soul to read, his book 'Hell' is shorter and starker. If you have not yet read 'Purgatory', read it first, and then proceed on to 'Hell' next.

We could only wish that Fr. Schouppe had also collected a similar book of excerpts from the lives of the saints about Heaven.

It is true however "Eye has not seen. . ."

If in my time working on Saints' Quotes I come up with sufficient material, I will try to make a similar effort to that which Fr. Schouppe has so far.

If you like 'Hell' you should consider donating to Saints' Books. There are some other good works on the subject that if we could afford to acquire them, we would make available to you and all.

Because some of these old works are rare and antiquarian it is not always a slight expense to make them available.