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The best wish I can make is that you may obtain from God, not what you wish, but what He wishes for you. St. Francois de Sales

Devotion for the month of January: Holy Childood

Prayer to the Holy Infant for priests:
Jesus, Divine Infant, I bless and thank Your most loving Heart for the institution of the priesthood. Priests are sent by You, as You were sent by the Father. To them You entrusted the treasures of Your doctrine, of Your Law, of Your Grace, and souls themselves.
Grant me the grace to love them, to listen to them, and to let myself be guided by them in Your ways. Jesus, send good laborers into Your harvest. May priests be the salt that purifies and preserves; may they be the light of the world; may they be the city placed on the mountain. May they all be formed after Your own Heart. And in heaven may they be surrounded by a joyous throng of those they shepherded on earth. Amen.
Glory Be three times. Infant Jesus, make me love You more and more!

Virtue for the month of January: Perfection

"Be  ye  perfect  as your  Heavenly  Father  is  perfect." St.  Matt., v: 48. 

To  be  perfect  in  one's  vocation,  is  nothing  else  than  to perform the  duties  and  offices  to  which  one  is  obliged,  solely  for  the  honor and  love  of  God,  referring  all  to  His  glory.  Whoever  works  in  this manner,  may  be  called  perfect  in  his  state,  a  man according  to  the heart  and  will  of  God.— St.  Francis  de  Sales. 

"1. On the first day of the year we commemorate the first shedding of the Precious Blood for us. Christmas week, as it draws to a close, introduces us to the new-born King in the weakness of the nature that He shared with sinful man. We now learn that He came, not to manifest His power and majesty, but to be made like unto us in all things as far as it was possible for One Who was the Eternal Son of God. We begin to appreciate that He is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.

2. To-day He also proclaims that He is come to suffer for us. We listen to His first cry of pain, and see the strange spectacle of the first commencement of that Life of which the agony upon the cross was the final consummation. How shall we ever thank Him as we ought ? How great a joy we should consider it if we have the privilege of suffering some little pain for Him in return!

3. He also declares to us to-day that He is come to suffer with us, to take part in all the miseries of humanity, to learn by His own experience all that we have to endure in this valley of tears. This it is which should console us in all our troubles. Christ not only knows them all, but has in His mercy felt them all Himself in His sacred Humanity. "

Meditations for Christmas . By Rev. Richard F. Clarke S.J. The Catholic Truth Society, London 1891

O sacred and adorable Trinity, hear our prayers on behalf of our holy Father the Pope, our Bishops, our clergy, and for all that are in authority over us.

Bless, we beseech Thee, during the coming year, the whole Catholic Church; convert heretics and unbelievers; soften the hearts of sinners so that they may return to Thy friendship; give prosperity to our country and peace among the nations of the world; pour down Thy blessings upon our friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and upon our enemies, if we have any; assist the poor and the sick; have pity on the souls of those whom this year has taken from us; and do Thou be merciful to those who during the coming year will be summoned before Thy judgment seat. May all our actions be preceded by Thy inspirations and carried on by Thy assistance, so that all our prayers and works, having been begun in Thee, may likewise be ended through Thee. Amen

"Man being such," Says the Council of Trent, "that, without the help of sensible signs, he can only with difficulty rise to the consideration of divine things, the Church, like a tender mother, has establish certain rites, has ordered that certain parts of the Mass should be said in a low and other in a loud voice. She has also instituted ceremonies: such are mysterious blessings, lights, incense, vestments, and many other things, in accordance with discipline and apostolic tradition. " The end of all this is to add to the majesty of the Adorable Sacrifice, and to lead the minds of the Faithful, by means of these visible signs of piety and religion, to the contemplation of the great mysteries hidden in Christianity.

On this point, the impious agree perfectly in their words and deeds with us. Religion reduced to pure spirituality, says one of them, is very soon banished to the regions of the moon. Another adds that dogmas disappeared with the external signs bearing witness to them. When, at the close of the last century, the disciples of these men, who could argue so well, were pleased to destroy religion among us, with what did they begin? With external worship. They first turned ceremonies into ridicule. They then pulled downs temples, crosses, and altars.

But in vain does man wage war against nature. These pitiless enemies of external worship had scarcely taken the reins of government into their own hands, when they felt all the necessity for public and solemn rites. In order to convert people to their ideas of morality, they hastened to practice what they had condemned, by calling to their aid external worship. They only changed its immortal object, and referred it altogether to human virtues, which are but pompous nonentities when separated from their Author.

They scoffed in their writings and in their lyceums at the worship of the Saints, and substituted for it the worship of heroes, after the manner of the pagans, who rendered the honors of apotheosis only to persons remarkable for extraordinary feats, most generally the ravagers of nations. They jeered at the piety of Catholics towards the precious remains of the just man, and they rendered honors almost divine to their own great men. In fine, is there a single part of Catholic worship that they did not employ to win favor and credit for their lessons with the multitude? Hymns, canticles, altars, the tables of the law, the ark of the constitution, candelabra, sacred fire, holidays, statues of liberty and equality, tutelary genii, and other emblems of the revolution: did they not offer us a collection of religious ceremonies as extensive as that of any other worship?"

Source: Catechism of perseverance, Msgr. Gaume