Daily Gospel for Sunday, 6 September 2015



Daily Gospel for Sunday, 6 September 2015"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."[John 6:68]
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B
Saints of the day:
St. Eleutherius, Abbot († c. 585)

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
Feastday: July 29
Death: 1629
Dominican martyr of Japan. A relative of St. Louis Bertran, this Louis was born in Barcelona, Spain, and became a Dominican. He was sent to the Philippines in 1618 and then to the Japanese mission. He was burned alive with two companions in Omura, Japan. He was beatified in 1867.Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B
Book of Isaiah 35:4 Say to the fainthearted, “Be strong and unafraid!
Here is your God; he will come with vengeance;
with God’s retribution he will come and save you.”
5 Then the eyes of the blind will be opened,
and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped;
6 then the lame man will leap like a deer,
and the mute person’s tongue will sing.
For in the desert, springs will burst forth,
streams of water in the ‘Aravah;
7 the sandy mirage will become a pool,
the thirsty ground springs of water.
The haunts where jackals lie down will become
a marsh filled with reeds and papyrus.
Psalms 146:7 He secures justice for the oppressed,
he gives food to the hungry.
Adonai sets prisoners free,
8 Adonai opens the eyes of the blind,
Adonai lifts up those who are bent over.
Adonai loves the righteous.
9 Adonai watches over strangers,
he sustains the fatherless and widows;
but the way of the wicked he twists.
10 Adonai will reign forever,
your God, Tziyon, through all generations.
Halleluyah!
Letter of James 2:1 My brothers, practice the faith of our Lord Yeshua, the glorious Messiah, without showing favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your synagogue wearing gold rings and fancy clothes, and also a poor man comes in dressed in rags. 3 If you show more respect to the man wearing the fancy clothes and say to him, “Have this good seat here,” while to the poor man you say, “You, stand over there,” or, “Sit down on the floor by my feet,” 4 then aren’t you creating distinctions among yourselves, and haven’t you made yourselves into judges with evil motives?

⁵ Listen, my dear brothers, hasn’t God chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith and to receive the Kingdom which he promised to those who love him? The Holy Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah according to Saint Mark 7:31 Then he left the district of Tzor and went through Tzidon to Lake Kinneret and on to the region of the Ten Towns. 32 They brought him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and asked Yeshua to lay his hand on him. 33 Taking him off alone, away from the crowd, Yeshua put his fingers into the man’s ears, spat, and touched his tongue; 34 then, looking up to heaven, he gave a deep groan and said to him, “Hippatach!” (that is, “Be opened!”). 35 His ears were opened, his tongue was freed, and he began speaking clearly. 36 Yeshua ordered the people to tell no one; but the more he insisted, the more zealously they spread the news. 37 People were overcome with amazement. “Everything he does, he does well!” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak!”
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B
Commentary of the day:
Saint Lawrence of Brindisi (1559-1619), Capuchin, Doctor of the Church
11th Sunday after Pentecost, First homily, 1.9.11-12; Opera omnia, 8, 124.134.136-138 (©Friends of Henry Ashworth)
"He has done all things well" Just as the divine law says that when God created the world “he saw all that he had made and it was very good,” (Gn 1,31) so the gospel speaking of our redemption and re-creation, affirms: “He has done all things well” (Mk 7,37)... As fire can give out nothing but heat and is incapable of giving out cold; and as the sun gives out nothing but light and is incapable of giving out darkness, so God is incapable of doing anything but good. For he is infinite goodness and light, a sun giving out endless light, a fire producing endless warmth. “He has done all things well.”
The law says that all God did was good; the gospel says he has done all things well. Doing a good deed is not quite the same as doing it well. Many do good deeds but fail to do them well. The deeds of hypocrites, for example, are good, but they are done in the wrong spirit, with a perverse and defective intention. Everything God does, however, is not only good but is also done well. “The Lord is just in all his ways and holy in all his deeds. With wisdom you have done them all” (Ps 145[144].17)... Now if God has done all his good works and done them well for our sake, knowing that we take pleasure in goodness, why, I ask, do we not endeavor to make all our works good and to do them well, knowing that such works are pleasing to God? 

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