One desire

IMAGE: Vintage picture during the annual Forty Hours Devotion held

at the famous Birmingham Oratory (founded by John Henry Newman) in England.

"How much I love You, O my Jesus!  I wish to love You with my whole heart; yet I do not love You enough.  My lack

of devotion and my negligence still haunt me. 

I have one desire, that of being near You in the Blessed
Sacrament.  You are the sweet bridegroom of my soul. 

My Jesus, my love, my all, gladly would I endure hunger, thirst, heat and cold to remain always with You

in the Blessed Sacrament..."

St John Neumann

Bohemian - 1811-1860

Redemptorist missionary - Bishop of Philadelphia

Bishop motto:  “Passion of Christ strengthen me”

Multi-lingual; Promoter of Forty Hours Devotion

Opened over 100 schools, built over 50 churches,

wrote 2 catechisms, and a Bible History +++

FEAST DAY - January 5

"Everyone who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old,

man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random; we are not here, that we may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, toil for our bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, . . . for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us; we are all equal in His sight, and we are placed in our different ranks and stations, not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labor in them for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also."


 ~ Sermon: "God's Will the End of Life," from Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations,

1849, in Daniel M. O'Connell, Favorite Newman Sermons 

Ste John Neumann, ora pro nobis!