Daily Gospel for Friday, 1 August 2014

Daily Gospel for Friday, 1 August 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
Friday of the Seventeenth week in Ordinary Time 
Saints of the day:
SAINT ALPHONSUS MARY DE LIGUORI
Bishop and Doctor of the Church
(1696-1787)
St. Alphonus was born of noble parents, near Naples, in 1696. His spiritual training was intrusted to the Fathers of the Oratory in that city, and from his boyhood Alphonsus was known as a most devout Brother of the Little Oratory. At the early age of sixteen he was made doctor in law, and he threw himself into this career with ardor and success.
A mistake, by which he lost an important cause, showed him the vanity of human fame, and determined him to labor only for the glory of God. He entered the priesthood, devoting himself to the most neglected souls; and to carry on this work he founded later the missionary Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer.
At the age of sixty-six he became Bishop of St. Agatha, and undertook the reform of his diocese with the zeal of a Saint. He made a vow never to lose time, and, though his life was spent in prayer and work, he composed a vast number of books, filled with such science, unction, and wisdom that he has been declared one of the Doctors of the Church.
St. Alphonsus wrote his first book at the age of forty-nine, and in his eighty-third year had published about sixty volumes, when his director forbade him to write more. Very many of these books were written in the half-hours snatched from his labors as missionary, religious superior, and Bishop, or in the midst of continual bodily and mental sufferings. With his left hand he would hold a piece of marble against his aching head while his right hand wrote.
Yet he counted no time wasted which was spent in charity. He did not refuse to hold a long correspondence with a simple soldier who asked his advice, or to play the harpsichord while he taught his novices to sing spiritual canticles. He lived in evil times, and met with many persecutions and disappointments.
For his last seven years he was prevented by constant sickness from offering the Adorable Sacrifice; but he received Holy Communion daily, and his love for Jesus Christ and his trust in Mary's prayers sustained him to the end.
He died in 1787, in his ninety-first year.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Friday of the Seventeenth week in Ordinary Time
Book of Jeremiah 26: Change the Way You’re Living
1 At the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, this Message came from God to Jeremiah:
2-3 “God’s Message: Stand in the court of God’s Temple and preach to the people who come from all over Judah to worship in God’s Temple. Say everything I tell you to say to them. Don’t hold anything back. Just maybe they’ll listen and turn back from their bad lives. Then I’ll reconsider the disaster that I’m planning to bring on them because of their evil behavior.
4-6 “Say to them, ‘This is God’s Message: If you refuse to listen to me and live by my teaching that I’ve revealed so plainly to you, and if you continue to refuse to listen to my servants the prophets that I tirelessly keep on sending to you—but you’ve never listened! Why would you start now?—then I’ll make this Temple a pile of ruins like Shiloh, and I’ll make this city nothing but a bad joke worldwide.’”
7-9 Everybody there—priests, prophets, and people—heard Jeremiah preaching this Message in the Temple of God. When Jeremiah had finished his sermon, saying everything God had commanded him to say, the priests and prophets and people all grabbed him, yelling, “Death! You’re going to die for this! How dare you preach—and using God’s name!—saying that this Temple will become a heap of rubble like Shiloh and this city be wiped out without a soul left in it!”
All the people mobbed Jeremiah right in the Temple itself.
Psalm 69:5 God, you know every sin I’ve committed;
My life’s a wide-open book before you.
8 My brothers shun me like a bum off the street;
My family treats me like an unwanted guest.
9 I love you more than I can say.
Because I’m madly in love with you,
They blame me for everything they dislike about you.
10 When I poured myself out in prayer and fasting,
All it got me was more contempt.
14 But I will pray to you, LORD,
at a favorable time.
God, in your abundant kindness, answer me
with your sure deliverance.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 13:53-57 When Jesus finished telling these stories, he left there, returned to his hometown, and gave a lecture in the meetinghouse. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. “We had no idea he was this good!” they said. “How did he get so wise, get such ability?” But in the next breath they were cutting him down: “We’ve known him since he was a kid; he’s the carpenter’s son. We know his mother, Mary. We know his brothers James and Joseph, Simon and Judas. All his sisters live here. Who does he think he is?” They got their noses all out of joint.
58 But Jesus said, “A prophet is taken for granted in his hometown and his family.” He didn’t do many miracles there because of their hostile indifference.
Friday of the Seventeenth week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the day:
Saint Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) and Doctor of the Church 
Sermon 51, §19.30 
"Is he not the carpenter's son? "
The Lord Jesus’ response: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house ? » (Lk 2,49) does not state that God is his Father in order to affirm that Joseph is not. How are we to prove this? With Scripture, which continues… “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them” (v.51). To whom was he obedient? Wasn’t it to his parents? So both of them were his parents… They were his parents in time and God was his Father from all eternity. They were the parents of the Son of man; the Father, of the Word and his Wisdom (1Cor 1,24), the power by which he created all things… 
And so don’t be surprised that the evangelists give us the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph rather than Mary (Mt 1,1 ; Lk 3,23). If Mary became mother apart from the desire of the flesh, Joseph became father apart from any carnal union. Therefore he is able to be the point of departure for the Savior’s genealogy even though he is not his father according to the flesh. His great purity only confirms his paternity. His wife, Mary, wished to put his name in first place: “See, you father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety” (Lk 2,48)… 
If Mary bore the Savior apart from the laws of nature, the Holy Spirit was also at work in Joseph and therefore working equally in both of them. “Joseph was a just man,” says Matthew the evangelist (1,19). The husband was just, his wife was just: the Holy Spirit rested upon both these just people and gave a son to both of them. 

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