Daily Gospel for Tuesday, 11 February 2014
“Peter replied, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words
of real life, eternal life.”(John 6:68, the Message).
Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Feast of the Church: Our Lady of Lourdes (1858)
OUR LADY OF LOURDES
(1858)
In the fourth year after the definition of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception, when a certain girl named Bernadette asserted that she
had seen the Immaculate Mother of God many times in a rock cavern, on the banks
of the river Gave, near the town of Lourdes, in the diocese of Tarbes, in
France, so many and great wonders took place that every prudent and devoted
follower of Christ could easily know that the finger of God was there. The most
famous among these is that sick people who took the water from a spring that
had miraculously originated in the grotto were ever so often restored to
health.
Reports of the favors which the faithful were said to have
received in the sacred grotto had become very widespread, and with the
gathering of people increasing daily, the Bishop of Tarbes, after a juridical
inquiry into the facts, permitted the religious veneration of this Immaculate
Virgin to be held in the grotto itself.
Before long a church was built, and innumerable crowds of the
faithful have come there every year, and in time the name of the Immaculate
Mother of God has become renowned everywhere in the world; the more so each
year, as the procession of the most blessed Sacrament takes place, during which
some of the sick who are brought there from all parts of the world seeking
health from God through the intercession of his Immaculate Mother, grow well.
Because of all this, Pope Pius X officially extended to the
Universal Church this feast which Leo XIII had permitted to be celebrated only
in certain places.
Roman breviary
Saint of the Day:
SAINT SEVERINUS
Abbot of Agaunum
(+ 507)
St. Severinus, of a noble family in Burgundy, was educated in
the Catholic faith, at a time when the Arian heresy reigned in that country. He
forsook the world in his youth, and dedicated himself to God in the monastery
of Agaunum, which then only consisted of scattered cells, till the Catholic
King Sigismund built there the great abbey of St. Maurice.
St. Severinus was the holy abbot of that place, and had governed
his community many years in the exercise of penance and charity, when, in 504,
Clovis, the first Christian king of France, lying ill of a fever, which his
physicians had for two years ineffectually endeavored to remove, sent his
chamberlain to conduct the Saint to court; for it was said that the sick from
all parts recovered their health by his prayers. St. Severinus took leave of
his monks, telling them he should never see them more in this world. On his journey
he healed Eulalius, Bishop of Nevers, who had been for some time deaf and dumb;
also a leper, at the gates of Paris; and coming to the palace he immediately
restored the king to perfect health, by putting on him his own cloak. The king,
in gratitude, distributed large alms to the poor and released all his
prisoners.
St. Severinus, returning toward Agaunum, stopped at
Château-Landon in Gatinois, where two priests served God in a solitary chapel,
among whom he was admitted, at his request, as a stranger, and was soon greatly
admired by them for his sanctity. He foresaw his death, which happened shortly
after, in 507.
The place is now an abbey of reformed canons regular of St.
Austin. The Huguenots scattered the greater part of his relics when they
plundered this church.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 8:22 Solomon stood before the altar of Yahweh in the
presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands toward heaven;
23 and he said, “Yahweh, the God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven
above, or on earth beneath; who keeps covenant and loving kindness with your
servants, who walk before you with all their heart;
27 But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven
and the heaven of heavens can’t contain you; how much less this house that I
have built! 28 Yet have respect for the prayer of your servant, and for his
supplication, Yahweh my God, to listen to the cry and to the prayer which your
servant prays before you today; 29 that your eyes may be open toward this house
night and day, even toward the place of which you have said, ‘My name shall be
there;’ to listen to the prayer which your servant prays toward this place. 30
Listen to the supplication of your servant, and of your people Israel, when
they pray toward this place. Yes, hear in heaven, your dwelling place; and when
you hear, forgive.
Psalm 84: 3 Yes, the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest
for herself, where she may have her young,
near your altars,
Yahweh of Armies, my King, and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house.
They are always praising
you.
Selah.
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you;
who have set their
hearts on a pilgrimage.
10 For a day in your courts is better than a thousand.
I would rather be a
doorkeeper in the house of my God,
than to dwell in the
tents of wickedness.
11 For Yahweh God is a sun and a shield.
Yahweh will give grace
and glory.
He withholds no good
thing from those who walk blamelessly.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 7:1 Then the
Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together to him, having come from
Jerusalem. 2 Now when they saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled,
that is unwashed, hands, they found fault. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the
Jews, don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the
tradition of the elders. 4 They don’t eat when they come from the marketplace unless
they bathe themselves, and there are many other things, which they have
received to hold to: washings of cups, pitchers, bronze vessels, and couches.)
5 The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why don’t your disciples walk
according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed
hands?”
6 He answered them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites,
as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far
from me.
7 But they worship me in vain,
teaching as doctrines
the commandments of men.’[a]
8 “For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to
the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other
such things.” 9 He said to them, “Full well do you reject the commandment of
God, that you may keep your tradition. 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father
and your mother;’[b] and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be
put to death.’[c] 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother,
“Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban[d] , that is to say,
given to God”;’ 12 then you no longer allow him to do anything for his father
or his mother, 13 making void the word of God by your tradition, which you have
handed down. You do many things like this.”
Footnotes:
a. Mark 7:7 Isaiah 29:13
b. Mark 7:10 Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16
c. Mark 7:10 Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9
d. Mark 7:11 Corban is a Hebrew word for an offering devoted to
God.
Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the day:
Saint Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) and
Doctor of the Church
Sermon 155, 6
"This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts
are far from me"
“The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you
from the law of sin and death” (Rm 8,2)... Saint Paul says that the Law of
Moses has been given to prove our weakness, and not just to prove it but to
increase it and thus force us to find the doctor...: “Where sin increased,
grace overflowed all the more” (Rm 5,20; cf. 3,20)... But why did the first
Law, written with the finger of God (Ex 31,18), not give us the essential assistance
of grace?Because it was written on tablets of stone, not the tablets of flesh
that are our hearts (2Cor 3,3)...
It is the Holy Spirit that writes, not on stone, but in the
heart; “the Law of the Spirit of life”, written in the heart and not on stone,
this Law of the Spirit of life that is in Jesus Christ in whom the Passover has been celebrated in truth
(1Cor 5,7-8), has delivered you from the law of sin and death. Do you want to
have proof of the manifest and certain difference separating the Old Testament
from the New?... Hear what the Lord spoke by the mouth of one of the
prophets...: “”I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts”
(Jr 31,33). So if God's Law is written in your heart, it does not bring forth
fear [as at Sinai] but pours a secret sweetness into your soul.
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