Page 272 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

RE DING LES SONS. 271
vation. If you live in retirement, pray : solitude itself becomes a rock, if a continual intercourse with God does not defend us against ourselves; and Ju­ dith in the secrecy of her house, and the widow Ann in the temple, and the Antonies in the desert, und the uit and the security of their retreat in prayer alone. If established in the Church r the instruc­ tion of the people, pray : all the power and all the success of the ministry musi depend upon your
prayers; and the. apostles converted the universe, solely because they had appropriated nothing to themselves but prayer and the preaching of the Gospel.
3. Lastly, whoever you are, I again repeat it, in prosperity or indigence, in joy or in a iction, in trouble or n peace, in rvency or in despondency, in sin or in the ways of righteousness, advanced in virtue or still in the rst steps of penitence, pray : prayer is the safety of all stations, the consolation of all sorrows, tμe duty of all conditions, the soul of piety, the support of ith, the grand undation of religion, and all religion itself. 0 my God ! shed, then, upon us that spirit of grace and of prayer which was to be the distinguishing mark of thy Church, and the portion of a new people; and purify our hearts and our lips, that we may be enabled to o er up to thee pure homages, rvent sighs, and prayers worthy of the eternal riches which thou hast so often promised to those who shall have well en­ treated thee.
MASS LON.