Life, Hope and Joy:

Jesus, you are the resurrection and the life. You know all my stagnant places, the deep ruts that I have worked in my life. Sometimes I lose hope and cling to the darkness of these tombs. Give me the courage to trust that you are present—even where I am broken and stagnant—bringing life out of death, hope out of despair and joy out of grief.

Faith – Practice:

Do we live our faith in a routine way? Do we really know the “why’s” and “how’s” of our faith? We should nourish our faith daily with spiritual readings of the lives of saints, etc and concretize our faith with sacrifices and services to the needy. A routine faith is a shallow faith.

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The devil is afraid of us when we pray and make sacrifices. He is also afraid when we are humble and good. He is especially afraid when we love Jesus very much. He runs away when we make the Sign of the Cross.

- St. Anthony of Egypt (251-356)