Collect taken from the memorial of St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop
Collect: Preserve in the midst of your people, we ask, O Lord, the spirit with which you filled the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo, that your Church may be constantly renewed and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ, may show his face to the world. Who lives and reigns…
“Preserve in the midst of your people, we ask, O Lord, the spirit with which you filled the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo,”
— St. Charles was known to be a great reformer and a holy man. Once again, as Catholics we recognize that his goodness and fruitfulness are dependent upon the grace of God, so we ask him to continue to pour out such graces upon his people
“that your Church may be constantly renewed and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ, may show his face to the world”
— The Church’s task is to reflect Christ to the world. This requires that the members of the Church conform themselves to Christ as he truly is and not as we would like him to be. We hold up the example of St. Charles because he rejected the false ideas of Christianity which had taken hold in the world and sought to reassert the fullness of what the Church had received from Christ in Truth and Charity.
Questions & Advice: Do you see yourself as an ambassador for Christ? From where do you get your ideas about how to live as a Christian? Are you part of the Church’s decline and corruption or part of her renewal? There is no in-between.
Read about the Church’s on the path to renewal in the Catechism (821-829). Spend some of your daily prayer time reflecting on how you can contribute to the holiness of the Church. Think of some topic of the faith that you don’t know very well, look it up in the catechism or some other apologetics source. Pray an Our Father and ask specifically for the grace to put that particular aspect of the faith into practice.
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| Sancte Carole Borromeo, ora pro nobis! |