Daily Gospel for Saturday, 6 September 2014 & Sunday, 7 September 2014

Daily Gospel for Saturday, 6 September 2014 & Sunday, 7 September 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-Second Week in Ordinary Time & Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A
Saints of the Day:
SAINT ELEUTHERIUS 
Abbot
(† c. 585)
Wonderful simplicity and spirit of compunction were the distinguishing virtues of this holy man. He was chosen abbot of St. Mark's near Spoleto, and favored by God with the gift of miracles. A child who was possessed by the devil, being delivered by being educated in his monastery, the abbot said one day: "Since the child is among the servants of God, the devil dares not approach him." These words seemed to savor of vanity, and thereupon the devil again entered and tormented the child. The abbot humbly confessed his fault, and fasted and prayed with his whole community till the child was again freed from the tyranny of the fiend.
St. Gregory the Great not being able to fast on Easter-eve on account of extreme weakness, engaged this Saint to go with him to the church of St. Andrew's and put up his prayers to God for his health, that he might join the faithful in that solemn practice of penance. Eleutherius prayed with many tears, and the Pope, coming out of the church, found his breast suddenly strengthened, so that he was enabled to perform the fast as he desired. St. Eleutherius raised a dead man to life.
Resigning his abbacy, he died in St. Andrew's monastery in Rome, about the year 585.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Blessed Bertrand
September 6: Blessed Bertrand of Garrigue, C., O.P., Commemoration
Today, in the 1962 Dominican Rite Calendar, we make a commemoration of Blessed Bertrand of Garrigua, Confessor, of the Order of Preachers.  Since today is a ferial day, the ferial office is prayed, and a commemoration is made of Bl. Bertrand at Lauds only.
From “Short Lives of the Dominican Saints” (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1901):
Blessed Bertrand was a native of Garrigua, a little place in the South of France, apparently a fief or farm belonging to the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady at Bosquet.  He was brought up by the nuns of that Abbey, and received an education which fitted him for Holy Orders.  From his youth he had had sad and personal experience of the terrible condition to which the ravages of the Albigensian heretics had reduced the fair provinces of Southern France.  In the year 1200, Raymond VI , Count of Toulouse, had overrun the country at the head of an army of these miscreants, directing attacks chiefly on the monasteries and churches.  Blessed Bertrand’s kind benefactresses, the good nuns of Bosquet, had been obliged to seek refuge in flight; and their abbey might have been razed to the ground, had not one of their vassals had the happy inspiration to overturn some beehives which stood on the walls, and the exasperated bees drove the enemy back in confusion.
It was quite natural, therefore, that as soon as he was ordained priest, Blessed Bertrand should volunteer to join the mission then being conducted by the Cistercian monks to reclaim the people from the errors of the Albigenses, and thus become acquainted with our Holy Father, Saint Dominic, who was then taking part in the same holy enterprise.  From the first day that they met, a common sympathy in divine things knit their hearts together.  Thus the ancient chroniclers of the Order speak of Blessed Bertrand as “the beloved companion of Dominic”, “the dearest associate in all his labors, the sharer in his devotions,” “the imitator of his sanctity,” and “the inseparable companion of his journeys”. “By watchings, his fasts and his other penances he succeeded,” says Bernard Guidonis, “in so perfectly imprinting on his own person the likeness of his beloved Father, that one might have said, seeing him pass by, there goes the very portrait of Saint Dominic”.
After making his profession at Prouille in the Feast of the Assumption, A.D. 1217, in company with the other fifteen first companions of the holy Patriarch, Blessed Bertrand was one of those chosen to lay the foundations of the Order in Paris; and two years later we find him again visiting that city, on this latter occasion as the companion of Saint Dominic.  The details of this journey Blessed Jordan learnt from Blessed Bertrand’s own lips.  The two holy travelers, going from Toulouse by way of Rocamadour, spent the night devoutly in that celebrated sanctuary of Our Lady.  The next day, as they travelled along, they overtook some German pilgrims and were miraculously enabled to understand their language.  In an earlier journey made by Blessed Bertrand in the Saint’s company, they remained untouched by torrents of rain which fell around them.
It is related of Blessed Bertrand, that he constantly wept for his sins, for which he was wont to do excessive penance.  Saint Dominic, however, reproved him and enjoined him rather to weep and pray for the sins of others.  And this charge had such an effect on the soul of Blessed Bertrand, that from that time, even if he wished, he was not able to weep for his own sins; but, when he mourned for those of others, his tears would flow in great abundance.  He was accustomed every day to say Mass for sinners; and being asked by one Brother Benedict, a prudent man, why he so rarely celebrated Mass for the dead and so frequently for sinners, he replied: “We are certain of the salvation of the faithful departed, whereas we remain tossed about in many perils.”  “Then,” said Brother Benedict, “if there were two beggars, the one with all his limbs sound, and the other quite disabled, which would you compassionate the most?”  And he replied: “The once certainly who can do least for himself.”  “If so,” said Brother Benedict, “such certainly are the dead, who have neither mouth to confess nor hands to work, but who ask our help; whereas living sinners have mouths and hands, and with them can take care of themselves.”  Blessed Bertrand, however, remained unconvinced.  But eh following night there appeared to him a terrible vision of a departed soul who with a bundle of wood pressed ad weighed upon him after a strange fashion; and, waking him up more than ten times that same night, marvelously vexed and troubled him. Therefore, the following morning he called Brother Benedict to him and told him all that had befallen him in the night; and then religiously and with many tears going to the altar, he offered the Holy Sacrifice for the departed, and from that time very frequently did the same.
