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We are gluttonous, my children, when we take food in excess, more than is required for the support of our poor body; when we drink beyond what is necessary, so as even to lose our senses and our reason. . . Oh, how shameful is this vice! How it degrades us! See, it puts us below the brutes: the animals never drink more than to satisfy their thirst: they content themselves with eating enough; and we, when we have satisfied our appetite, when our body can bear no more, we still have recourse to all sorts of little delicacies; we take wine and liquors to repletion! Is it not pitiful? We can no longer keep upon our legs; we fall, we roll into the ditch and into the mud, we become the laughing stock of everyone, even the sport of little children. If death were to surprise us in this state, my children, we should not have time to recollect ourselves; we should fall in that state into the hands of the good God. What a misfortune, my children! How would our soul be surprised! How would it be astonished! We should shudder with horror at seeing the lost who are in Hell.

Do not let us be led by our appetite; we shall ruin our health, we shall lose our soul. See, my children, intemperance and debauchery are the support of doctors; that lets them live, and gives them a great deal of practice. We hear every day, such a one was drunk, and falling down he broke his leg; another, passing a river on a plank, fell into the water and was drowned. Intemperance and drunkenness are the companions of the wicked rich man. A moment of pleasure in this world will cost us very dear in the other. There they will be tormented by a raging hunger and a devouring thirst; they will not even have a drop of water to refresh themselves; their tongue and their body will be consumed by the flames for a whole eternity.

O my children! We do not think about it; and yet that will not fail to happen to some amongst us, perhaps even before the end of the year! St. Paul said that those who give themselves to excess in eating and drinking shall not possess the kingdom of God. Let us reflect on these words!

Look at the saints: they pass their life in penance, and we would pass ours in the midst of enjoyments and pleasures. St. Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal, fasted all Advent, and also from St. John Baptist's day to the Assumption. Soon after, she began another Lent, which lasted till the feast of St. Michael. She lived upon bread and water only on Fridays and Saturdays, and on the vigils of the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and of the Apostles. They say that St. Bernard drank oil for wine. St. Isidore never ate without shedding tears!

If we were good Christians, we should do as the saints have done. We should gain a great deal for Heaven at our meals; we should deprive ourselves of many little things which, without being hurtful to our body, would be very pleasing to the good God; but we choose rather to satisfy our taste than to please God; we drown, we stifle our soul in wine and food.

My children, God will not say to us at the Day of Judgment, "Give Me an account of thy body"; but, "Give Me an account of thy soul; what hast thou done with it?" . . . What shall we answer Him? Do we take as much care of our soul as of our body? O my children! Let us no longer live for the pleasure of eating; let us live as the saints have done; let us mortify ourselves as they were mortified. The saints never indulged themselves in the pleasures of good cheer. Their pleasure was to feed on Jesus Christ! Let us follow their footsteps on this earth, and we shall gain the crown which they have in Heaven."

Source: The Spirit of the Curé of Ars by Abbé Monnin, 1865

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

" Luxury is the love of the pleasures that are contrary to purity.

No sins, my children, ruin and destroy a soul so quickly as this shameful sin; it snatches us out of the hands of the good God, and hurls us like a stone into an abyss of mire and corruption. Once plunged in this mire, we cannot get out, we make a deeper hole in it everyday, we sink lower and lower. Then we lose the faith, we laugh at the truths of religion, we no longer see heaven, we do not fear hell. O my children! how much are they to be pitied who give way to this passion! How wretched they are! Their soul, which was so beautiful, which attracted the eyes of the good God, over which he leant as one leans over a perfumed rose, has become like a rotten carcass, of which the pestilential odor rises even to His throne.

See, my children; Jesus Christ endure patiently, among His Apostles, men who were proud, ambitious, greedy, - even one who betrayed Him; but He could not bear the least stain of impurity in any of them; it is of all vices that which He has most in abhorrence: "My Spirit does not dwell in you," the Lord says, "if you are nothing but flesh and corruption."

God gives up the impure, then, to all the wicked inclinations of his heart. He lets him wallow, like the vile swine, in the mire, and does not even let him smell its offensive exhalations.

The immodest man is odious to everyone, and is not aware of it. God has set the mark of ignominy on his forehead, and he is not ashamed; he has a face of brass and a heart of bronze; it is vain you talk to him of honor, of virtue: he is full of nothing but arrogance and pride. The eternal truths, death, judgment, paradise, hell, - nothing terrifies him, nothing can move him.

So, my children, of all sins that of impurity is the most difficult to eradicate. Other sins forge for us chains of iron, but this one makes them of bull's -hide, which can be neither broken nor rent; it is a fire, a furnace, which consumes even to the most advanced old age.

See those two infamous old men who attempted the purity of the chaste Susannah; they had kept the fire of their youth even till they were decrepit. When the body is worn out with debauchery, when they can no longer satisfy their passions, they supply the place of it, oh, shame! by infamous desires and memories.

