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Can man save himself? To this question Christ answers, “No, man cannot save himself; it is in the companionship of God, of the Mystery who has set Himself beside him, part of his humanity, that Christ is the answer to man’s supreme need, the need for his own salvation.” This is the inconceivable and unforeseeable answer to man’s need for salvation. So the more man is aware of his limitation (his frailty, his wrongdoing, his incapacity), the more he is able to open himself to this answer. I think Reinhold Niebuhr’s phrase is significant: “Nothing is so incredible as the answer to a question that is not asked.” The gravest opposition, the greatest obstacle to the acknowledgment of Christ is, first and foremost, the non-acknowledgment of one’s own human need, of the question that our humanity itself is.
Fr. Luigi Giussani
Japan, like China, has proved hard to win over to the Gospel. St. Francis Xavier first planted Christianity there in 1549, and it is said that by 1587 there were over 200,000 converts. But in 1588 the military leader Hideyoshi, who was the actual ruler under the shadow-emperor, ordered all Christian missionaries to depart. Some obeyed, but many stayed on in secret. In 1597 Hideyoshi apprehended 26 Christians, religious and lay. He had the left ears of 24 of them partly cut off, and then paraded them to Nagasaki through the villages, so as to frighten the spectators against having any more dealings with Christianity.
“The blood of martyrs is a seed,” a prominent church writer declared during the Roman persecutions. The truth of this adage has often been verified in other nations, but not yet in Japan. However, to judge by the Catholic martyrs Japan has produced, the Japanese have the makings of extraordinary Christians. May our prayers water their harsh spiritual soil so as to produce, at length, an abundant harvest of souls. -- Father Robert F. McNamara
(Third Century) 
We profess ourselves ready to die for Christ, yet cannot bear the least cross or humiliation. How agreeable to our divine spouse is the sacrifice of a soul which suffers in silence, desiring to have no other witness of her patience than God alone, who sends her trials; which shuns superiority and honours, but takes all care possible that no one knows the humility or modesty of such a refusal; which suffers humiliations and seeks no comfort or reward but from God. This simplicity and purity of heart; this love of being hid in God, through Jesus Christ, is the perfection of all our sacrifices, and the complete victory over self-love, which it attacks and forces out of its strongest intrenchments: this says to Christ, with St. Agatha, "Possess alone all that I am."
Guardian Angel
Patron Saint of Statesmen, Politicians and Lawyers
The Bishop Michael A. Saltarelli, 8th Bishop of the Diocese of Wilmington Delaware has asked Catholics to pray to St. Thomas More for the conversion of pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians. Bishop Michael Saltarelli has composed a litany to St. Thomas More for his intercession to make politicians "courageous and effective in their defense and promotion of the sanctity of human life."
Thomas More, a layman and lawyer, was the Chancellor of England to King Henry VIII. When he refused to ratify the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the king's establishment as head of a new religion, More was beheaded. He was canonized by the Catholic Church for his defense of his faith and in 2000 was declared patron of statesmen and politicians by Pope John Paul II.
The practice of asking for the saints' intercession with God is central to Catholic spiritual practice. "Our hope is to lead our people back to prayer and to the basic tenets of this great nation 'In God We Trust,' 'One Nation Under God,' 'God who is the author of all life,'" Bishop Saltarelli said in the diocesan newspaper. "We will storm heaven with our prayers..."
The prayer has been distributed to parishes and schools in the Wilmington diocese. The bishop has met with dissenting Catholic politicians and asked them not to present themselves for communion in Catholic churches. "Thomas More knew the consequences of his choice. He knew the world would view him as politically incorrect," he said.
Apostolate and Zeal for the Salvation of Souls
by Venerable Father Germanus CP
"Gemma had this mission: to labor for the good of souls and especially for the conversion of sinners, thereby cooperating, as far as she could in her human limitations, with the work of the Redemption. This mission was not given her in the usual way by which Our Lord, through His Church, ordinarily confides it to others; but by a particular, explicit and, I may say, a solemn investiture. She herself will tell us about it: . . . "
