The Daily Gospel for Saturday, January 23, 2016

The Daily Gospel for Saturday, January 23, 2016
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."[John 6:68]
Saturday of the Second week in Ordinary Time
Saints of the day: St. John the Almoner, Patriarch of Alexandria (+ c. 620)

SAINT JOHN THE ALMONER
Patriarch of Alexandria
(+ c. 620)

St. John was married, but when his wife and two children died he considered it a call from God to lead a perfect life. He began to give away all he possessed in alms, and became known throughout the East as the Almoner. He was appointed Patriarch of Alexandria; but before he would take possession of his see he told his servants to go over the town and bring him a list of his lords-meaning the poor. They brought word that there were seventy-five hundred of them, and these he undertook to feed every day.

On Wednesday and Friday in every week he sat on a bench before the church, to hear the complaints of the needy and aggrieved; nor would he permit his servants to taste food until their wrongs were redressed. The fear of death was ever before him, and he never spoke an idle word. He turned those out of church whom he saw talking, and forbade all detractors to enter his house. He left seventy churches in Alexandria, where he had found but seven.

A merchant received from St. John five pounds weight of gold to buy merchandise. Having suffered shipwreck and lost all, he had again recourse to John, who said, "Some of your merchandise was ill-gotten," and gave him ten pounds more; but the next voyage he lost ship as well as goods. John then said, "The ship was wrongfully acquired. Take fifteen pounds of gold, buy corn with it, and put it on one of my ships." This time the merchant was carried by the winds without his own knowledge to England, where there was a famine; and he sold the corn for its weight in tin, and on his return he found the tin changed to finest silver.

St. John died in Cyprus, his native place, about the year 620.[Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]]

St. Marianne Cope

St. Marianne Cope Religious (1838 - 1918) Though leprosy scared off most people in 19th-century Hawaii, that disease sparked great generosity in the woman who came to be known as Mother Marianne of Molokai. Her courage helped tremendously to improve the lives of its victims in Hawaii, a territory annexed to the United States during her lifetime (1898). Mother Marianne’s generosity and courage were celebrated at her May 14, 2005, beatification in Rome. She was a woman who spoke “the language of truth and love” to the world, said Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. Cardinal Martins, who presided at the beatification Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, called her life “a wonderful work of divine grace.” Speaking of her special love for persons suffering from leprosy, he said, “She saw in them the suffering face of Jesus. Like the Good Samaritan, she became their mother.” On January 23, 1838, a daughter was born to Peter and Barbara Cope of Hessen-Darmstadt, Germany. The girl was named after her mother. Two years later the Cope family emigrated to the United States and settled in Utica, New York. Young Barbara worked in a factory until August 1862, when she went to the Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Syracuse, New York. After profession in November of the next year, she began teaching at Assumption parish school. Marianne held the post of superior in several places and was twice the novice mistress of her congregation. A natural leader, three different times she was superior of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, where she learned much that would be useful during her years in Hawaii. Elected provincial in 1877, Mother Marianne was unanimously re-elected in 1881. Two years later the Hawaiian government was searching for someone to run the Kakaako Receiving Station for people suspected of having leprosy. More than 50 religious communities in the United States and Canada were asked. When the request was put to the Syracuse sisters, 35 of them volunteered immediately. On October 22, 1883, Mother Marianne and six other sisters left for Hawaii where they took charge of the Kakaako Receiving Station outside Honolulu; on the island of Maui they also opened a hospital and a school for girls. In 1888, Mother Marianne and two sisters went to Molokai to open a home for “unprotected women and girls” there. The Hawaiian government was quite hesitant to send women for this difficult assignment; they need not have worried about Mother Marianne! On Molokai she took charge of the home that St. Damien de Veuster [May 10, d. 1889] had established for men and boys. Mother Marianne changed life on Molokai by introducing cleanliness, pride and fun to the colony. Bright scarves and pretty dresses for the women were part of her approach. Awarded the Royal Order of Kapiolani by the Hawaiian government and celebrated in a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, Mother Marianne continued her work faithfully. Her sisters have attracted vocations among the Hawaiian people and still work on Molokai. In 2005 Cope was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI.[AmericanCatholic.org] Cope was declared a saint by the same pope on October 21, 2012.

