God can use every human being....

The world would sooner be brought close to God. His will would sooner
be done on earth, if all who acknowledge Him gave themselves
unreservedly to being used by Him. God can use every human being as a
channel for divine love and power. What delays the bringing of the
world closer to God is the backwardness of His followers. If each one
lived each day for God and allowed God to work through him, then the
world would soon be drawn much closer to God, its Founder and
Preserver. I pray that I may be used as a channel to express the
Divine Love. I pray that I may so live as to bring God's spirit closer
to the world.
--From Twenty-Four Hours a Day

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29 November – Blessed Bernardo Francisco de Hoyos SJ

Professed Priest of the Society of Jesus, Mystic, Apostle of the
Sacred Heart – born on 21 August 1711 at Torrelobatón, Valladolid,
Kingdom of Spain (1711-08-21) and died on 29 November 1735,
Valladolid, Spain of natural causes (typhoid), aged 24. The miracle
for his Beatification involved a young lady with typhoid.

Bernardo Francisco de Hoyos de Seña was born on 21 August 1711 to Don
Manuel de Hoyos and Doña Francisca de Seña.  His father worked at the
town hall at Torrelobatón near Valladolid. He was baptised on 6
September in his local parish church in the names of “Bernardo
Francisco Javier.”  He was named in honour of Saint Bernard of
Clairvaux and Saint Francis Xavier.  He received his Confirmation in
1720.

On 11 July 1726, a not quite fifteen year old Bernardo Francisco de
Hoyos y Seña crossed the threshold of the Jesuit novitiate of the
Province of Castile. Straightaway he chose the Flemish Saint John
Berchmans SJ as his model and intercessor. At his profession on 12
July 1728, he heard Our Lord say to him: “From today on I will unite
Myself more intimately to you because of my love for you.” Our Lord,
His Virgin Mother, Saint Ignatius, Saint Teresa of Avila and other
celestial visitors manifested themselves to the young Jesuit,
conversed with him, counselled him and encouraged him.  In 1726 both
Aloysius Gonzaga SJ and Stanislaus Kostka SJ were Canonised by Pope
Benedict XIII. The two became models of holiness for the Jesuit
priest, as well as John Berchmans who was already on the course for Canonisation.

On 10 August 1729, the Saviour, covered with His Precious Blood,
appeared to Bernardo, and showing him the wound in His Side, said,
“Rejected by humanity, I come to find my consolation with chosen
souls.” Bernardo’s experience closely resembles that of Saint Margaret
Mary Alacoque fifty-three years earlier in the Visitation Monastery of Paray-le-Monial in France.

Bernardo was ordained a priest on 2 January 1735, for which he had to
obtain special permission due to his young age. Saint John the
Evangelist and Saint Francis de Sales, mystically present at the
ordination, served as his “godfathers” in the priesthood. In that same
year he wrote:

Hitherto I had great confidence in my prayers and petitions, depending
on the intercession of the Heart of Jesus, at present I have no doubt
about obtaining whatsoever I ask, if it is for the greater glory of
God. I am convinced that at the altar, the Eternal Father can refuse
me nothing . . . I find myself with views like that of Venerable
Father La Colombière concerning the greatness of this sacrifice. Here
I am as if I were triumphant, for it seems to me not only that I am
making reparation for myself and for the whole world but that the
Eternal Father is my debtor.

Now and again, during Mass . . . a word of the Eternal Father has
assured me of the satisfaction He takes in His Son and in His Heart
and how this satisfaction may embolden me, even at the sight of my
sins and ingratitude, to presume as much as I fancy, for all is
contained in the merits of Jesus, whose minister I am and whose place
I take.”

Father Bernardo de Hoyos died on 29 November 1735 at the age of
twenty-four. He left behind the memory of his brief but fruitful
ministry as a priest, the reputation of a charism for delivering souls
from the vice of impurity – his book, The Hidden Treasure, published
under the name of Father John de Loyola and a wealth of detailed
accounts of his mystical experiences of the Heart of Jesus.

On 17 January 2009, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, met with the
Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Archbishop
Angelo Amato, S.D.B. The Pope authorised the promulgation of a number
of decrees, among them the recognition of a miracle attributed to the
Servant of God Bernardo Francisco Hoyos.

On 19 April 2010, Father Bernardo Francisco de Hoyos was beatified in Valladolid, Spain. The ceremony was presided over by Archbishop Angelo
Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. In
addition to nearly a 1,000 priests and more the 20,000 faithful,
approximately fifty bishops and cardinals attended the ceremony. The
new Blessed’s liturgical memorial was confirmed for today, the
anniversary of his death.

https://anastpaul.com/2019/12/


Bible Quote:
And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, The face thereof was
covered with nettles, And the stone wall thereof was broken down.
Then I beheld, and considered well; I saw, and received instruction:
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep; So shall thy poverty come as a robber, And thy want as an armed man.
[Pro 24:30-34]


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Take pride in the title of Christian

 If with faith and religious feeling you take pride in the title of
Christian, value the grace of this reconciliation at its true worth.
Once you were cast off, driven from paradise, dying in weary exile.
Reduced to dust and ashes, you have no further hope of life; but now
through the incarnation of the Word you have the power to return from
afar to your Creator, to recognize your Father, to be freed from
slavery, and raised from the status of a stranger to that of a child.
You were born with a nature liable to decay, but now you can be reborn
through the Spirit of God and obtain by grace what you lacked by
nature. You need have no doubt that if you keep the terms of your
engagement in the heavenly army, you will receive the victor's crown
in the triumphant camp of the eternal King. You will rise again with
the just to enter into the fellowship of the kingdom of heaven.
--St. Leo the Great

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