Blessed Francis X. Seelos, pray for us!

Happy Feast of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos!

Today we celebrate a Redemptorist missionary who, like many of his elder brothers in the Congregation, left his home in Europe to minister to the lost and forgotten in the New World. Blessed Seelos was a mission preacher, pastor, novice master, and spiritual director during his time. He served alongside another great Redemptorist, St. John Neumann, and spent time in both Baltimore and Annapolis.

Seelos contracted yellow fever and died in New Orleans in 1867. He was beatified in 2000, and in 2009, the Archdiocese of Baltimore opened its investigation into an Annapolis woman’s supposed miraculous cure from cancer thanks to the prayers of Blessed Seelos. If her cure is accepted as a miracle by the Vatican, Seelos would be declared a saint.

Seelos’ Top 10 Practical Guide to Holiness 
1. Go to Mass with deepest devotion.
2. Spend a half hour to reflect upon your main failing & make resolutions to avoid it.
3. Do daily spiritual reading for at least 15 minutes, if a half hour is not possible.
4. Say the rosary every day.
5. Also daily, if at all possible, visit the Blessed Sacrament; and toward evening, meditate on the Passion of Christ for a half hour.
6. Conclude the day with evening prayer & an examination of conscience over all the faults & sins of the day.
7. Every month make a review of the month in confession.
8. Choose a special patron every month & imitate that patron in some special virtue.
9. Precede every great feast with a novena, that is, nine days of devotion.
10. Try to begin & end every activity with a “Hail Mary.”
Courtesy: www.seelos.org