Daily Gospel for Saturday, 2 August 2014

Daily Gospel for Saturday, 2 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 EUSEBIUS 
Bishop
(† 371)
St. Eusebius was born of a noble family, in the island of Sardinia, where his father is said to have died in prison for the Faith. The Saint's mother carried him and his sister, both infants, to Rome.
Eusebius having been ordained, served the Church of Vercelli with such zeal that on the episcopal chair becoming vacant he was unanimously chosen, by both clergy and people, to fill it. The holy bishop saw that the best and first means to labor effectually for the edification and sanctification of his people was to have a zealous clergy.
He was at the same time very careful to instruct his flock, and inspire them with the maxims of the Gospel. The force of the truth which he preached, together with his example, brought many sinners to a change of life. He courageously fought against the heretics, who had him banished to Scythopolis, end thence to Upper Thebais in Egypt, where he suffered so grievously as to win, in some of the panegyrics in his praise, the title of martyr.
He died in the latter part of the year 371.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Saint Stephen I
Death: 257
A Roman by birth, Pope/St. Stephen was a priest when elected to the papacy in 254. He believed that baptism is a sacrament that need be administered only once, even if heretics had done the baptizing. He and Cyprian of Carthage wrangled over the issue and over the pope's reinstatement of two Spanish bishops, whom a synod had deposed for apostacy. Stephen defended the right of bishops to appeal to Rome and was the first to use St. Peter as an argument for Rome's primacy. Stephen died a martyr in 257, during the persecutions of Emperor Valerian.

Saint Peter Julian Eymard
Feastday: August 2
Birth: 1811
Death: 1868
1811-1868, Founder. Born in LaMure, France, he worked at his father's trade as cutler until eighteen when he went to the seminary at Grenoble and was ordained in 1834. He served as a parish priest for several years then joined the Marists and in 1845 became their provincial at Lyons. He established the Sevants of the Blessed Sacrament whose nuns devoted themselves to perpetual adoration.
Friday of the Seventeenth week in Ordinary Time 
Book of Jeremiah 26:11 The prophets and priests spoke first, addressing the officials, but also the people: “Death to this man! He deserves nothing less than death! He has preached against this city—you’ve heard the evidence with your own ears.”
12-13 Jeremiah spoke next, publicly addressing the officials before the crowd: “God sent me to preach against both this Temple and city everything that’s been reported to you. So do something about it! Change the way you’re living, change your behavior. Listen obediently to the Message of your God. Maybe God will reconsider the disaster he has threatened.
14-15 “As for me, I’m at your mercy—do whatever you think is best. But take warning: If you kill me, you’re killing an innocent man, and you and the city and the people in it will be liable. I didn’t say any of this on my own. God sent me and told me what to say. You’ve been listening to God speak, not Jeremiah.”
16 The court officials, backed by the people, then handed down their ruling to the priests and prophets: “Acquittal. No death sentence for this man. He has spoken to us with the authority of our God.”
24 But in Jeremiah’s case, Ahikam son of Shaphan stepped forward and took his side, preventing the mob from lynching him.)
Psalms 69:15 Don’t let the swamp be my grave, the Black Hole
Swallow me, its jaws clenched around me.
16 Now answer me, God, because you love me;
Let me see your great mercy full-face.
30 Let me shout God’s name with a praising song,
Let me tell his greatness in a prayer of thanks.
31 For God, this is better than oxen on the altar,
Far better than blue-ribbon bulls.
33 For God listens to the poor,
He doesn’t walk out on the wretched.
34 You heavens, praise him; praise him, earth;
Also ocean and all things that swim in it.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 14: The Death of John
1-2 At about this time, Herod, the regional ruler, heard what was being said about Jesus. He said to his servants, “This has to be John the Baptizer come back from the dead. That’s why he’s able to work miracles!”
3-5 Herod had arrested John, put him in chains, and sent him to prison to placate Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. John had provoked Herod by naming his relationship with Herodias “adultery.” Herod wanted to kill him, but he was afraid because so many people revered John as a prophet of God.
6-12 But at his birthday celebration, he got his chance. Herodias’s daughter provided the entertainment, dancing for the guests. She swept Herod away. In his drunken enthusiasm, he promised her on oath anything she wanted. Already coached by her mother, she was ready: “Give me, served up on a platter, the head of John the Baptizer.” That sobered the king up fast. Unwilling to lose face with his guests, he did it—ordered John’s head cut off and presented to the girl on a platter. She in turn gave it to her mother. Later, John’s disciples got the body, gave it a reverent burial, and reported to Jesus. 
Saturday of the Seventeenth week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the day:
Blessed Guerric of Igny (c.1080-1157), Cistercian abbot 
3rd Sermon for the Nativity of John the Baptist ; SC 202 (trans. ©Cistercian Fathers series) 
John the Baptist’s greatness
This was John's greatness, in virtue of which he reached such heights of greatness among the great that he crowned his great and countless virtues… with the greatest of all the virtues, humility. Reckoned as he was the highest of all, he freely and with the greatest devotion preferred to himself the Most Lowly One—and he put him before himself to such an extent as to declare himself unworthy to take off his shoes (Mt 3,11). 
Let others wonder that he was foretold by prophets, that he was promised by an angel and… that he came of so holy and noble parents, even though aged and sterile… that he preceded the coming of the Redeemer… and prepared his way in the desert, that he converted the hearts of fathers to their sons and of sons to their fathers, (Lk 1,17) that he merited to baptize the Son, to hear the Father and to see the Holy Spirit, (Lk 3,22), and finally, that he strove for the truth even to death and, so that he might go before Christ also to the lower regions, was Christ's martyr before Christ's passion. Let others, I say, wonder at these things… 

What is set before us, brethren, not only to be wondered at but also to be imitated, is the virtue of his humility, by which he refused to be regarded as greater than he was, although he could have been… For as a faithful “friend of the Bridegroom”, (Jn 3,29) a lover more of the Lord than of himself, he wished that he himself might “diminish” in order that Christ might “grow” (v.30) and made it his business to increase Christ’s glory by means of his own diminution. Before St Paul he made his own in act and in truth those words of the Apostle: "We do not preach ourselves but the Lord Jesus Christ" (2Cor 4,5).
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