Daily Gospel for Saturday, 28 June 2014

Daily Gospel for Saturday, 28 June 2014
"Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.'"(John 6:68)
The memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Saints of the Day:

SAINT IRENÆUS

Bishop and Martyr

(+ 202)

This Saint was born about the year 120. He was a Grecian, probably a native of Lesser Asia. His parents, who were Christians, placed him under the care of the great St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. It was in so holy a school that he learned that sacred science which rendered him afterward a great ornament of the Church and the terror of her enemies. St. Polycarp cultivated his rising genius, and formed his mind to piety by precepts and example; and the zealous scholar was careful to reap all the advantages which were offered him by the happiness of such a master.
Such was his veneration for his tutor's sanctity that he observed every action and whatever be saw in that holy man, the better to copy his example and learn his spirit. He listened to his instructions with an insatiable ardor, and so deeply did he engrave them on his heart that the impressions remained most lively even to his old age. In order to confute the heresies of his age, this father made himself acquainted with the most absurd conceits of their philosophers, by which means he was qualified to trace up every error to its sources and set it in its full light.
St. Polycarp sent St. Irenæus into Gaul, in company with some priest; he was himself ordained priest of the Church of Lyons by St. Pothinus. St. Pothinus having glorified God by his happy death, in the year 177, our Saint was chosen the second Bishop of Lyons. By his preaching, he in a short time converted almost that whole country to the Faith.
He wrote several works against heresy, and at last, with many others, suffered martyrdom about the year 202, under the Emperor Severus, at Lyons.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
The memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Book of Lamentations 2:2 The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied:
He has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground; he has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground, they keep silence;
They have cast up dust on their heads; they have clothed themselves with sackcloth:
The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled;
My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
12 They tell their mothers, Where is grain and wine?
When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city,
When their soul is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.
13 What shall I testify to you? what shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion?
For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you?
14 Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish visions;
They have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captivity,
but have seen for you false revelations and causes of banishment.
18 Their heart cried to the Lord:
wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no respite; don’t let the apple of your eye cease.
19 Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches;
Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord:
Lift up your hands toward him for the life of your young children, that faint for hunger at the head of every street.
Psalm 74: A contemplation by Asaph.
1 God, why have you rejected us forever?
    Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture?
2 Remember your congregation, which you purchased of old,
    which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your inheritance;
    Mount Zion, in which you have lived.
3 Lift up your feet to the perpetual ruins,
    all the evil that the enemy has done in the sanctuary.
4 Your adversaries have roared in the middle of your assembly.
    They have set up their standards as signs.
5 They behaved like men wielding axes,
    cutting through a thicket of trees.
6 Now they break all its carved work down with hatchet and hammers.
7     They have burned your sanctuary to the ground.
    They have profaned the dwelling place of your Name.
20 Honor your covenant,
    for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the earth.
21 Don’t let the oppressed return ashamed.
    Let the poor and needy praise your name.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 2:41 His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover.
42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast, 43 and when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. Joseph and his mother didn’t know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the company, they went a day’s journey, and they looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances. 45 When they didn’t find him, they returned to Jerusalem, looking for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the middle of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions. 47 All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When they saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you.”
49 He said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 They didn’t understand the saying which he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth. He was subject to them, and his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
The memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Commentary of the Day:

Benedict XVI, pope from 2005 to 2013 

Speech for 30/05/2009 (trans. © copyright Libreria Editrice Vaticana) 

"His mother kept all these things in her heart"

In the New Testament we see that Mary's faith, so to speak, "attracts" the gift of the Holy Spirit. First of all in the conception of the Son of God, a mystery that the Archangel Gabriel himself explains in this way: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Lk 1:35)... Mary's heart, in perfect unison with the divine Son, is a temple of the Spirit of truth in which every word and every event are preserved in faith, hope and charity (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). 
We may therefore be certain that the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the whole of his hidden life in Nazareth always found in his Mother's Immaculate Heart, a "hearth" ever alight with prayer and with constant attention to the voice of the Spirit. The events at the Wedding at Cana (Jn 2,1f.) are an attestation of this unique harmony between the Mother and the Son in seeking God's will. In a situation laden with symbols of the Covenant, such as the wedding feast, the Virgin Mother intercedes and provokes, so to speak, a sign of superabundant grace: the "good wine" that refers to the mystery of Christ's Blood. This leads us directly to Calvary, where Mary stands beneath the Cross together with the other women and with the Apostle John. The Mother and the disciple receive spiritually the testament of Jesus: his last words and his last breath, in which he begins to pour out the Spirit; and they receive the silent cry of his Blood, poured out entirely for us (cf. Jn 19:25-34). Mary knew where that Blood came from: it had been formed within her by the power of the Holy Spirit and she knew that this same creative "power" was to raise Jesus, as he had promised. 
Thus Mary's faith sustained that of the disciples until their encounter with the Risen Lord and continued to accompany them also after his Ascension into Heaven, as they waited for "[Baptism] in the Holy Spirit" (cf. Acts 1:5)... This is why, for all the generations, Mary is an image and model of the Church which together with the Spirit journeys through time, invoking Jesus' glorious return: "Come, Lord Jesus" (cf. Rv 22:17, 20).

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