Confession

After work, it was good to stop off at the Redemptorist Monastery, say the penitential prayer of St Simeon Metaphrastes, and make my humble confession; and afterward to pray the Little Hours and Vespers in their church.  It struck me that the collect of to-day, the feast of St Callistus I, Pope and Martyr, was highly appropriate, as I repeated it at Terce, Sext, None and Vespers:

Deus, qui nos conspicis ex nostra infirmitate deficere: ad amorem tuum nos misericorditer per sanctorum tuorum exempla restaura.  Per...

God, Who seest us (by reason of our infirmity) to fall and fail, to Thy love mercifully (by the example of Thy saints) restore us.  Through...

Yes, it is through the One Mediator, the Saint of Saints, Jesus Christ our Redeemer and Lord, that God our Lord restores us to supernatural life when we fall from His grace and fail; but, since the Divine Will delights in working through secondary causes, it is by the example of the righteous made perfect, those saved by Christ who have gone before us, that we are moved to repentance and to hope and to cooperation with grace.  May St Callistus be praised and blessed, for this holy Pope and courageous martyr gives us cause, by his triumphant witness to his Divine Master and ours, to trust that we too shall run the great race, finish the course, keep the faith, and win the prize of victory laid up for us in heaven (cf. II Tim. iv, 7) through Christ our Lord.

Blessed be St Alphonsus, too, for giving us his Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer - and now too the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer.  I might even visit Christchurch sometime...