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 A meditation for Tuesday

( From St Peter of Alcantara)

This day you shall meditate upon the miseries of the life of man, out of which consideration, you will take notice of worldly vanities and learn how much glory of them ought to be despised, seeing they are built upon so weak a foundation as our fading life...

Therefore, consider the shortness of the life of man, being restrained within the limits of threescore and ten, or fourscore, years, whatsoever the overplus be, it is but labor and sorrow, as the prophet speaks: out of this time, if you subtract your infancy, which time you did live rather the life of a beast than a man; the time you spend in sleep, for then you are deprived of the use of reason, which only distinguishes man from other creatures, and you will find your life to be far shorter than ever you did imagine. This time if you do compare with the eternity of the world to come, you will find it to be less than a moment. Conjecture ,then, the foolish madness of the lovers of this world, who, that they might enjoy one only momentary pleasure of this transitory life, do not fear to expose themselves to the loss of eternity...

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 Life and death of St . Peter of Alcantara

His parents brought up their young son in the fear of God and sowed in him the seeds of virtue; they put him to school where , as he profited in learning , so his obedience toward his parents did likewise increase.Although he was a child, yet he withdrew himself from the common sports of children and sorted himself among men whom he saw inclined to devotion. In these, his tender years, he addicted himself to works of mercy: he applied himself seriously to learn the Christian doctrine; he often visited churches and holy places, he frequented the sacraments and continually employed himself in good works. He excelled his fellow students in science, so he knew that all science was ignorance without the right knowledge of God .

About that time, there was a famous and reformed monastery of Franciscans in the province of St. Gabriel, whither he addressed himself, there to bring his good desires to a joyful period.

He sequestered from the company of men and abstracted from all worldly tumults. 

The more you are sequestered from the pleasures of the flattering world, the more you enjoy the freedom of your spirit....   

Your soul is now sure not to be defiled with the pitch of evil conversation.....

You find here no snares to entangle you into worldly vanities, no flatterers to applaud you when you offend, or anything else to withdraw your affection from the cross of Christ....

Your beloved spouse has brought you now into this holy desert, to recreate your soul with his heavenly consolations, where , abstracted from all worldly tumults, it may attend only to divine wisdom, and the noise of all temporal cares being hushed and silent, it may be wholly employed in sacred contempation and ravished with eternal pleasures.....

The pleasure of this world is short, but the punishment for it perpetual... a little suffering here and infinite glory hereafter.....                                                                                                                                

St peter of alcantara

 From Life and death of St . Peter of Alcantara

Two virutes were chiefly eminent in him: simplicity and purity. He likewise had a perfect oblivion of all worldly things. He greedily desired and willingly accepted of the inferior and basest employments of the monastery. 

He was dexterous in his actions, modest in correcting , and a peacemaker, reconciling those who upon any occasion had been at jars. In his sermons he was hot, but moving; in hearing of confessions he was a helper, a counselor, and a comforter; in his ordinary speech he was not fawning nor biting, and his conversation without any pertinacity.

Who could but think his chaste child of St . Francis to have made a covenant with his eyes not to behold a virgin? And well he might be styled that son of a dove, whose eyes were washed with the milk of innocence. he kept such a continual guard over his eyes that he never knew any woman by her face.