Saturday of the Second week in Ordinary Time
The Second Book of Samuel 1:1 Sha’ul had died, and David had been two days in Ziklag after returning from the slaughter of the ‘Amaleki. 2 On the third day, there came a man from Sha’ul’s camp with his clothes torn and earth on his head. He approached David, fell to the ground and prostrated himself. 3 David said to him, “Where are you coming from?” “I escaped from the camp of Isra’el,” he replied. 4 “Tell me, please, how did things go?” asked David. “The people have fled the battle,” he answered, “and many of them are wounded or dead. Sha’ul and Y’honatan his son are dead too.”

11 Then David took hold of his clothes and tore them, and likewise all the men who were with him. 12 They wailed and cried, and they fasted until evening for Sha’ul, for Y’honatan his son, for Adonai’s people and for the house of Isra’el; because they had fallen by the sword.

19 “Your glory, Isra’el, lies dead on your high places!

How the heroes have fallen!

23 Sha’ul and Y’honatan, loved and gracious while alive,

were not separated even in death;

they were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions.

24 “Daughters of Isra’el, weep over Sha’ul!

He clothed you luxuriously in scarlet

and put gold jewelry on your clothing.

25 “How the heroes have fallen in the heat of battle,

Y’honatan killed on your high places!

26 I grieve for you, my brother Y’honatan,

you meant so much to me!

Your love for me was deeper

than the love of women.

27 How the heroes have fallen

and the weapons of war perished”

Psalm 80:2 (1) Shepherd of Isra’el, listen!

You who lead Yosef like a flock,

you whose throne is on the k’ruvim,

shine out!

3 (2) Before Efrayim, Binyamin and M’nasheh,

rouse your power; and come to save us.

5 (4) Adonai, God of armies, how long

will you be angry with your people’s prayers?

6 (5) You have fed them tears as their bread

and made them drink tears in abundance.

7 (6) You make our neighbors fight over us,

and our enemies mock us.

The Holy Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah according to Saint Mark 3:20 and once more, such a crowd came together that they couldn’t even eat. 21 When his family heard about this, they set out to take charge of him; for they said, “He’s out of his mind!”
Saturday of the Second week in Ordinary Time
Commentary of the day:
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Dominican theologian, Doctor of the Church
Opuscule for the Feast of Corpus Christi (trans. Breviary) 
Jesus gives himself wholly : he gives his own self to eat The only-begotten Son of God, wishing to enable us to share in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, he turned the whole of our nature, which he assumed, to our salvation. For he offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation; and he shed his blood for our ransom and our cleansing, so that we might be redeemed from wretched captivity and cleansed from all sins. 

Now in order that we might always keep the memory of his great act of love, he left his body as food and his blood as drink, to be received by the faithful under the appearances of bread and wine... What could be more precious than this banquet? It is not the meat of calves or kids that is offered, as happened under the Old Law; at this meal Christ, the true God, is set before us for us to eat. What could be more wonderful than this sacrament?... No one is capable of expressing the delight of this sacrament, through which the sweetness of the Spirit is tasted at its source, and the memory is celebrated of that surpassing love which Christ showed in his Passion.
And so, in order to imprint the immensity of this love more deeply in the hearts of the faithful, at the Last Supper, when the Lord had celebrated the Pasch with his disciples and was about to pass from this world to his Father, he instituted this sacrament as a perpetual memorial of his Passion. It fulfilled the types of the Old Law; it was the greatest of the miracles he worked; and he left it as a unique consolation to those who were desolate at his departure. 

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A Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson - Mother Marianne Cope
Mother Marianne Cope
Reverend Sister Marianne
Matron of the Bishop Home, Kalaupapa
To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the devastated face,
The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod,
A fool were tempted to deny his God.
He sees, and shrinks; but if he look again,
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!—
He marks the sisters on the painful shores,
And even a fool is silent and adores.[Robert Louis Stevenson, Kalawao, May 22, 1889]
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