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Text Box: so cold, and the snow so bad, during part of February, that they had a “snow day” one Sunday. In Guatemala the cold weather has caused much suffering and many deaths. One February in the late 1990’s, several groups of people came to the home of Archbishop Andres to wish him a happy birthday. It was around three or four O’Clock in the morning, and the people were dressed for warmpth, the little babies wearing colorful “wooly hats” to keep warm, for the temperature was very cold, somewhere in the low 70’s (F), and would not rise to the more reasonable 90’s until later in the day. This year the temperatures have been much, much lower. Most homes are heated by the cook stove, which is a concrete or cinder block structure roughly about three feet high, two feet wide, and four feet long. It has round holes in the top into which cooking pots are placed or upon which metal plates are placed and food cooked on the metal plates. Heat comes from wood, leaves, and anything which will burn. The fuel is placed inside the stove - smoke going out of a pipe chimney at one end. The reason the grounds around most houses appears to be swept clean daily is, everything which can burn is swept up daily so it can be used as fuel for cooking. Adobe brick houses and cinder block walled houses usually have fairly solid walls. The walls may crumble during earth quakes or stroms - especially the adobe brick ones - but they are much more snug and secure than those houses where the walls are wood. The wood usually is tood “green” and not well cured at the time of building, and therfore has a tendency to shrink, causing open spaces. Also, many wood wall houses are intentionally built with openings along the “boards” to allow for ventilation and light. The roofs on most houses do not form a seal with the walls, thereby allowing ventilation. But ventilation during an unusually cold winter can be deadly, as has been the case this year. The cold has also had a devastating effect on crops, not only reducing the amount of food available to the people, but also reducing the need for labor to harvest on the large plantations.

Text Box: Thus people not only suffer a reduction on what they can grow and provide for themselves, but also in what they can earn. Great Lent: If as we teach we can assist people to understand the connection between our non-spiritual inclinations, needs,and desires, and our spiritual inclinations, needs, and desires, we may assist them in leveraging the non-spiritual into some form of control or subvjegation. If course, we must also explain or make it clear that our spiritual inclinations, needs, and desires can be evil as well as holy, and stress the need to bring the holy into control. We have included information about Saint Joseph in this issue of REUNION, so that people can use what we know about him to assist themselves in their own struggles to follow God’s instructions. You may find this a fruitful resource for your own sermons and efforts to teach, as well as subject matter in ordinary social discourse. Do not forget the PRAYER OVER THE PEOPLE (prayed with the Celebrant facing the Altar) at the end of every weekday Divine Liturgy during Great Lent. There may occur certain Great Feasts during Great Lent where this prayer is not part of the Liturgy and therefore is not said. But where a Saint’s feast is celebrated for some reason instead of the Liturgy for that day of Great Lent, or in addition to the liturgy for that day of Great Lent, remember to pray the Prayer Over The People. Even in Divine Liturgy commemorating the Blessed Ever Virgin Mary on Saturday, pray the Prayer Over The People. It is different from day to day, and is very meaningful each day. For instance, on the first Friday in Great Lent, the prayer is: Watch over Thy people, O Lord, and of Thy clemency, purge it of all its sins; for no adversity shall harm it, if no iniquity dominate it. You could actually use the prayer for any day of Great Lent as the foundation for a sermon.

Text Box: The Confessions of Saint Augustine As with Imitation of Christ, we had been presenting the Confessions of Saint Augustine, but were interrupted in that presentation. We now resume that presentation, and hope to continue in future issues of REUNION. BOOK ONE CHAPTER XVII 27. Bear with me, O my God, while I speak a little of those talents, thy gifts, and of the follies on which I wasted them. For a lesson was given me that sufficiently disturbed my soul, for in it there was both hope of praise and fear of shame or stripes. The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as she raged and sorrowed that she could not "Bar off Italy From all the approaches of the Teucrian king."[33] I had learned that Juno had never uttered these words. Yet we were compelled to stray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to turn into prose what the poet had said in verse. In the declamation, the boy won most applause who most strikingly reproduced the passions of anger and sorrow according to the "character" of the persons presented and who clothed it all in the most suitable language. What is it now to me, O my true Life, my God, that my declaiming was applauded above that of many of my classmates and fellow students? Actually, was not all that smoke and wind? Besides, was there nothing else on which I could have exercised my wit and tongue? Thy praise, O Lord, thy praises might have propped up the tendrils of my heart by thy Scriptures; and it would not have been dragged away by these empty trifles, a shameful prey to the spirits of the air. For there is more than one way in which men sacrifice to the fallen angels. CHAPTER XVIII

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