Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary time

Saturday Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Saint: Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop, Doctor of the Church (380-450)

Readings of the Day

Rule of Saint Benedict: Ch 48:22-25 The Daily Manual Labor

Mass: Jer 26:11-16, 24; Resp Ps 69; Mt 14:1-12

See you lowly ones and be glad.

MARY, QUEEN OF PEACE,

PRAY FOR US.

Listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

(Jer 26:13)

Welcome to Saturday, a day customarily dedicated to the Virgin. It is also a day to commemorate Bishop of Ravenna, "the city of mosaics," Italy, and Doctor of the Church, Saint Peter Chrysologus, whose name means "golden speech." We also conclude our reading from another one of my favorite chapters of the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, namely, Chapter 48 on the Daily Manual. It may just be that it is one where I am challenged as I am not necessarily a person of moderation. As it turns out, I read an article this morning entitled, "3 Tips for a Restful Sabbath," by Liz Montigny. The title alone prompts me to pass along some of Saint Benedict's wisdom from Chapter 48. And since tomorrow is the Sabbath, it all goes together. As we find in the Letter to the Hebrews, "therefore, a sabbath rest still remaims for the people of God. And whoever enters into God's rest, rests from his own works as God did from His" (Hebrews 4:9-10). What does Saint Benedict have to say about the sabbath of Sunday? Our holy father says that "on Sunday all are to be engaged in reading except those who have been assigned various duties" (RB 48:22). We have, then, another tip for a restful Sabbath. God is praised. Until tomorrow we go forth, united in faith and prayer. Thank you for being there. 

That the Creator is in His creature and God is in the flesh brings dignity to man without dishonor to Him who made him ...

He has made you in His image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth; He has made you His legate, so that the vast empire of the world might have the Lord's representative. Then in His mercy God assumed what He made in you; He wanted now to be truly manifested in man, just as He had wished to be revealed in man as an image. Now He would be in reality what He had submitted to be in symbol.

(From a sermon by Saint Peter Chrysologus, bishop, in Office of Readings, July 30)

With you

have been hidden the unfailing treasures

of truth and grace

of peace and pity

of salvation and wisdom

of glory and honor.

(Adam of Perseigne, c. 1145-1221, in Mary Most Holy: Meditating with the Early Cistercians) 

MARY, QUEEN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH,

SAINT PETER CHRYSOLOGUS,

SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST,

PRAY FOR US.

Today's photo: I love the colors of this one, sighted early the other morning, in our garden of delights. I think the Blessed Mother is pleased, along with Saint Peter Chrysologus.

© Gertrude Feick 2022

Monday of the Third Week of Easter

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

Saint: Saint Athanasius, Bishop, Doctor (295-373)

Readings of the Day

Rule of Saint Benedict: Prologue 1-7 

Mass: Acts 6:8-15; Resp Ps 119; Jn 6:22-29

Teach me your statutes.

MARY, QUEEN OF PEACE,

PRAY FOR US.

This is the work of God, that you believe in the one He sent.

(Jn 6:29)

Welcome to Monday and the Prologue of the Rule of Saint Benedict, when we begin our second read through of the year (see RB 58:9-13). For starters then, we listen with the ear of our hearts (RB Prol. 1) to Saint Benedict: "First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to God most earnestly to bring it to perfection" (RB Prol. 4). It seems a fitting way to begin the week and the month of May, the month dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading, and to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed in his progress.

(Saint Athanasius)

Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the sisters should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading.

(Rule of Saint Benedict 48:1)

SAINT ATHANASIUS,

PRAY FOR US.

Today's photo: Benvenuta. "All absent sisters should always be remembered at the closing prayer of the Work of God ... when they come back from a journey ... they ask prayers for all their faults ..." (Rule of Saint Benedict, 67:2-4).

© Gertrude Feick 2022

Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Year of Saint Joseph

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

Saints: Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

Readings of the Day

RB: Ch 48:10-21 The Daily Manual Labor

Mass: 1 Jn 4:7-16; Resp Ps 34 or Ex 40:16-21, 34-38; Resp Ps 84; Jn 11:19-27 or Lk 10:38-42

Glorify the Lord with me.

JESUS ENTERED A VILLAGE WHERE A WOMAN WHOSE NAME WAS MARTHA WELCOMED HIM. SHE HAD A SISTER NAMED MARY WHO SAT BESIDE THE LORD AT HIS FEET LISTENING TO HIM SPEAK.

(Lk 10:38-39)

For some years, a friend of happy memory would give me a stack of 52 cards for my birthday, one for each week of the year. On each of the cards, usually a mixed collection of postcards, greeting cards and holy cards, was written a quotation. The quotations often, but not always, were all taken from the same book. For example, the first year had quotations from Gertrude the Great's The Herald of Divine Love. Another year had random quotations from here and there. Another year was dedicated to Adrienne von Speyer's Three Women and the Lord (Ignatius 1986). I still have all the cards from each year and today will share words from Three Women and the Lord, fitting for today's memorial. First though, a few words about the Holy Rule. We are once again in another one of my favorite chapters, Ch 48 The Daily Manual Labor. It is in the first verse that Saint Benedict says, "Idleness is the enemy of the soul." Martha is pleased with that. Saint Benedict goes on though: "Therefore, the brothers should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading." Mary is pleased too. 😊

As we contemplate the Lord on His journey it is axiomatic that love inspires His steps. It comes from the Father and goes to the Father and all the time He is in the Father. On His way He meets a woman and she too does something out of love; she takes Him into her house. This woman is like the rod of the tree, and her sister is the fruit ...

Here again there are three aspects to love: the Lord on His journey, Martha's activity and in the background, shining through her, the tranquil being of Martha's sister. This contemplative "being" on the part of Mary of Bethany will turn out to be the highest response that human love can make to the Lord. But this love would be impossible unless it drew its life from the Lord Himself; nor could it issue in any expression without the meditation of Martha's activity, which brought her and the Lord together ...

At first love is as it were latent; the Lord, journeying here and there, is its pure, invisible radiance, and Mary is its pure, invisible expectation. Martha's action releases it into visibility, causing its hidden energy to explode. 

(Adrienne von Speyer, Three Women and the Lord, pp. 85, 87) 

SAINTS MARTHA, MARY, AND LAZARUS,

SAINT JOSEPH,

PRAY FOR US.

Today's photo: Monastery daphne.

© Gertrude Feick 2021