"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."[John 6:68]
Thursday of the Thirty-first week in Ordinary TimeSaints of the day:
St. Bertilla, Abbess (7th century)
Feastday: November 5
SAINT BERTILLA
Abbess
(7th century)
St. Bertilla was born of one of the most illustrious families in the territory of Soissons (France), in the reign of Dagobert I. As she grew up she learned perfectly to despise the world, and earnestly desired to renounce it. Not daring to tell this to her parents, she first consulted St. Ouen, by whom she was encouraged in her resolution.
The Saint's parents were then made acquainted with her desire, which God inclined them not to oppose. They conducted her to Jouarre, a great monastery in Brie, four leagues from Meaux, where she was received with great joy and trained up in the strictest practice of monastic perfection.
By her perfect submission to all her sisters she seemed every one's servant, and acquitted herself with such great charity land edification that she was chosen prioress to assist the abbess in her administration.
About the year 646 she was appointed first abbess of the abbey of Chelles, which she governed for forty-six years with equal vigor and discretion, until she closed her penitential life in 692.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Saint Sylvia
Feastday: November 5
Patron of Pregnant Women
St. Sylvia, Mother of St. Gregory the Great (Feast - November 5) The Church venerates the sanctity of Sylvia and Gordian, the parents of St. Gregory the Great, as well as his two aunts, Tarsilla and Emiliana. St. Sylvia was a native of the region of Sicily while St. Gordian, her husband, came from the vicinity of Rome. They had two sons: Gregory and another whose name has not survived the ages. Gordian died about 573 and Gregory converted his paternal home into a monastery. Sylvia therefore retired to a solitary and quasi-monastic life in a little abode near the Church of St. Sava on the Aventine. It became her custom frequently to send fresh vegetables to her son on a silver platter. One day, when Gregory found himself with nothing to give a poor beggar, he presented him with the platter. St. Sylvia is thought to have gone on to her heavenly reward between 592 and 594. After her death, the holy Pontiff had a picture of both his parents depicted in the Church of St. Andrew. In the sixteenth century, Pope Clement VIII had St. Sylvia inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.
Thursday of the Thirty-first week in Ordinary Time
The Letter to the Romans 14:7 For none of us lives only in relation to himself, and none of us dies only in relation to himself; 8 for if we live, we live in relation to the Lord; and if we die, we die in relation to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord — 9 indeed, it was for this very reason that the Messiah died and came back to life, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. 10 You then, why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For all of us will stand before God’s judgment seat; 11 since it is written in the Tanakh,
“As I live, says Adonai, every knee will bend before me,
and every tongue will publicly acknowledge God.”[Romans 14:11 Isaiah 45:23]
12 So then, every one of us will have to give an account of himself to God.
Psalm 27:0) By David:
(1) Adonai is my light and salvation;
whom do I need to fear?
Adonai is the stronghold of my life;
of whom should I be afraid?
4 Just one thing have I asked of Adonai;
only this will I seek:
to live in the house of Adonai
all the days of my life,
to see the beauty of Adonai
and visit in his temple.
13 If I hadn’t believed that I would see
Adonai’s goodness in the land of the living, . . .
14 Put your hope in Adonai, be strong,
and let your heart take courage!
Yes, put your hope in Adonai!
The Holy Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah accrding to Saint Luke 15:1 The tax-collectors and sinners kept gathering around to hear Yeshua, 2 and the P’rushim and Torah-teachers kept grumbling. “This fellow,” they said, “welcomes sinners — he even eats with them!” 3 So he told them this parable: 4 “If one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, doesn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? 5 When he does find it, he joyfully hoists it onto his shoulders; 6 and when he gets home, he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Come, celebrate with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’ 7 I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who turns to God from his sins than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.
8 “Another example: what woman, if she has ten drachmas and loses one of these valuable coins, won’t light a lamp, sweep the house and search all over until she finds it? 9 And when she does find it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Come, celebrate with me, because I have found the drachma I lost.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is joy among God’s angels when one sinner repents.”
Thursday of the Thirty-first week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the day:
Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), hermit and missionary in the Sahara
Retreat at Nazareth, November 1897
Going after the lost sheep
I was distancing myself more and more from you, my Lord and my life. My life, too, was beginning to become a death, or rather it was already death in your sight. And yet, within that state of death, you upheld me... All faith had gone but my respect and esteem remained intact. You showed me further graces, O my God: you preserved the attraction for study in me, for serious reading, beautiful things, a revulsion for vice and ugliness. I did evil yet I neither approved nor loved it... You granted me that vague uneasiness of a bad conscience, which though it may be asleep is not altogether dead.
I have never felt that same sadness, lassitude, unease except then. Oh my God, was it then your gift? How far I was from doubting it! How good you are! And while, by this invention of your love, you prevented my soul from drowning altogether, you kept my body safe: for if I had died then I should have been in hell... Those dangers of the journey, great and various as they were, from which you enabled me to come out as if by a miracle! That unchanging health in the most unhealthy of places, in spite of such great fatigue! Oh my God, how your hand was upon me and how little I was aware of it! How you protected me! How you sheltered me under your wings when I did not even believe in your existence! And while you were thus protecting me time passed by, you judged that the time was approaching to draw me back into the fold.
In spite of me you undid all the wrong attachments that would have kept me away from you; you even undid all the healthy bonds that would have prevented me from becoming all yours one day... Your hand alone carried out the beginning, middle and end in all this. How good you are! It was needed in order to prepare my soul for truth; the devil is too much master of an unchaste soul to let it enter into truth; you would not be able, my God, to enter a soul in which the demon of squalid passions reigned as lord. But you wanted to enter mine, Oh good Shepherd, and so you cast out your enemy yourself.
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