Augustine For Today
January 25 – Conversion of Saint Paul
Let us confidently acknowledge and openly declare that Christ was crucified for our sake, proclaiming it with pride and joy, not with fear and shame. The apostle Paul saw in this reason for boasting. He could have told us many great and holy things about Christ: how as God he shared with his Father the work of creation, and how as man like us he was master of the world. But he would not glory in any of these wonderful things. God forbid that I should boast of anything, he said, except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Sermon 218C
Augustine For Today
January 24 – Saint Francis De Sales
You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away from the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure and certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. For all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal to those who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained the reality which even now we possess in hope.
Sermon 260A
Augustine For Today
January 23 – Saint Josephine Mary of Beniganim, O.S.A.
In these two women [Martha and Mary] two lives are typified: the present life and that of the future, the life of toil and that of peace, the wretched and the blissful, the temporal and the eternal. Both are blameless, both, I say, are praiseworthy; but one is laborious and the other leisured. Martha was the image of things present, Mary of things to come. In Martha’s employment we share, for Mary’s we hope. Let us work well at the one that we may fully possess the other.
Sermon 104
Augustine For Today
January 22 – Saint Vincent
We should think that, by some miracle, as Vincent suffered, one person was speaking while another was being tortured. And this, my brothers, was true; it was really the truth; another person was speaking. Christ in the Gospel promised this to those who were to be his witnesses, to those he was preparing for contests of this kind. For he said: Do not give thought to how or what you are to speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks within you. Thus, it was Vincent’s body that suffered, but the Spirit that spoke. And at his voice, impiety was not only vanquished but human frailty was given consolation.
Sermon 276, 1-2
Augustine For Today
January 20 – Saints Fabian & Sebastian
We have been promised something we do not yet possess, and because the promise was made by one who keep his word, we trust him and are glad; but insofar as possession is delayed, we can only yearn and long for it. It is good for us to persevere in longing until we receive what was promised, and yearning is over; then praise alone will remain.
On Psalm 148
Augustine For Today
January 19 – Saint Mario
He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, he is the object of our prayers as our God. Let us then recognize both our voice in his, and his voice in ours. When something is said, especially in prophecy, about the Lord Jesus Christ that seems to belong to a condition of lowliness unworthy of God, we must not hesitate to ascribe this condition to one who did not hesitate to unite himself with us.
On Psalm 85
Augustine For Today
January 18 – Saint Prisca
We have heard in the Gospel how the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Certainly Christ was tempted by the devil. … If in Christ we have been tempted, in him we overcome the devil. Do you think only of Christ’s temptation and fail to think of his victory? See yourself as tempted in him, and see yourself as victorious in him. He could have kept the devil from himself; but if he were not tempted he could not teach you how to triumph over temptation.
On Psalm 60
Fr. Walter J. Quinn, O.S.A., 1930 – 2019
Walter James Quinn was born on August 8, 1930, in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, one of two sons and a daughter of Walter J. Quinn and Anna Haas. He was baptized at Saint Charles Borromeo Church, Drexel Hill, PA, on August 17, 1930, and attended Saint Charles Parish School and Saint Andrew Parish School, both in Drexel Hill. He entered West Catholic High School, Philadelphia, and later the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained a BS in Economics. With the completion of studies, he served in the United States Army from 1952 to 1954, during the Korean War. Upon being discharged from the service, he worked as a salesman in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware area before entering the Order as a novice on September 9, 1955. He spent his novitiate year at Good Counsel Novitiate, New Hamburg, New York, and professed simple vows on September 10, 1956. Walter then attended Villanova University for Philosophical studies and, in 1958, moved to Augustinian College, Washington, DC, where he obtained an MA in Religious Education. He also pursued Graduate Studies in International Law at the Catholic University of America. He professed Solemn Vows on September 10, 1959, and was ordained to the priesthood on June 3, 1961, at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC, by Bishop Philip Hannan.
Augustine For Today
January 17 – Saint Antony, Abbot
“O Lord, our God, let the shelter of your wings give us hope. Protect us and uphold us. You will be the Support that upholds us from childhood till the hair on our heads is grey. When you are our strength we are strong, but when our strength is our own, we are weak. In you our good abides forever, and when we turn away from it we turn to evil. Let us come home at last to you, O Lord, for fear that we be lost.”
Confessions, IV, 16
Augustine For Today
January 16 – Saint Marcellus
“My love of you, O Lord, is not some vague feeling; it is positive and certain. Your word struck into my heart and from that moment I loved you. Besides this, all about me, heaven and earth and all that they contain proclaim that I should love you, and their message never ceases to sound in the ears of all mankind, so that there is no excuse for any not to love you.”
Confessions, X 6