After filing the office of Prior of Saint Romain’s at Toulouse, Blessed Bertrand was appointed the first Provincial of Provence, which then included the whole of Southern France.  He devoted himself earnestly to the work of preaching up to the time of his death, which took place at the Abbey of Bosquet, about A.D. 1230. Twenty-three years afterwards, his body was found whole and incorrupt.  The precious remains were sacrilegiously burnt by the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, but the devotion to him has subsisted to our own day.  He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII.
Prayer
O God, in the blessed Bertrand, your confessor, you brought to the holy patriarch Dominic a wonderful companion and follower, grant through his loving intercession for us, that we may so follow in his footsteps as to gain his rewards.  Through our Lord…
SAINT CLOUD
Priest
(522- c. 560)
St. Cloud is the first and most illustrious Saint among the princes of the royal family of the first race in France. He was son of Chlodomir, King of Orleans, the eldest son of St. Clotilda, and was born in 522. He was scarce three years old when his father was killed in Burgundy; but his grandmother Clotilda brought up him and his two brothers at Paris, and loved them extremely.
Their ambitious uncles divided the kingdom of Orleans between them, and stabbed with their own hands two of their nephews. Cloud, by a special providence, was saved from the massacre, and, renouncing the world, devoted himself to the service of God in a monastic state. After a time he put himself under the discipline of St. Severinus, a holy recluse who lived near Paris, from whose hands he received the monastic habit.
Wishing to live unknown to the world, he withdrew secretly into Provence, but his hermitage being made public, he returned to Paris, and was received with the greatest joy imaginable. At the earnest request of the people, he was ordained priest by Eusebius, Bishop of Paris, in 551, and served that Church some time in the functions of the sacred ministry.
He afterward retired to St. Cloud, two leagues below Paris, where he built a monastery. Here he assembled many pious men, who fled out of the world for fear of losing their souls in it. St. Cloud was regarded by them as their superior, and he animated them to all virtue both by word and example. He was indefatigable in instructing and exhorting the people of the neighboring country, and piously ended his days about the year 560.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Saint Regina
Feastday: September 7

St. Regina was a martyr. She was an actual martyr at Autun, France. Legend has her the daughter of a pagan, Clement, and tortured and beheaded during the second century when she refused to marry the proconsul Olybrius. Feast day is Sept 7th.
Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time & Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A
First Letter to the Corinthians 4:6 All I’m doing right now, friends, is showing how these things pertain to Apollos and me so that you will learn restraint and not rush into making judgments without knowing all the facts. It’s important to look at things from God’s point of view. I would rather not see you inflating or deflating reputations based on mere hearsay.
7-8 For who do you know that really knows you, knows your heart? And even if they did, is there anything they would discover in you that you could take credit for? Isn’t everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from God? So what’s the point of all this comparing and competing? You already have all you need. You already have more access to God than you can handle. Without bringing either Apollos or me into it, you’re sitting on top of the world—at least God’s world—and we’re right there, sitting alongside you!
9-13 It seems to me that God has put us who bear his Message on stage in a theater in which no one wants to buy a ticket. We’re something everyone stands around and stares at, like an accident in the street. We’re the Messiah’s misfits. You might be sure of yourselves, but we live in the midst of frailties and uncertainties. You might be well-thought-of by others, but we’re mostly kicked around. Much of the time we don’t have enough to eat, we wear patched and threadbare clothes, we get doors slammed in our faces, and we pick up odd jobs anywhere we can to eke out a living. When they call us names, we say, “God bless you.” When they spread rumors about us, we put in a good word for them. We’re treated like garbage, potato peelings from the culture’s kitchen. And it’s not getting any better.
14-16 I’m not writing all this as a neighborhood scold just to make you feel rotten. I’m writing as a father to you, my children. I love you and want you to grow up well, not spoiled. There are a lot of people around who can’t wait to tell you what you’ve done wrong, but there aren’t many fathers willing to take the time and effort to help you grow up. It was as Jesus helped me proclaim God’s Message to you that I became your father. I’m not, you know, asking you to do anything I’m not already doing myself.
Book of Ezekiel 33:7-9 “You, son of man, are the watchman. I’ve made you a watchman for Israel. The minute you hear a message from me, warn them. If I say to the wicked, ‘Wicked man, wicked woman, you’re on the fast track to death!’ and you don’t speak up and warn the wicked to change their ways, the wicked will die unwarned in their sins and I’ll hold you responsible for their bloodshed. But if you warn the wicked to change their ways and they don’t do it, they’ll die in their sins well-warned and at least you will have saved your own life.
