Divine Praises & Prayers

The Divine Praises
Laudes Divinae
from the Raccolta (favored by Pope Pius VII and Pope Pius IX)

Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart
Blessed be His Most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, the most holy Mary.
Blessed he her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her Glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His holy angels and in His saints.

Benedictus Deus.
Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.
Benedictus Iesus Christus, verus Deus et verus homo.
Benedictum Nomen Iesu.
Benedictum Cor eius sacratissimum.
Benedictus Sanguis eius pretiosissimus.
Benedictus Iesus in sanctissimo altaris Sacramento.
Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus.
Benedicta excelsa Mater Dei, Maria sanctissima.
Benedicta sancta eius et immaculata Conceptio.
Benedicta eius gloriosa Assumptio.
Benedictum nomen Mariae, Virginis et Matris.
Benedictus sanctus Ioseph, eius castissimus Sponsus.
Benedictus Deus in Angelis suis, et in Sanctis suis.

On the Loveliness of Mary
by St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

Raise your voices, vales and mountains,
Flowery meadows, streams and fountains,
Praise, oh, praise the loveliest Maiden
Ever the Creator made.
Murmuring brooks, your tribute bringing,
Little birds with joyful singing,
Come with mirthful praises laden
To your Queen be homage paid.

Say, sweet Virgin, we implore thee,
Say, what beauty God sheds o'er thee:
Praise and thanks to him be given,
Who in love created thee.
Like a sun with splendour glowing,
Gleams thy heart with love o'erflowing;
Like the moon in starry heaven,
Shines thy peerless purity.

Like the rose and lily blooming,
Sweetly heaven and earth perfuming,
Stainless, spotless, thou appearest

Queenly beauty graces thee.
But, to God, in whom thou livest,
Sweeter joy and praise thou givest,
When to him in beauty nearest,
Yet, so humble thou canst be.

Three Quotes of the Day

'The King of Heaven deigned to be born in a stable, because He came to destroy pride, the cause of man's ruin.'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

'I will go peaceably and firmly to the Catholic Church: for if Faith is so important to our salvation, I will seek it where true Faith first began, seek it among those who received it from God Himself.'

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

'True Christian prudence makes us submit our intellect to the maxims of the Gospel without fear of being deceived. It teaches us to judge things as Jesus Christ judged them, and to speak and act as He did.'

St. Vincent de Paul

Quote for the Day

'Above all we ought at least to know that there are three origins of our thoughts, i.e., from God, from the devil, and from ourselves. . . We ought then carefully to notice this threefold order, and with a wise discretion to analyse the thoughts which arise in our hearts, tracking out their origin and cause and author in the first instance, that we may be able to consider how we ought to yield ourselves to them. . .'

St. Moses the Black Hermit

Unread, written on a mountain top. The sky, and empty space.

Unread, written on a mountain top. The sky, and empty space.

Activity and passivity, the faculties and their reactions to influences in different states.

To share a breath of this rarified atmosphere.

"All manner of bodily thing is without thy soul and beneath it in nature, yea! the sun and the moon and all the stars, although they be above thy body, nevertheless yet they be beneath thy soul.

All angels and all souls, although they be confirmed and adorned with grace and with virtues, for the which they be above thee in cleanness, nevertheless, yet they be but even with thee in nature.

Within in thyself in nature be the powers of thy soul: the which be these three principal, Memory, Reason, and Will; and secondary, Imagination and Sensuality.

Above thyself in nature is no manner of thing but only God.

Evermore where thou findest written thyself in ghostliness, then it is understood thy soul, and not thy body. And then all after that thing is on the which the powers of thy soul work, thereafter shall the worthiness and the condition of thy work be deemed; whether it be beneath thee, within thee, or above thee."

- The Cloud

Quotations

We are currently at over 1200 quotes on Saints' Quotes and as time has allowed I have also been improving Saints' Prayers diversity of offerings, though I do not consider it time to take down the construction sign from the latter site as there are further prayers to add and other improvements.

There are also more surprises in store for the future.

Saints' Quotes should continue to grow quickly in its amount and variety of quotations, God willing. I said I would celebrate and give thanks upon reaching the 1000 mark, and the next time to rest and give a large thanksgiving will be the 10,000 mark.

I cannot be thankful enough for the privilege to work on this site. A full orchestra of angels singing whilst the light of Heaven shone over them would not suffice, I tremble to state.

I am looking to working on St. Ignatius of Antioch more thoroughly soon, and extracting portions of his works for the program.

I also have a book by St. Claude de la Colombiere and one by St. Peter Julian Eymard, but there are so many further too.

I pray that everyone who visits the site will benefit -- I know everyone who does can benefit, all it takes is a prayer and a bit of heart to take the words and put them into oneself and one's actions and life.

Then those who come will all participate in the blessed sunshine of the smile of God together.

The Holiness of the Bitter Sea

'As Jesus is called the King of sorrows and the King of martyrs, because He suffered during, His life more than all other martyrs; so also is Mary with reason called the Queen of martyrs, having merited this title by suffering the most cruel martyrdom possible after that of her Son. Hence, with reason, was she called by Richard of Saint Lawrence, "the Martyr of martyrs"; and of her can the words of Isaias with all truth be said, "He will crown thee with a crown of tribulation;" that is to say, that that suffering itself, which exceeded the suffering of all the other martyrs united, was the crown by which she was shown to be the Queen of martyrs. That Mary was a true martyr cannot be doubted, as Denis the Carthusian, Pelbart, Catharinus, and others prove; for it is an undoubted opinion that suffering sufficient to cause death is martyrdom, even though death does not ensue from it. Saint John the Evangelist is revered as a martyr, though he did not die in the caldron of boiling oil, but he came out more vigorous than he went in. Saint Thomas says, "that to have the glory of martyrdom, it is sufficient to exercise obedience in its highest degree, that is to say, to be obedient unto death." "Mary was a martyr," says Saint Bernard, "not by the sword of the executioner, but by bitter sorrow of heart." If her body was not wounded by the hand of the executioner, her blessed heart was transfixed by a sword of grief at the passion of her Son; grief which was sufficient to have caused her death, not once, but a thousand times. From this we shall see that Mary was not only a real martyr, but that her martyrdom surpassed all others; for it was longer than that of all others, and her whole life may be said to have been a prolonged death.

"The passion of Jesus," as Saint Bernard says, "commenced with His birth". So also did Mary, in all things like unto her Son, endure her martyrdom throughout her life. Amongst other significations of the name of Mary, as Blessed Albert the Great asserts, is that of "a bitter sea." Hence to her is applicable the text of Jeremias: "great as the sea is thy destruction." For as the sea is all bitter and salt, so also was the life of Mary always full of bitterness at the sight of the passion of the Redeemer, which was ever present to her mind. "There can be no doubt, that, enlightened by the Holy Ghost in a far higher degree than all the prophets, she, far better than they, understood the predictions recorded by them in the sacred Scriptures concerning the Messias." This is precisely what the angel revealed to Saint Bridget; and he also added, "that the Blessed Virgin, even before she became His Mother, knowing how much the Incarnate Word was to suffer for the salvation of men, and compassionating this innocent Saviour, who was to be so cruelly put to death for crimes not His own, even then began her great martyrdom."'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori

It will all be done in the Lord's time, I console myself with that thought.

A Merry Christmas to all!

'As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorchëd with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
Alas, quoth he, but newly born in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.
With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.'

St. Robert Southwell, 'St. Peter's Complaint', 'The Burning Babe'