United States or Saint Kitts and Nevis ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Our saints are the spirits through whom God wills to send us of His own. Whatever becomes to us a channel of His truth and love we must involuntarily canonize and consecrate. Woe, if by the same channel ever an offense cometh!" Perhaps Faith was nearly the only person in church, to-day, who did not notice that there were strangers in the pew behind the Gimps.
At the general chapter held at Rome, June 7, 1227, in which Brother Elias was re-elected, His Holiness was petitioned by all present to canonize Francis whom God already made illustrious by many miracles. Now a favorable opportunity presented itself to pay special heed to this petition.
Our engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket a vial of water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships' bottoms; and with that classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the bottle being broken on poor Grandstone's crown as on the prow of a ship. "You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius," I said. "If you remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you.
Acting as as I bid you to do you will remain unharmed amid the hissing of serpents and, like the strawberry, will not assimilate their poison even though licked by their venomous tongues." Our Saint used to say that to equivocate was, in his opinion, to canonize lying, and that simplicity was, after all, the best kind of shrewdness.
Now, however, he rested one knee on the only unoccupied portion of a large, light sled, drawn by the third member of the party, a powerful dog of the Newfoundland species, which he was evidently training into some little excellence as a sledge-dog. It was only an added virtue, even if complete; for noble old Carlo had already excellences enough to canonize a dozen individual canines.
Many of these look forward to the day when posterity will canonize them, and lift them to the glory of those who were not received by their age because they were in advance of their age. So they regard with contempt the pigmy world, wrap the mantles of their mortified pride about them, and lie down in a delusive dream of immortality.
"I congratulate you on your position, Miss Brandon; it is quite unassailable. You are in the right now, as you always have been. You were right, of course, in always doling out the tokens of your love in such scanty measure as your pride and your priests would allow. They ought to canonize you those holy men! I doubt if they have another disciple so superior to all human weaknesses.
"Well, come down to hard facts, and how many of us will have to admit that we have feelings like that at times? There is still a good share of the primitive man left in our natures. We're not saints. Why, even the churches that believe in saints don't canonize mortals until they have been a hundred years dead they want to be sure they are dead and their mortal weaknesses forgotten."
It is described best in those inimitable beatitudes which canonize, not the stern and rugged, but the sweet and tender, the humble and meek; and stamp Heaven's tenderest smile on virtues which had hardly found a place in the strong and gritty character of the Baptist. Yes, there is more to be had by the humble heart than John possessed or taught.
And in nothing were the mediævals more free and sane than in their acceptance of names and emblems from outside their most beloved limits. The monastery would often not only take in the stranger but almost canonize him. A mere adventurer like Bruce was enthroned and thanked as if he had really come as a knight errant.
Word Of The Day