Daily Gospel for Thursday, 23 October 2014

Daily Gospel for Thursday, 23 October 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)
Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Feast of the Church:
Saints of the Day:
Saint John of Capistrano
Priest
(1386 – 1456)
St. John of Capistrano was born in 1386. He had a vison while a prisoner of war that made him long to enter religion.
In 1416 he joined the Franciscan Order and was ordained in 1420. He began to preach throughout Italy. He was several times vicar general of the Order.
He preached in various countries of Eastern Europe against the Hussite heresy, with great success, until the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. He raised an army to fight the Turks in Hungary, and defeated them in 1456. He died later that year, of the plague.
He was canonized in 1690 by Pope Alexander VIII.
The Weekday Missal (1975)
SAINT THEODORET 
Martyr
(4th century)
About the year 361, Julian, uncle to the emperor of that name, and like his nephew an apostate, was made Count of the East. He closed the Christian churches at Antioch, and when St. Theodoret assembled the Christians in private, he was summoned before the tribunal of the Count and most inhumanly tortured.
His arms and feet were fastened by ropes to pulleys, and stretched until his body appeared nearly eight feet long, and the blood streamed from his sides. "O most wretched man," he said to his judge, "you know well that at the day of judgment the crucified God whom you blaspheme will send you and the tyrant whom you serve to hell."
Julian trembled at this awful prophecy, but he had the Saint despatched quickly by the sword, and in a little while the judge himself was arraigned before the judgment-seat of God.
Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Letter to the Ephesians 3:14-19 My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
20-21 God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!
Psalm 33:1-3 Good people, cheer God!
    Right-living people sound best when praising.
Use guitars to reinforce your Hallelujahs!
    Play his praise on a grand piano!
Invent your own new song to him;
    give him a trumpet fanfare.
4-5 For God’s Word is solid to the core;
    everything he makes is sound inside and out.
He loves it when everything fits,
    when his world is in plumb-line true.
Earth is drenched
    in God’s affectionate satisfaction.
10-12 God takes the wind out of Babel pretense,
    he shoots down the world’s power-schemes.
God’s plan for the world stands up,
    all his designs are made to last.
Blessed is the country with God for God;
    blessed are the people he’s put in his will.
18-19 Watch this: God’s eye is on those who respect him,
    the ones who are looking for his love.
He’s ready to come to their rescue in bad times;
    in lean times he keeps body and soul together.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 12: To Start a Fire
49-53 “I’ve come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront! From now on, when you find five in a house, it will be—
Three against two,
    and two against three;
Father against son,
    and son against father;
Mother against daughter,
    and daughter against mother;
Mother-in-law against bride,
    and bride against mother-in-law.”
Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the Day:
Saint Ambrose (c.340-397), Bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church 
Treatise on St Luke’s Gospel, 7, 131-132 (SC 52) 
“I have come to set the earth on fire"
“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing”… The Lord desires to have us vigilant, always waiting for the Saviour’s coming… But as the gain is meagre and the merit weak when fear of pain is what prevents us from straying, and as love is what has the greater worth, the Lord himself…sets on fire our longing to win God when he says: “I have come to set the earth on fire.” Not the kind of fire that destroys, of course, but that which produces an upright will and perfects the golden vessels in the Lord’s house by consuming the chaff and the straw (1Cor 3,12f.), by devouring all this world’s veneer acquired through the taste for earthly pleasures and the perishable works of the flesh. 
This was the heavenly fire that burned in the bones of the prophets, as Jeremiah declared: “It becomes like fire burning…in my bones,” (Jer 20,9). For there is a fire of the Lord of which it is said: “Fire goes before him,” (Ps 96,3). The Lord himself is a fire, it says: “which burns without being consumed,” (Ex 3,2). The fire of the Lord is light eternal; the lamps of believers are lit at this fire: “Gird your loins and light your lamps,” (Lk 12,35). It is because the days of our life are still night that a lamp is necessary. This is the fire which, according to the testimony of the disciples at Emmaus, the Lord himself set within them: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (Lk 24,32). He gives us evident proof of this fire’s action, enlightening man’s inmost heart. That is why the Lord will come in fire (Is 66,15) so as to devour our faults at the resurrection, fulfil each one’s desires with his presence and cast his light over their merits and mysteries. 
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