December 31
Of the end of the year and the brevity of life.
DAILY MEDITATIONS
OF THE MYSTERIES
OF OUR HOLY FAITH,
By the P. Alonso de Andrade
FROM THE COMPANY OF JESUS.
PRAYER TO BEGIN
By the sign of the Holy Cross, from our enemies delier us, Lord, our God. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My Lord and my God: I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with deep reverence. I ask you for forgiveness of my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruit. My Mother Immaculate, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian Angel: intercede for me.
December 31
Meditation
Of the end of the year and the brevity of life.
POINT ONE. Consider Christ our Lord newborn and crying in the manger; and if you find out the causes why he cries, you will find that they are not so much the cold he suffers and the inclement weather, as your carelessness and the forgetfulness with which you live of your good, and that he comes into the world to wake you up with his moans and voices that he gives you from that hard bed, so that you notice your harm and return to yourself, and leave the path of perdition, and enter by that of your salvation, because as the apostle says St. Paul (1): grace appeared Of our Savior and God made man, teaching us that denying all our disordered appetites and secular desires, let us live in this century temperate and holy, adjusting to the law of God, so without losing sight of the example that gives you so distinguished Master, because you are in the last day and end of the year, consider how you have this less of life: look at how it has passed without feeling, and that in the same way those that remain to come will pass, that you do not know how many or which will be: contemplate how life is spent without stopping, and that It goes like a ship whipped by the winds, in which those who walk eating and drinking and sleeping, do not stop sailing; so your life never stops running, eating and sleeping, watching and working, they take you without stopping a point; and this very thing that you are reading is taking away your life: from which you must draw great fervor and encouragement to suffer any work for God and for your salvation, seeing how brief they all are, as well as to work in your use and increase your flow, recognizing how little time you have left to gain the immortal riches.
POINT II. Consider how many began with you to run the course of life this year, who stayed on the road, and did not finally arrive as you have arrived: turn your eyes back, and look at them in the tombs eaten by worms, who ended their roles in the farce of this world, and did not last them, as they thought, all year: look at their mocked designs, their lost jobs, their estates confiscated in the customs of death, which others enjoy: their honors were undone like the wind, and everything passed like a shadow, and there is hardly any memory of them; and Recognizes the fragility of this life and its deceptions, and that everything is madness, but looking for the eternal and what lasts forever. Consider what you would feel if you had stayed on the road like them, and that in a short time it will be yours what has become theirs: compare the present with the eternal, which will never end; extend your eyes for that year that has to begin from the day of your death, and it must not have an end or succession of another, but that it will last and continue without end, no end, no limit, no end, no end, for as long as God is God, or in heaven or in hell; and you will find that the Longer life in this miserable world is like a point with respect to the eternal, and like a drop of water with respect to the whole sea; and he exclaims with admiration and crying, seeing the blindness of men, because by enjoying such a breath of such a short and deceptive life, they lose the eternal and true, and ask the Lord not to allow you to fall into such deception, and to give you light and grace to despise the temporal and covet the eternal only.
POINT III. Keep your eyes on the events of this year, and consider the removals you have had, the various events, the failures and misfortunes, the fall of some and the ups and overtaking of the others: enter within yourself, and consider what has happened to you in the speech of this brief time; the variety of affections, already of joy, now of sadness, now of content, already of discontent; the disturbances of anger and anger; the good and bad days; the decrease of health; the temporary and spiritual misery; the occasions of impatience with you And with men; the variety of times and the instability of everything that is under heaven, and you will find that the moon does not have so many changes, nor does the chameleon so many colors a day, how many have been the changes of your heart in which you have lived this year; and take out from here disappointments of what is temporary, and desires to despise life so deceptive and changeable, and stand firmly on the true and constant, which is the spiritual and holy that the Son of God is teaching us from the moment he enters this world until That comes out: put your eyes on the tranquility of mind that the servants of God enjoy, resigned and sure in his holy will, without having another will more than what God wants or does not want: see how even if the years pass they do not lose them, because they achieve them with holy works, which they have to enjoy forever; but the bad ones lose them, because they let time pass in vain, and so their empty years remain and their days vain: remember that the past time never returns, and that you must no longer see this year that has passed, and Achieve what God gives you for the good of your soul: cry the lost time, and amend life in the future.
POINT IV. Put your eyes on Christ our Lord in the manger, and enter with the consideration in his chest, and contemplate how from the moment of his conception, and from the day and hour he was born in the world to the end of his life, he did not stop acting and deserving without wasting an instant of time: he considers the acts of gratitude that he would do to his Eternal Father for the mercies he had made to him over all men, and those he would also do of love and charity, loving him intensely and offering himself as a holocaust to his holy service: the acts that He would do in his soul of zeal of his glory, wishing and asking that he be glorified and exalted endlessly, and of the good of souls, wishing and asking the Father for his salvation, and offering from the manger his life for his brothers: great lesson reads you, oh my soul! This Divine Professor of heaven to achieve the time and the years he gives you to serve him: listen, go, learn his doctrine, and do not forget his teaching, and take out of here very firm purposes to imitate him, and recover in the years that he will give you of life what you have lost in this and in the past because of your carelessness and lackness, and ask him for grace to amend your life from now on, despising the world and following his footsteps in the future, as if the one that follows were the last year of your life.
(1) Tit. 3.
PRAYER TO END EVERY DAY
I thank you, my God, for the good purposes, affections and inspirations that you have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask you for help to put them to work. My Mother Immaculate, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian Angel: intercede for me.
Daily offer of works
Come Holy Spirit
Inflames our hearts
In the redeeming longings of the Heart of Christ
So that we really offer
Our people and works
In union with Him
For the redemption of the world
My Lord and my God Jesus Christ
For the Immaculate Heart of Mary
I consecrate myself to your Heart
And I offer myself with you to the Father
In your Holy Sacrifice of the altar
With my prayer and my work
Today's sufferings and joys
In reparation for our sins
And that your Kingdom may come to us.
I ask you in particular
For the Pope and his intentions,
For our Bishop and his intentions,
For our parish priest and his intentions.
Church of the Savior of Toledo at 21:00:00
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