Trick the Monkeys

Strategy 1: TRICK them. Pray early in the morning when the monkeys are groggy. Before you check your phone, before email, before news — get to prayer while your mind is quiet. Give God the "first fruits" of your day. The more noise you consume before prayer, the louder the monkeys. (Ep 600, 554)

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches:

And especially, when the city was taken, would they call Christ and His miracles to remembrance, and desire His presence. AUG. Here He foretells His resurrection: for the search for Him was to take place after His resurrection, when men were conscience stricken.

(Source: catena_aurea_john.txt)

Doctrinal Foundation

T4.G.010 (Sententia communis (common teaching)): Prayer is a necessary means of salvation for adults. God grants the grace of perseverance to those who pray for it perseveringly. Without prayer, the necessary graces for salvation will not ordinarily be received.

• Scripture: Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you.

• Fathers: He who prays well, lives well. He who lives well, dies well. He who dies well, all is well.

From the Sources

St. Thomas Aquinas (catena_aurea_john.txt):

And especially, when the city was taken, would they call Christ and His miracles to remembrance, and desire His presence. AUG. Here He foretells His resurrection: for the search for Him was to take place after His resurrection, when men were conscience stricken. They would not acknowledge Him, when present; afterward they sought Him, when they saw the multitude believing on Him; and many pricked in their hearts said, What shall we do?

St. Francis de Sales (03_catholic_controversy.txt):

The reasons which these reformers have advanced in the preceding chapter are but tricks, as we have seen, which are used only as it were for amusement, to try whether some simple and weak brain will be content with them ; and, in reality, when one comes to the.

St. Francis de Sales (03_catholic_controversy.txt):

But for God's sake notice the trick. " We know," say they, " these books to be canonical, not so much by the common consent and accord of the Church."

St. Ignatius of Loyola (autobiography_oconor_1900.txt):

There he learned that he would not be allowed to enter the city. He then proceeded with his companions to Padua, to get the testimony of a notary that the party was not stricken with the plague. Ignatius could not, on account of his weakness, keep pace with the others, and was left alone in an open field. Then Christ appeared to him, as He had appeared on former occasions. By this vision he was greatly strengthened and consoled.

Church Fathers (Confessiones_english.txt):

Chapter II.—Stricken with Exceeding Grief, He Remembers the Dissolute Passions in Which, in His Sixteenth Year, He Used to Indulge. 2. But what was it that I delighted in save to love and to be beloved?

Church Fathers (Confessiones_english.txt):

These things did I follow eagerly, and practise with my friends—by me and with me deceived. Let the arrogant, and such as have not been yet savingly cast down and stricken by Thee, O my God, laugh at me; but notwithstanding I would confess to Thee mine own shame in Thy praise.

Nihil Obstat: Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D. Censor Librorum

Imprimatur: + Patrick J. Hayes, D.D. Archbishop of New York New York, June 29, 1921

{Transcriber's Note: This book is commonly known as "The Baltimore Catechism No. 4" and is the last part of a four volume e-text collection.

Catechism sources (PD) (baltimore_catechism.txt):

You can easily remember that feast. Everybody knows that St. Patrick's Day is on the 17th of March, and therefore eight days after it comes Annunciation day. There is another feast coming in between them, the feast of St.