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St. Joseph Marello - 1890

therefore you are obliged to always obey its commandments.
God wants you to sanctify a holy day; the Divine Master has
told you a thousand times of the need to pray; the Church
specifies the days to be consecrated particularly to the Lord and
on which you are to raise your heart to Him more especially; it
prescribes that you are to assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
on those days, to abstain from certain occupations that would
distract you from the holy concerns of heaven: therefore you are
not to work at your temporal interests and give to worldly
pastimes those hours that God wants to be consecrated to
himself and the interests of your soul.
God grant, dearly Beloved, that we may see you all firm in
our Christian beliefs and observant of the duties that they
impose; that everywhere we may find comforting testimonies of
your active faith. We will visit your churches, and we are
confident that everything in them will be a testimony to the piety
that you inherited from your ancestors. The decorations of the
altar, the images and statues of the Virgin and the Saints, the
sacred vessels, the furnishings, the ornaments and everything
that is necessary for the House of God, everything will speak to
us of your love for Divine worship, of your devotion to Jesus in
the Blessed Sacrament, to Blessed Virgin, to your heavenly
Patrons. Then we will see that you take delight in the holy
places, and your presence itself, your religious demeanor will
tell us that you willingly hasten there to hear the word of God, to
assist at the celebration of the divine mysteries, to participate in
the Holy Sacraments, to ask for the graces you need in order to
remain Christians not only in name, in its beliefs, but also in the
exercise of the works that accompany it. There, Dearly
Beloved, you learn to know God and His infinite love for you,
there you promise to love Him with all your heart, above all
things, for your whole life; and there you have from Him the
promise of help in observing his holy law and the reward of
eternal life. After those days of innocence, you have perhaps

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