Tuesday, September 30 : Saint Charles de Foucauld

[Our Lord]…‘Another virtue that I have often urged you to practise by word, and still more often by example, is gentleness. How often have I preached it for your good! Practise this gentleness in your thoughts, thrusting out all bitterness of thought as inspired by the devil, all hardness and stiffness and insolence and anger, all hatred and stern judgement of others for whom you are not responsible. Welcome and nourish gentle, tender, charitable thoughts, thoughts of sympathy and goodness and gratitude. Soften your hearts with the thought of the love you owe to all men, to your brothers, who are my beloved children. Think what gratitude you owe them for the benefit we all receive from each other from the Communion of Saints, from the glory they lend me whether they will or no, to me, your Well-beloved. All men are tender friends and true to you, because they have at their side their Guardian Angels. Keep your thoughts sweet, tender and peaceful. And keep your words so too. If sometimes duty obliges you to rebuke, let there be seen under your severity, as though through a thin veil, a depth of eternal gentleness. Shew that the severity is only passing and will be withdrawn as soon as those souls, for whose good it is evoked, need it no longer and that it asks only to vanish and give place to sweetness.’
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team

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