Psalm 145:17 Everything God does is right—
    the trademark on all his works is love.
18 God’s there, listening for all who pray,
    for all who pray and mean it.
19 He does what’s best for those who fear him—
    hears them call out, and saves them.
20 God sticks by all who love him,
    but it’s all over for those who don’t.
21 My mouth is filled with God’s praise.
    Let everything living bless him,
    bless his holy name from now to eternity!
Psalms 95:1-2 Come, let’s shout praises to God,
    raise the roof for the Rock who saved us!
Let’s march into his presence singing praises,
    lifting the rafters with our hymns!
6-7 So come, let us worship: bow before him,
    on your knees before God, who made us!
Oh yes, he’s our God,
    and we’re the people he pastures, the flock he feeds.
7-11 Drop everything and listen, listen as he speaks:
    “Don’t turn a deaf ear as in the Bitter Uprising,
As on the day of the Wilderness Test,
    when your ancestors turned and put me to the test.
For forty years they watched me at work among them,
    as over and over they tried my patience.
And I was provoked—oh, was I provoked!
    ‘Can’t they keep their minds on God for five minutes?
    Do they simply refuse to walk down my road?’
Exasperated, I exploded,
    ‘They’ll never get where they’re headed,
    never be able to sit down and rest.’”
Letter to the Romans 13:8-10 Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 6: In Charge of the Sabbath
1-2 On a certain Sabbath Jesus was walking through a field of ripe grain. His disciples were pulling off heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands to get rid of the chaff, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing that, breaking a Sabbath rule?”
3-4 But Jesus stood up for them. “Have you never read what David and those with him did when they were hungry? How he entered the sanctuary and ate fresh bread off the altar, bread that no one but priests were allowed to eat? He also handed it out to his companions.”
5 Then he said, “The Son of Man is no slave to the Sabbath; he’s in charge.”
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 18:15-17 “If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.
18-20 “Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”
Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time & Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A 
Commentary of the day: 
Catechism of the Catholic Church 
§1166-1167
"The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath"
"By a tradition handed down from the apostles which took its origin from the very day of Christ's Resurrection, the Church celebrates the Paschal mystery every seventh day, which day is appropriately called the Lord's Day or Sunday" (Vatican II SC 106). The day of Christ's Resurrection is both the “first day of the week” (Jn 20,1) the memorial of the first day of creation, and the "eighth day," on which Christ after his "rest" on the great sabbath inaugurates the "day that the Lord has made," the "day that knows no evening." (Ps 117; Byzantine liturgy)  The “Lord's Supper” (1Cor 11,20) is its center, for there the whole community of the faithful encounters the risen Lord who invites them to his banquet ((Jn 21,12; Lk 24,30).
The Lord's day, the day of Resurrection, the day of Christians, is our day. It is called the Lord's day because on it the Lord rose victorious to the Father. If pagans call it the "day of the sun," we willingly agree, for today the light of the world is raised, today is revealed “the sun of justice with healing in his rays” (St Jerome; Mal 3,20).
Sunday is the pre-eminent day for the liturgical assembly, when the faithful gather "to listen to the word of God and take part in the Eucharist, thus calling to mind the Passion, Resurrection, and glory of the Lord Jesus, and giving thanks to God who 'has begotten them again, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead' unto a living hope" (SC 106; 1P 1,3). “When we ponder, O Christ, the marvels accomplished on this day, the Sunday of your holy resurrection, we say: Blessed is Sunday, for on it began creation . . . the world's salvation ... the renewal of the human race .... On Sunday heaven and earth rejoiced and the whole universe was filled with light. Blessed is Sunday, for on it were opened the gates of paradise so that Adam and all the exiles might enter it without fear (Antiochene syriac liturgy).
Commentary of the day:
Saint John Chrysostom (c.345-407), priest at Antioch then Bishop of Constantinople, Doctor of the Church 
Homily 8 on the Letter to the Romans, 8
"There am I in the midst of them"
If I tell you to imitate the apostle Paul, that is not to say: “Raise the dead, heal lepers.” Do better than that: have charity. Have the love that animated Saint Paul, for this virtue is far superior to the power to perform miracles. Where there is charity, God the Son reigns with his Father and the Holy Spirit. He has said: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.” The nature of a friendship that is as strong as it is real, is to enjoy being together.
You will say, are there people who are so miserable that they do not want to have Christ in their midst? Yes, my children, we ourselves. We cast him out of our midst when we fight one against the other. You will say: “What are you talking about? Don’t you see that we are gathered together in his name, all within the same walls, inside the same church, attentive to our pastor’s voice? Not the least dissension in our unity in song and prayer, listening together to our pastor. Where is the discord?”
I know we are in the same fold and under the same shepherd. That only makes me weep all the more bitterly… For if you are calm and quiet at this moment, when you leave the church one person criticizes the other; one publicly insults the other; this one is devoured by envy, jealousy or avarice; another is meditating on revenge, another on sensuality, duplicity or fraud… So have respect. Respect this holy table at which we are all in communion; respect Christ who was sacrificed for us; respect the sacrifice that is offered on this altar in our midst.
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