With one foot in the grave, they still speak the language of passion, till their last breath; they die as they have lived, impenitent; for what penance can be done by the impure, what sacrifice can he impose on himself at his death who during his life has always given way to his passions? Can one at the last moment expect a good confession, a good Communion, from him who has concealed one of these shameful sins, perhaps, from his earliest youth - who has heaped sacrilege on sacrilege? Will the tongue, which has been silent up to this day, be unloosed at the last moment? No, no, my children; God has abandoned him; many sheets of lead already weigh upon him; he will add another, and it will be the last..."

Source: The Sermons of the Curé of Ars, 1960 (Public Domain)

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

5. We adore Thee, O Sacrament of Love! And to repair all those thoughts and criminal desires, conceived even at the foot of Thy altars, we offer up to Thee all the pure affections and chaste desires of the Dominations. Eternal praise and thanksgiving be to the Most Holy and Most Divine Sacrament

O Queen of heaven and earth, hope of mankind, who adores thy Divine Son incessantly! We entreat thee, that, since we have the honor to be of the number of thy children, thou would interest thyself in our behalf and make satisfaction for us, and in our name, to our Eternal Judge, by rendering to Him the duties which we ourselves are incapable of performing. Amen.

"What is sloth? Sloth is a kind of cowardice and disgust, which makes us neglect and omit our duties, rather than do violence to ourselves.

Alas, my children, how many slothful people there are on this earth: how many are cowardly, how many are indolent in the service of the good God! We neglect, we omit our duties of piety, just as easily as we should take a glass of wine. We will not do violence to ourselves; we will not put ourselves to any inconvenience. Everything wearies, everything disgusts the slothful man. Prayer, the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which do so much good to pious souls, are a torture to him. He is weary and dissatisfied in church, at the foot of the altar, in the presence of the good God. At first, he feels only dislike and indifference towards everything that is commanded by religion. Soon after, you can no longer speak to him either of Confession or Communion; he has no time to think of those things.

O my children! how miserable we are in losing, in this way, the time that we might so usefully employ in gaining Heaven, in preparing ourselves for eternity! How many moments are lost in doing nothing, or in doing wrong, in listening to the suggestions of the devil, in obeying him! Does not that make us tremble? If one of the lost had only a day or an hour to spend for his salvation, to what profit would he turn it! What haste he would make to save his soul, to reconcile himself with the good God! And we, my children, who have days and years to think of our salvation, to save our souls - we remain there with our arms crossed, like that man spoken of in the Gospel. We neglect, we lose our souls. When death shall come, what shall we have to present to Our Lord? Ah! my children, hear how the good God threatens the idle: "Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire. " "Take that unprofitable servant, and cast him out into the exterior darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. "

Idleness is the mother of all vices. Look at the idle; they think of nothing but eating, drinking, and sleeping. They are no longer men, but stupid beasts, giving up to all their passions; they drag themselves through the mire like very swine. They are filthy, both within and without. They feed their soul only upon impure thoughts and desires. They never open their mouth but to slander their neighbor, or to speak immodest words. Their eyes, their ears, are open only to criminal objects. . . .

O my children! that we may resist idleness, let us imitate the saints. Let us watch continually over ourselves; like them, let us be very zealous in fulfilling all our duties; let the devil never find us doing nothing, lest we should yield to temptation. Let us prepare ourselves for a good death, for eternity. Let us not lose our time in lukewarmness, in negligence, in our habitual infidelities. Death is advancing: tomorrow we must, perhaps, quit our relations, our friends. Let us make haste to merit the reward promised in Paradise to the faithful servant in the Gospel!"

Source: The Blessed Curé of Ars in His Catechetical Instructions, 1951

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

Source: The Bulletin

Sisters of Mercy, Catholic Encyclopedia

Sisters of Mercy have been serving in North Carolina close on to ninety years
1951, The Bulletin.
Belmont, NC.

