January 5

"To pray for those who are in mortal sin is the best kind of almsgiving. For the love of God, always remember such souls when you pray."

-St. Teresa of Avila

January 4

"If a man possesses any strong attachment to the things of this earth, he cannot possess true charity. For anyone who really loves God prefers to know and experience God rather than his creatures. The whole set and longing of his mind is ever directed toward him."

-St. Maximus the Confessor

January 3

"How long will the sun and moon, the stars continue to give forth light? Who can tell? Of one thing alone we are sure. In God’s own time – then shall come the Son of Man in great power and majesty to render to each according to his works. The question alone important, the solution of which depends upon how I have spent my life, is the state of my soul at the moment of death. Infinite misery or infinite happiness! There is no half and half, either one or the other."

-St. Katherine Drexel

January 1

"The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire.

You do not see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied."

-St. Augustine

January 1

Act of Consecration to Our Blessed Lady

Recite the Hail Mary and then pray:

My Queen! My Mother! I give you all

Myself, and, to show my devotion to you,

I consecrate to you my eyes, my ears, my mouth,

My heart, my entire self.

Wherefore, O loving Mother, as I am your own,

Keep me, defend me, as your property

And possession.

Mother of Sorrows, pray for us.

Amen.

December 31

Eve of the Feast of Mary, Mother of God

Mother benign of our redeeming Lord,

Star of the sea and portal of the skies,

Unto thy fallen people help afford –

Fallen, but striving still anew to rise.

Thou who dids’t once, while wond’ring

worlds adored,

Bear thy Creator, Virgin then as now,

O by thy holy joy at Gabriel’s word,

Pity the sinners who before thee bow.

-Roman Breviary, Antiphon of the Blessed Virgin

December 30

"God could make a bigger world or a wider sky, but He could not raise a pure creature higher than Mary, for the dignity of Mother of God is the highest dignity that can be conferred on a creature.”

-St. Bonaventure

December 29

“The first thing which kindles ardor in learning is the greatness of the teacher. What is greater than the Mother of God? What more glorious than she whom Glory Itself chose?”

-St. Ambrose of Milan

December 28

“True love of God consists in adhering perfectly to His holy will, not desiring to do or to be other than what God indicates for each of us, to the point of becoming, as it were, “a living will of God.”

-Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD

December 27

“The Blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been His mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood.”

-St. Augustine