DECEMBER 20

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Private Catholic Breviary

Launched on: August 8 2025

Last updated: June 13 2026

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Let nothing be preferred to the Work of GOD. {‘Opus DEI’ or ‘Divine Office’} (St Benedict)

Let us always desire the blessed life from the LORD GOD and always pray for it. For this very reason we turn our mind to the task of prayer at appointed hours, since that desire grows lukewarm, so to speak, from our involvement in other concerns and occupations… The desire that began to grow lukewarm may grow chill altogether and may be totally extinguished. (St Augustine)

Prayer offered in holiness from a faithful heart rises like incense from a holy altar. Nothing is more fragrant than the fragrance of the LORD. May all who believe share in this fragrance. (St Augustine, Commentary on the Psalms)

The psalms do not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. (St Augustine)

The Psalms seem to me to be like a mirror, in which the person using them can see himself, and the stirrings of his own heart; he can recite them against the background of his own emotions.(St Pius X)

In the psalms, not only is JESUS born for us, HE also undergoes His saving Passion in His Body, HE lies in death, HE rises again, HE ascends into Heaven, HE sits at the right Hand of the FATHER. What no man would have dared to say was foretold by the psalmist alone. (St Ambrose, Explanations of the Psalms)

A psalm is a blessing on the lips of the people, a hymn in praise of GOD. (St Ambrose, Explanations of the Psalms)

When the words come, they are merely empty shells without the music. They live as they are sung, for the words are the body and the music the spirit. (St Hildegard of Bingen)