In 1862, an urgent appeal was made to the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Charleston, SC., to rush to the assistance of the city of Wilmington, NC, which was stricken with an epidemy of yellow fever. Father Thomas Murphy, the pastor, and at one time the only priest in North Carolina, was himself a victim of the plague.
As the result of their work of mercy and charity the Sisters, endeared themselves to the people of Wilmington, and were bade farewell with reluctance when they returned to their home in Charleston.
At the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866, the Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina, was erected. Father James Gibbons, of Baltimore, who later became Cardinal Gibbons, was appointed Vicar Apostolic. Upon his arrival in Wilmington, he found an impoverished South, its mills and factories closed, its farms laid waste, and its people disheartened. Race riots were of frequent occurrence. In fact, on the very night of his arrival there was a torchlight procession of black people through the streets.
Father Gibbons saw the urgent need for Catholic schools and requested Sisters from the community at Charleston. Three Sisters were sent to establish the new mission. People gathered in crowds on street corners to gaze in amazement at the Sisters and their religious habits.
Immediately upon their arrival the three Sisters began the work of instructing children and of visiting patients in the local hospital. Money was needed for the care and relief of charity patients. The Mayor of Wilmington, Silas Martin, having been approached in order to obtain assistance, gave the Sisters a sum each week to be used for the need of the poor.
The fist postulant to be received into the young community, and also the first to die, was Miss Margaret Price, a sister of the famed "Tar-Heel Apostle," Father Frederick Price, co-founder of Maryknoll.
In 1872, the Wilmington community became a foundation separate from the Charleston House. In the same year, Bishop Gibbons became Bishop of Richmond, and although his visits to his "children in Wilmington" were infrequent, he sent them many letters of encouragement and continued his financial assistance. In one letter he wrote: "Though my calls are numerous and means not colossal, I can never forget the cherished home, my own creation, whose children prosecute the good work after their father was snatched from  them."
When the Sisters planned to establish their first branch house in Western North Carolina, Bishop Gibbons was dubious about the venture, but consented because he felt that it would give the Sisters an opportunity to get away from the swampy lowland in which they were then located. To pay for the equipment in this new school at Hickory, the Sisters saved by using one fire and one lamp at night. Finally, this house was closed because of the impossibility of securing a priest to minister to the community.
Other places were considered as sites for a permanent foundation, but for various reasons were not found suitable. In 1891, Bishop Leo Haid, Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery at Belmont, NC, and Bishop of North Carolina, advised the Sisters that there was a valuable piece of property for sale between the monastery and the city of Belmont. After much negotiating, the property was purchased and a frame building was erected.
When the Sisters arrived at their new home late on summer afternoon, they found to their dismay that as yet no doors had been hung in the building. In the midst of their discussion about preparation for the coming night, several Monks from the monastery arrived with supper for them. The Benedictines continued to supply food for the Sisters for several days.
 Up to this time, the Sisters still retained the habit of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy of Charleston. In 1893, they adopted the habit of the Mother McAuley Sisters of Mercy but they did not become officially affiliated with that Order until 1812.
At home, the community has grown from the original three Sisters in 1869 to one hundred and thirty-three Sisters in 1951. The Sisters of Mercy, as is characteristic of their labors, are engaged in caring for the poor, the sick and the ignorant in the State of North Carolina.
In their two large hospitals, Mercy Hospital, Charlotte, and St. Joseph's Hospital, Asheville, hundreds of charity patients have been given the same care and consideration as provided for paying patients. A training school for nurses is operated in connection with Mercy Hospital in Charlotte. The Sisters also visit the poor and sick in their homes. The needy of Charlotte will long remember the charity of Sister Benedict, who distributed food and clothing among them.
St. Leo's Military School for small boys, located near the Mother-house in Belmont, fills a great need in this area since there is no other Catholic boarding school for young boys between Northern Virginia and Georgia.
Besides teaching on all levels of education from kindergarten  through junior college, the Sisters travel miles on Saturdays and Sundays to do catechetical work. They conduct vacation schools during the summer months.
Numerous requests are received from pastors asking that Sisters be sent for their schools. Many of these requests have to be refused because of the lack of a sufficient number of Sisters. Vocations are increasing in number, it is true, but not in numbers to supply the demand. The hospitals plead, " We need more Sister nurses," the schools urge, " Mother, send us more teaching Sisters." The field is ripe to the harvest, but more laborers are needed.
The present Superior of the Sisters of Mercy of Belmont is Reverend Mother M. Immaculate, a native of Savannah, Ga. Her Council is composed of Mother M. Juliana, Mother Assistant; Mother M. Benignus, Burser, and Mother M. John, Mistress of Novices.
Gradually the Sisters were able to open schools in nearby town, and soon hospitals were established. After their gallant services in nursing flu patients in the government hospital in Wilmington in 1918, each Sister received a letter from the government stating: " You risked your life as truly as any soldier on the field of battle."
An orphanage for girls was erected on the grounds of the Mother-house at Belmont. Father Price founded an orphanage for boys near Raleigh. The first children admitted were two boys found starving on the streets of Raleigh, and a third boy sent to the Sisters by the courts.
In 1946, the Belmont Community undertook its first foreign mission at the request of the Bishop of Guam. Three Sisters, left for the South Pacific in the fall of that year to open a native novitiate and a school. Today there are a Guam forty-five Sisters, who have four missions, two schools, and do catechetical work.

Source: The Bulletin

"Envy is a sadness which we feel on account of the good that happens to our neighbor.

