Daily Gospel for Thursday, 16 October 2014

Daily Gospel for Thursday, 16 October 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)
Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Feast of the Church:
Saints of the Day:
SAINT HEDWIG
Religious
(1174-1243)
St. Hedwig, the wife of Henry, Duke of Silesia, and the mother of his six children, led a humble, austere, and most holy life amidst all the pomp of royal state.
Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was the key-note of her life. Her valued privilege was to supply the bread and wine for the Sacred Mysteries, and she would attend each morning as many Masses as were celebrated.
After the death of her husband she retired to the Cistercian convent of Trebnitz, where she lived under obedience to her daughter Gertrude, who was abbess of the monastery, growing day by day in holiness, till God called her to Himself, in 1242.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
SAINT MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE
Virgin 
(1647-1690)
Margaret Mary was born at Terreau in Burgundy, on the 22d July, 1647. Her childhood was unhappy and during her infancy she showed a wonderfully sensitive horror of the very idea of sin.
In 1671 she entered the Order of the Visitation, at Paray-le-Monial, and was professed the following year. After purifying her by many trials, Jesus appeared to her in numerous visions, displaying to her his Sacred Heart, sometimes burning as a furnace, and sometimes torn and bleeding on account of the coldness and sins of men.
In. 1675 the great revelation was made to her that she, in union with Father de la Colombiere, of the Society of Jesus, was to be the chief instrument for instituting the feast of the Sacred Heart, and for spreading that devotion throughout the world.
She died on the 17th October, 1690.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Saint Gerard Majella
Feastday: October 16
Patron of expectant mothers
Death: 1755
St. Gerard Majella, religious, is the patron of expectant mothers. He was born at Muro, Italy, in 1726 and joined the Redemptorists at the age of 23, becoming a professed lay brother in 1752. He served as sacristan, gardener, porter, infirmarian, and tailor. However, because of his great piety, extraordinary wisdom, and his gift of reading consciences, he was permitted to counsel communities of religious women.
This humble servant of God also had the faculties of levitation and bi-location associated with certain mystics. His charity, obedience, and selfless service as well as his ceaseless mortification for Christ, made him the perfect model of lay brothers. He was afflicted with tuberculosis and died in 1755 at the age of twenty-nine.
This great saint is invoked as a patron of expectant mothers as a result of a miracle effected through his prayers for a woman in labor.
Prayer: O Great Saint Gerard, beloved servant of Jesus Christ, perfect imitator of your meek and humble Savior, and devoted Child of the Mother of God: enkindle within my heart one spark of that heavenly fire of charity which glowed in your heart and made you an angel of love. O glorious Saint Gerard, because when falsely accused of crime, you did bear, like your Divine master, without murmur or complaint, the calumnies of wicked men, you have been raised up by God as the Patron and Protector of expectant mothers. Preserve me from danger and from the excessive pains accompanying childbirth, and shield the child which I now carry, that it may see the light of day and receive the lustral waters of baptism through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Letter to the Ephesians 1:1-2 I, Paul, am under God’s plan as an apostle, a special agent of Christ Jesus, writing to you faithful believers in Ephesus. I greet you with the grace and peace poured into our lives by God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.
The God of Glory
3-6 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
Psalm 98:1 Sing to God a brand-new song.
He’s made a world of wonders!
He rolled up his sleeves,
He set things right.
2 God made history with salvation,
He showed the world what he could do.
3 He remembered to love us, a bonus
To his dear family, Israel—indefatigable love.
The whole earth comes to attention.
Look—God’s work of salvation!
4 Shout your praises to God, everybody!
Let loose and sing! Strike up the band!
5 Round up an orchestra to play for God,
Add on a hundred-voice choir.
6 Feature trumpets and big trombones,
Fill the air with praises to King God.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 11:47-51 “You’re hopeless! You build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed. The tombs you build are monuments to your murdering ancestors more than to the murdered prophets. That accounts for God’s Wisdom saying, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, but they’ll kill them and run them off.’ What it means is that every drop of righteous blood ever spilled from the time earth began until now, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was struck down between altar and sanctuary, is on your heads. Yes, it’s on the bill of this generation and this generation will pay.
52 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You took the key of knowledge, but instead of unlocking doors, you locked them. You won’t go in yourself, and won’t let anyone else in either.”
53-54 As soon as Jesus left the table, the religion scholars and Pharisees went into a rage. They went over and over everything he said, plotting how they could trap him in something from his own mouth.
Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the Day:
Baldwin of Ford (?-c.1190), Cistercian abbot 
The Sacrament of the altar, II, 1 (SC 93) 
"And they began to act with hostility toward him"
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3,16). This only Son “was offered”, not because his enemies overcame him but because “he surrendered himself” (cf. Is 53,12). “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end” (Jn 13,1). This “end” was the death he accepted on behalf of those whom he loved; this was the end of all perfection, the end of perfect love, for “there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends” (Jn 15,13). 
This love of Christ's was more stronger in the death of Christ than his enemies' hatred, for hatred could only do what love permitted it to do. Judas - or the enemies of Christ –delivered him up to death through wicked hatred. The Father delivered his Son, and the Son delivered himself to death through love (Rom 8,32; Gal 2,20). Love, however, is by no means guilty of betrayal; it is innocent even when Christ dies of it. Since love alone is able to carry out with impunity whatever it pleases. Only love can constrain God and, as it were, give him orders. This it was that caused him to descend from heaven and placed him on the cross; this it was that shed Christ's blood for the remission of sins in an act that was as innocent as it was salutary. All our thanksgiving for the salvation of the world is thus owing to love. And it constrains us, with inescapable logic, to love Christ as much as people were able to hate him.
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