DAY 4

THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE.

• ACT OF CONTRITION.

  O my God I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins, because of your punishments, but most of all because they offended you, my God, who are all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.

• Act OF FAITH.

  My God, I believe in you and all that your Church teaches, because you have said it and your love is true.

• ACT OF HOPE.

  My God, I hope in you for grace and for glory, because of your promises, your mercy and your power.

• HYMN: HOLY SPIRIT LORD OF LIGHT

  Holy Spirit, Lord of light,
  From the clear celestial height,
  Thy pure beaming radiance give,
  Come, thou Father of the poor,
  Come with treasures that endure,
  Come, thou light of all that live!
  Thou, of all consolers best,
  

  Thou, the soul's delightful guest,
  Dost refreshing peace bestow
  Thou in toil art comfort sweet;
  Pleasant coolness in the heat;
  Solace in the midst of woe...

• SCRIPTURE READING (Daniel 13:1-64)

• CONSIDERATION.

  Knowledge, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, directs the soul to judge all things both human and divine, according to the supernatural common sense and not according to the standards of the worldly wise. Even with supernatural faith in our soul to elevate our reason, how often we detect ourselves talking of temporal gain and loss, success and failure, suffering and pleasure, purely and simply according to the principles of our worldly mind! We fail to pierce the veil of the natural and see in suffering a blessing from God. We have come to think it folly to season our pleasures with a pinch of pepper and salt of mortification; for example: to determine that we will not remain our later than a certain reasonable hour; when we go out for an evening of innocent pleasure. In this age of doubt, materialism, pleasure-seeking, what shall we say of the necessity of this gift to enable us to distinguish good from evil, innocent pleasure from tainted joy, truth from falsehood, the real good from the apparent good among all the things around us? Let us therefore, pray earnestly for this gift.

• PRAYER.

  Come, O blessed Spirit of knowledge, and grant that I may perceive the will of the Father; show me the nothingness of earthly things, that I may realize their vanity and use them only for thy glory and my own salvation, looking ever beyond them to thee and thy eternal rewards.
  Amen.