Envy my children, follows pride; whoever is envious is proud. See, envy comes to us from Hell; the devils having sinned through pride, sinned also through envy, envying our glory, our happiness. Why do we envy the happiness and the goods of others? Because we are proud; we should like to be the sole possessors of talents, riches, of the esteem and love of all the world! We hate our equals, because they are our equals; our inferiors, from the fear that they may equal us; our superiors, because they are above us. In the same way, my children, that the devil after his fall felt, and still feels, extreme anger at seeing us the heirs of the glory of the good God, so the envious man feels sadness at seeing the spiritual and temporal prosperity of his neighbor.

We walk, my children, in the footsteps of the devil; like him, we are vexed at good, and rejoice at evil. If our neighbor loses anything, if his affairs go wrong, if he is humbled, if he is unfortunate, we are joyful. . . we triumph! The devil, too, is full of joy and triumph when we fall, when he can make us fall as low as himself. What does he gain by it? Nothing. Shall we be richer, because our neighbor is poorer? Shall we be greater, because he is less? Shall we be happier, because he is more unhappy? O my children! How much we are to be pitied for being like this! St. Cyprian said that other evils had limits, but that envy had none. In fact, my children, the envious man invents all sorts of wickedness; he has recourse to evil speaking, to calumny, to cunning, in order to blacken his neighbor; he repeats what he knows, and what he does not know he invents, he exaggerates. . . .

Through the envy of the devil, death entered into the world; and also through envy we kill our neighbor; by dint of malice, of falsehood, we make him lose his reputation, his place. . . . Good Christians, my children, do not do so; they envy no one; they love their neighbor; they rejoice at the good that happens to him, and they weep with him if any misfortune comes upon him. How happy should we be if we were good Christians.

Ah! my children, let us, then, be good Christians and we shall no more envy the good fortune of our neighbor; we shall never speak evil of him; we shall enjoy a sweet peace; our soul will be calm; we shall find paradise on earth."

Source: The Blessed Curé of Ars in His Catechetical Instructions, 1951

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

Saint Katharine Drexel, Holy Name Cathedral, Raleigh NC ©CAPG

Saint Katharine Drexel in North Carolina

Quotes from Saint Katharine Drexel:

• "The patient and humble endurance of the Cross - whatever nature it may be- is the highest work we have to do."
• "Ours is the Spirit of the Eucharist, the total gift of self."
• "The Eucharist is the never ending sacrifice. It is the Sacrament of Love, the supreme love, the act of love."
• "My sweetest Joy is to be in the presence of Jesus in the Holy Sacrament. I beg that when obliged to withdraw in body, I may leave my heart before the Holy Sacrament. How I would miss Our Lord if He were to be away from me by His presence in the Blessed Sacrament!"
  

"The opening chapter of the rule admirably defines this twofold purpose of the life of a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament: "The object of the Institute is the honor and service of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The sisters admitted to this religious congregation, besides attending particularly to their own perfection, which is the principal end of all religious orders, shall, by an apostolate of prayer and work, zealously endeavor to procure through Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament living temples for His Divinity amongst the Indian and colored races. To attain this end the sisters admitted to this religious congregation shall consecrate themselves, body, soul and spirit, to the service of their Eucharistic Lord by their twofold apostolate, and feel convinced that even if they were to perform heroic acts of virtue, they would only be doing their duty; that is, they would be conducting themselves as it is meet and fitting for the honor of Him who has given Himself entirely to them." (...)

Devotion to Jesus in the Holy Sacrament is the great central devotion of the sisterhood. The rule says, "Jesus really present in the Holy Eucharist shall be the constant object of their affection. They shall often reflect, on the infinite charity displayed for us in that ever adorable Sacrament, and by frequent visits every day, pay assiduous court to their Heavenly Spouse on His throne of love, uniting their acts of adoration, prayers and thanksgiving, to those of the angels who continually attend Him in the tabernacle. In all their sufferings and anxieties, in all their fears, afflictions and temptations, they shall seek comfort and consolation at the foot of the altar. They shall endeavor to model themselves on the gentleness, humility, obedience and annihilation of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The practical rule of their conduct should be, what does our Lord Jesus Christ want of me at this moment? In this action is there anything for His service, for His glory? What would our Lord do on such or such an occasion?" (...)

"The Feast of the Purification following witnessed the opening of "Holy Providence House." In an incredibly short time the building was filled to its utmost capacity-one hundred and fifty children. The majority are girls, whom the sisters keep until their twenty-first year. The boys, when they have reached the age of twelve, are transferred to industrial or trade schools. The girls receive a good common-school education, the larger ones spend one-half day in school work, the other half in domestic employment. Some take a course in scientific dressmaking; the steam laundry instructs others in all the details of fine laundry work; while the bakery and cooking classes afford instruction to an equally large number. The aim is to give the girls a good, solid English education, and a thorough knowledge of all the branches of domestic economy." American Ecclesiastical Review