Daily Gospel for Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Daily Gospel for Tuesday, 15 July 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)
Tuesday of the Fifteenth week in Ordinary Time
Saints of the Day:
Saint Bonaventure  
Bishop and Doctor of the Church  
(1218-1274)

Sanctify and learning raised Bonaventure to the Church's highest honors, and from a child he was the companion of Saints. Yet at heart he was ever the poor Franciscan friar, and practised and taught humility and mortification.
St. Francis gave him his name; for, having miraculously cured him of a mortal sickness, he prophetically exclaimed of the child, "O bona ventura!"-good luck.
He is known also as the "Seraphic Doctor," from the fervor of divine love which breathes in his writings. He was the friend of St. Thomas Aquinas, who asked him one day whence he drew his great learning. He replied by pointing to his crucifix. At another time St. Thomas found him in ecstasy while writing the life of St. Francis, and exclaimed, "Let us leave a Saint to write of a Saint." They received the Doctor's cap together.
He was the guest and adviser of St. Louis, and the director of St. Isabella, the king's sister. At the age of thirty-five in 1257 he was made general of his Order; and only escaped another dignity, the Archbishopric of York, by dint of tears and entreaties. Gregory X. appointed him Cardinal Bishop of Albano.
When the Saint heard of the Pope's resolve to create him a Cardinal, he quietly made his escape from Italy. But Gregory sent him a summons to return to Rome. On his way, he stopped to rest himself at a convent of his Order near Florence; and there two Papal messengers, sent to meet him with the Cardinal's hat, found him washing the dishes. The Saint desired them to hang the hat on a bush that was near, and take a walk in the garden until he had finished what he was about. Then taking up the hat with unfeigned sorrow, he joined the messengers, and paid them the respect due to their character.
He sat at the Pontiff's right hand, and spoke first at the Council of Lyons. His piety and eloquence won over the Greeks to Catholic union, and then his strength failed.
He died while the Council was sitting, and was buried by the assembled bishops, A. D. 1274.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894] 
All-powerful Father, 
may we who celebrate the feast of Saint Bonaventure always benefit from his wisdom and follow the example of his love.[The Weekday Missal (1975)]
Tuesday of the Fifteenth week in Ordinary Time
Book of Isaiah 7: A Virgin Will Bear a Son
1-2 During the time that Ahaz son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel attacked Jerusalem, but the attack sputtered out. When the Davidic government learned that Aram had joined forces with Ephraim (that is, Israel), Ahaz and his people were badly shaken. They shook like trees in the wind.
3-6 Then God told Isaiah, “Go and meet Ahaz. Take your son Shear-jashub (A-Remnant-Will-Return) with you. Meet him south of the city at the end of the aqueduct where it empties into the upper pool on the road to the public laundry. Tell him, Listen, calm down. Don’t be afraid. And don’t panic over these two burnt-out cases, Rezin of Aram and the son of Remaliah. They talk big but there’s nothing to them. Aram, along with Ephraim’s son of Remaliah, have plotted to do you harm. They’ve conspired against you, saying, ‘Let’s go to war against Judah, dismember it, take it for ourselves, and set the son of Tabeel up as a puppet king over it.’
7-9 But God, the Master, says,
“It won’t happen.
    Nothing will come of it
Because the capital of Aram is Damascus
    and the king of Damascus is a mere man, Rezin.
As for Ephraim, in sixty-five years
    it will be rubble, nothing left of it.
The capital of Ephraim is Samaria,
    and the king of Samaria is the mere son of Remaliah.
If you don’t take your stand in faith,
    you won’t have a leg to stand on.”
Psalms 48: A Psalm of the Sons of Korah
1-3 God majestic,
    praise abounds in our God-city!
His sacred mountain,
    breathtaking in its heights—earth’s joy.
Zion Mountain looms in the North,
    city of the world-King.
God in his citadel peaks
    impregnable.
4-6 The kings got together,
    they united and came.
They took one look and shook their heads,
    they scattered and ran away.
They doubled up in pain
    like a woman having a baby.
7-8 You smashed the ships of Tarshish
    with a storm out of the East.
We heard about it, then we saw it
    with our eyes—
In God’s city of Angel Armies,
    in the city our God
Set on firm foundations,
    firm forever.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 11: The Unforced Rhythms of Grace
20 Next Jesus let fly on the cities where he had worked the hardest but whose people had responded the least, shrugging their shoulders and going their own way.
21-24 “Doom to you, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had seen half of the powerful miracles you have seen, they would have been on their knees in a minute. At Judgment Day they’ll get off easy compared to you. And Capernaum! With all your peacock strutting, you are going to end up in the abyss. If the people of Sodom had had your chances, the city would still be around. At Judgment Day they’ll get off easy compared to you.”
Tuesday of the Fifteenth week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the Day:
Saint Raphael Arnaiz Baron (1911-1938), a Spanish Trappist monk 
Spiritual writings, 25/01/1937
"Since they had not repented"
By what tortuous ways we have to go to attain to simplicity!... Only too often, if we don’t practice virtue it’s because of our way of being complicated, which puts simplicity aside. Very often we don’t come to understand the greatness hidden in an act of simplicity. We search for what is great in what is complicated; we search for the grandeur of things in their difficulty…
Virtue, O God; the interior life: how difficult it is to live that, it seems to me! Now, it isn’t that I should have virtue or that my understanding of God and the life of the spirit should be completely clear, but I have seen that we come to it precisely through its opposite, through simplicity of heart and purity of spirit… Yes, undoubtedly, but to acquire virtue it isn’t necessary to study for a career, nor to devote oneself to profound studies; the simple act of wishing is enough; sometimes the simple desire suffices. Why then do we sometimes lack virtue? It’s because we aren’t simple, because we complicate our wishes, because all that we want is made difficult by our lack of will which lets itself be governed by what is pleasant and comfortable, or by what is unnecessary, and often by the passions… If we were to wish it we would become saints; it is much more difficult to be an engineer than to be a saint.
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