Daily Gospel for Saturday, 30 August 2014

Daily Gospel for Saturday, 30 August 2014
"Peter replied, 'Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life. We’ve already committed ourselves, confident that you are the Holy One of God.'" (John 6:68-69)
Saturday of the Twenty-first week in Ordinary Time
Saints of the Day:
SAINT FIAKER 
Anchorite
(† c. 670)
St. Fiaker was nobly born in Ireland, and had his education under the care of a bishop of eminent sanctity who was, according to some, Conan, Bishop of Soder or the Western Islands. Looking upon all worldly advantages as dross, he left his country and friends in the flower of his age, and with certain pious companions sailed over to France, in quest of some solitude in which he might devote himself to God, unknown to the rest of the world.
Divine Providence conducted him to St. Faro, who was the Bishop of Meaux, and eminent for sanctity. When St. Fiaker addressed himself to him, the prelate, charmed with the marks of extraordinary virtue and abilities which he discovered in this stranger, gave him a solitary dwelling in a forest called Breuil which was his own patrimony, two leagues from Meaux. In this place the holy anchorite cleared the ground of trees and briers, made himself a cell, with a small garden, and built an oratory in honor of the Blessed Virgin, in which he spent a great part of the days and nights in devout prayer. He tilled his garden and labored with his own hands for his subsistence.
The life he led was most austere, and only necessity or charity ever interrupted his exercises of prayer and heavenly contemplation. Many resorted to him for advice, and the poor for relief. But, following an inviolable rule among the Trish monks, he never suffered any woman to enter the enclosure of his hermitage. St. Chillen, or Kilian, an Irishman of high birth, on his return from Rome, visited St. Fiaker, who was his kinsman, and having passed some time under his discipline, was directed by his advice, with the authority of the bishops, to preach in that and the neighboring dioceses. This commission he executed with admirable sanctity and fruit.
St. Fiaker died about the year 670.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Saint Pammachius
Feastday: August 30
Death: 409
Of the Furii family, Pammachius was a Roman senator and a friend of St. Jerome. Pammachius married St. Paula's daughter Paulina in 385. His denunciation to Pope St. Siricius of Jovinian, who was later condemned at a synod at Rome, and by St. Ambrose at Milan, caused Jerome to write a treatise against Jovinian's teachings that Pammachius criticized, which led to two more letters from Jerome defending his treatise. Paulina died in 397, and Pammachius devoted the rest of his life to study and charitable works. With Fabiola he built a hospice at Porto for poor and sick pilgrims coming to Rome (the first such in the West) and had a church in his house (a site now occupied by the Passionists' SS. Peter and Paul Church). He often tried unsuccessfully, to tone down the polemics of some of Jerome's controversial treatises and particularly the bitterness of Jerome's controversy with Rufinus. Pammachius urged Jerome to translate Origen's DE PRINCIPIIS, and Pammachius' letter to tenants on his estate in Numidia in 401 to abandon Donatism evoked a letter of thanks from St. Augustine. Pammachius died in Rome. His feast day is August 30.
Saturday of the Twenty-first week in Ordinary Time
First Letter to the Corinthians 1:26-31 Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
Psalm 33:10-12 God takes the wind out of Babel pretense,
    he shoots down the world’s power-schemes.
God’s plan for the world stands up,
    all his designs are made to last.
Blessed is the country with God for God;
    blessed are the people he’s put in his will.
13-15 From high in the skies God looks around,
    he sees all Adam’s brood.
From where he sits
    he overlooks all us earth-dwellers.
He has shaped each person in turn;
    now he watches everything we do.
18-19 Watch this: God’s eye is on those who respect him,
    the ones who are looking for his love.
He’s ready to come to their rescue in bad times;
    in lean times he keeps body and soul together.
20-22 We’re depending on God;
    he’s everything we need.
What’s more, our hearts brim with joy
    since we’ve taken for our own his holy name.
Love us, God, with all you’ve got—
    that’s what we’re depending on.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 25: The Story About Investment
14-18 “It’s also like a man going off on an extended trip. He called his servants together and delegated responsibilities. To one he gave five thousand dollars, to another two thousand, to a third one thousand, depending on their abilities. Then he left. Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master’s investment. The second did the same. But the man with the single thousand dug a hole and carefully buried his master’s money.
19-21 “After a long absence, the master of those three servants came back and settled up with them. The one given five thousand dollars showed him how he had doubled his investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’
22-23 “The servant with the two thousand showed how he also had doubled his master’s investment. His master commended him: ‘Good work! You did your job well. From now on be my partner.’
24-25 “The servant given one thousand said, ‘Master, I know you have high standards and hate careless ways, that you demand the best and make no allowances for error. I was afraid I might disappoint you, so I found a good hiding place and secured your money. Here it is, safe and sound down to the last cent.’
26-27 “The master was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live! It’s criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least? The least you could have done would have been to invest the sum with the bankers, where at least I would have gotten a little interest.
28-30 “‘Take the thousand and give it to the one who risked the most. And get rid of this “play-it-safe” who won’t go out on a limb. Throw him out into utter darkness.’ 
Saturday of the Twenty-first week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the day:
Vatican Council II 
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the modern world “ Gaudium et spes ”, § 33-34 (copyright Libreria Vaticana editrice) 
"You gave me five talents. See, I have made five more."
Through his labors and his native endowments man has ceaselessly striven to better his life… In the face of these immense efforts which already preoccupy the whole human race, men agitate numerous questions among themselves. What is the meaning and value of this feverish activity? How are all these things to be put to use?... 
To believers, this point is settled: considered in itself, this human activity accords with God's will. For man, created to God's image, received a mandate to subject to himself the earth and all it contains (Gn 1,27-28), and to govern the world with justice and holiness; a mandate to relate himself and the totality of things to Him who was to be acknowledged as the Lord and Creator of all. Thus, by the subjection of all things to man, the name of God would be wonderful in all the earth. This mandate concerns the whole of everyday activity as well… 
For the greater man's power becomes, the farther his individual and community responsibility extends. Hence it is clear that men are not deterred by the Christian message from building up the world, or impelled to neglect the welfare of their fellows, but that they are rather more stringently bound to do these very things. Human activity, to be sure, takes its significance from its relationship to man. Just as it proceeds from man, so it is ordered toward man. For when a man works he not only alters things and society, he develops himself as well… A man is more precious for what he is than for what he has. Similarly, all that men do to obtain greater justice, wider brotherhood, a more humane disposition of social relationships has greater worth than technical advances.
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