Friday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Year of Saint Joseph

Year of the Family "Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love"

Readings of the Day

RB: Ch 7:59 Humility

Mass: Joel 1:13-15; 2:1-2; Resp Ps 9; Lk 11:15-26

I will be glad and exult in you.

THE DESIGNS OF THE HEART ARE FROM AGE TO AGE, TO RESCUE THEIR SOULS FROM DEATH AND TO KEEP THEM ALIVE IN FAMINE.

(Entrance Antiphon, Mass)

With no saints on the official calendar to commemorate today, I went to the October volume of Butler's Lives of the Saints to see who is profiled. Three saints are listed for us to turn to for prayer and intercession. First, we have Saint Pelagia the Penitent. Butler's tells us this: "The genuine St Pelagia, so to speak, was a young virgin martyr of Antioch who was venerated there on 8 October at least as early as the fourth century ... she is commemorated on this day in the Syriac Breviary of the early fifth century" (p. 49). Second, we have Saint Demetrius, "probably a deacon who was martyred sometime before the fifth century at Sirmium (Mitrovic in former Yugoslavia" (p. 50). And third we have Saint Keyne, probably of the sixth century. She "was very well known in parts of south Wales and Cornwall, and may have been active in Herefordshire and Somerset, though there is no trustworthy evidence of an ancient cult of the saint in the latter county" (p. 51).

We turn to these saints to help us in our desire "to reach the highest summit of humility" (RB 7:5) as presented to us these days in Saint Benedict's Chapter 7 on Humility. Now in the tenth step of humility, sandwiched between related steps 9 and 11, we ask these saints to help us control our tongues, for Scripture warns us, In a flood of words you will not avoid sinning, and A talkative man goes about aimlessly on earth (RB 7:56-58). That we not be given to ready laughter, for it is written: Only a fool raises his voice in laughter (RB 7:59). And lastly, that we speak gently and without laughter, seriously and with becoming modesty, briefly and reasonably, but without raising our voices, as it is written: "A wise man is known by his few words" (RB 7:60-61). 

One might summarize these steps in this way: Think before you speak. Will whatever you say degrade or uplift? Are you laughing at or with? We are meant to build the Body of Christ and encourage each other in our life of faith and prayer. May we keep our homes of the heart and mind clean, as spoken about in today's Gospel. As related, "When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says. 'I shall return to my home from which I came.' But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that man is worse than the first" (Lk 11:24-26). 

SAINT PELAGIA THE PENITENT,

SAINT DEMETRIUS,

SAINT KEYNE,

SAINT JOSEPH,

PRAY FOR US.

Today's photo: More from Queen of Angels Monastery.

© Gertrude Feick 2021