resignation, and holy
joy, under sickness and all crosses or trials. These are the times of
the greatest spiritual harvest, by the exercise of the most perfect
virtues. For nothing is more heroic in the practice of Christian virtue,
nothing more precious in the sight of God, than the sacrifice of
patience, submission, constant fidelity and charity in a state of
suffering. Under sickness we are too apt eagerly to desire health, that
we may be able to do something for God, and to discharge the obligations
of our profession, as we persuade ourselves. This is a mere invention of
self-love, which is impatient under the weight of humiliation. Nothing,
indeed, is more severe to nature than such a state of death, and there
is nothing which it is not desirous of doing, to recover that active
life, which carries an air of importance by making an appearance in the
tumultuous scene of the world. But how much does the soul generally lose
by such an exchange! Ah! did we but truly know how great are the
spiritual advantages and riches, and how great the glory of patience
founded upon motives of true charity, and how precious the victories and
triumphs are which it gains over self-love, we should rejoice too much
in a state of suffering and humiliation ever to entertain any inordinate
desires of changing it. We should only ask for health in sickness under
this condition, if it be more expedient for God's honor and our
spiritual advancement. With St. Paul, we should find a joy and delight
in a state of privation and suffering, in which we enter into a true
sense of our absolute weakness, feel that we are nothing, and have no
reliance but on God alone.

Footnotes:
1. Psa. xxvi 4.

SS. ARMOGASTES, ARCHINIMUS, AND SATURUS,

MARTYRS.

GENSERIC, the Arian king of the Vandals, to Africa, having, on his
return out of Italy, in 457, enacted new penal laws, and severer than
any he had till then put in force against Catholics, count Armogastes
was on that occasion deprived of his honors and dignities at court, and
most cruelly tortured. But no sooner had the jailers bound him with
cords, but they broke of themselves, as the martyr lifted up his eyes to
heaven; and this happened several times. And though they afterwards hung
him up by one foot with his head downwards for a considerable time, the
saint was no more affected by this torment than if he had lain all the
while at his ease on a feather-bed. Theodoric, the king's son, thereupon
ord