Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

“Yet it is better for me not to do it and to fall into your power than to sin before the Lord.” (Daniel 13:23.)

Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the First Reading proclaimed at Mass today:

“It is better for me not to escape your hands than to sin in front of God.” She refused the proposals she heard because she feared him who she could not see and to whose divine gaze, however, she was very visible. Because she did not happen, in fact, to see God does not mean that God did not see her. God saw what he was building up: he inspected his work, inhabited his temple. He was there; he was answering their insidious trap. If the giver of chastity had abandoned her, chastity also would have been extinguished. Therefore she said, “I am trapped on every side.” But she waited for the one who would save her from weakness of spirit and from the fury of the false witnesses who were like stormy winds. Between these winds and that storm, however, chastity did not suffer shipwreck because the Lord guided the route. She screamed. People came. The process began, and the case came up for judgment. The servants of Susanna believed what the imposter elders said against their mistress. It seemed to them that it would be against their religion not to believe the elders, even though the innocent and stainless life Susanna had led up to this point seemed to offer valid testimony of her chastity. No such chatter had been made on her account. There they were, false witnesses, but God noticed. The household believed one thing; God saw another. But what God saw, human beings did not know, and it seemed right to believe the elders. Therefore she had to die, but if her flesh were to die, her chastity still would have triumphed. Instead, Lord was present to whom she prayed, and he heard because he knew her.” (Sermon 343)

Collect

O God, by Whose wondrous grace
we are enriched with every blessing,
grant us so to pass
from former ways to newness of life,
that we may be made ready
for the glory of the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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If anyone has sinned,we have an advocate with the Father

Saint John Fisher

Bishop and Martyr

An excerpt from a Commentary on Psalm 129

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Our high priest is Christ Jesus, our sacrifice is his precious body which he immolated on the altar of the cross for the salvation of all men.

The blood that was poured out for our redemption was not that of goats and calves (as in the old law) but that of the most innocent lamb, Christ Jesus our Savior.

The temple in which our high priest offered sacrifice was not one made by hands but built by the power of God alone. For he shed his blood in the sight of the world, a temple fashioned by the hand of God alone.

This temple, however, has two parts. The first is the earth, which we now inhabit. The second is as yet unknown to us mortals.

Christ offered sacrifice here on earth, when he underwent his most bitter death. Then, clothed in the new garment of immortality, with his own blood he entered into the holy of holies, that is, into heaven. There he also displayed before the throne of the heavenly Father that blood of immeasurable price which he had poured out seven times on behalf of all men subject to sin.

This sacrifice is so pleasing and acceptable to God that as soon as he has seen it he must immediately have pity on us and extend clemency to all who are truly repentant.

Moreover, it is eternal. It is offered not only each year (as with the Jews) but also each day for our consolation, and indeed at every hour and moment as well, so that we may have the strongest reason for comfort. That is why the Apostle adds: He has secured an eternal redemption.

All who have embarked on true contrition and penance for the sins they have committed, and are firmly resolved not to commit sins again for the future but to persevere constantly in that pursuit of virtues which they have now begun, all these become sharers in this holy and eternal sacrifice.

Saint John sets this before us in these words: My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for those of the whole world.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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Fifth Sunday of LentThe Third Scrutiny

“And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”” (John 11:43)

Saint Gregory of Nyssa offers the following insight on these verses from today's Gospel:

“Here we have a man past the prime of life, a corpse, decaying, swollen, in fact, already in a state of dissolution, so that even his own relatives did not want the Lord to draw near the tomb because the decayed body enclosed there was so offensive. And yet, he is brought into life by a single call, confirming the proclamation of the resurrection, that is to say, that expectation of it as universal that we learn by a particular experience to entertain. For as in the regeneration of the universe the apostle tells us that “the Lord himself will descend with a shout, with the voice of the archangel,” and by a trumpet sound raise up the dead to incorruption — so now too he who is in the tomb, at the voice of command, shakes off death as if it were only sleep. He rids himself of the corruption that had come on his condition of a corpse, leaps forth from the tomb whole and sound, not even hindered as he leaves by the bonds of the grave cloths round his feet and hands.” (On the Making of Man, 25)

By your help, we beseech You, Lord our God,
may we walk eagerly in that same charity
with which, out of love for the world,
Your Son handed himself over to death.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Remember in prayer today all who have been elected to encounter Jesus in Baptism, Confirmation and the Most Holy Eucharist this Easter. To strengthen them as they respond to our Lord's call, the Third Scrutiny is celebrated today.

Lord Jesus Christ,
Who commanded Lazarus to come forth alive from the tomb
and by Your own Resurrection freed all people from death,
we humbly pray to You for Your servants,
who hasten to the waters of rebirth
and the banquet of life.
Do not let the power of death hold back those
who by their faith
will share in the triumph of Your Resurrection.
Who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.

Preface

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give You thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
through Christ our Lord.

For as true man he wept for
Lazarus His friend and
as eternal God raised Him from the tomb,
just as, taking pity on the human race,
He leads us by sacred mysteries to new life.

Through Him the host of angels adores Your majesty
and rejoices in Your presence for ever.
May our voices, we pray,
join with theirs in one chorus of exultant praise, as we acclaim:
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts ...

Glory to You Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning is now
and will be forever. Amen!

We keep the coming feast of the Lord through deeds, not words

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria

Bishop and Great Eastern Father of the Church

An excerpt from his Letter 14: Easter

Fifth Sunday of Lent

The Word who became all things for us is close to us, our Lord Jesus Christ who promises to remain with us always. He cries out, saying: See, I am with you all the days of this age. He is himself the shepherd, the high priest, the way and the door, and has become all things at once for us. In the same way, he has come among us as our feast and holy day as well. The blessed Apostle says of him who was awaited: Christ has been sacrificed as our Passover. It was Christ who shed his light on the psalmist as he prayed: You are my joy, deliver me from those surrounding me. True joy, genuine festival, means the casting out of wickedness. To achieve this one must live a life of perfect goodness and, in the serenity of the fear of God, practice contemplation in one’s heart.

This was the way of the saints, who in their lifetime and at every stage of life rejoiced as at a feast. Blessed David, for example, not once but seven times rose at night to win God’s favor through prayer. The great Moses was full of joy as he sang God’s praises in hymns of victory for the defeat of Pharaoh and the oppressors of the Hebrew people. Others had hearts filled always with gladness as they performed their sacred duty of worship, like the great Samuel and the blessed Elijah. Because of their holy lives they gained freedom, and now keep festival in heaven. They rejoice after their pilgrimage in shadows, and now distinguish the reality from the promise.

When we celebrate the feast in our own day, what path are we to take? As we draw near to this feast, who is to be our guide? Beloved, it must be none other than the one whom you will address with me as our Lord Jesus Christ. He says: I am the way. As blessed John tells us: it is Christ who takes away the sin of the world. It is he who purifies our souls, as the prophet Jeremiah says: Stand upon the ways; look and see which is the good path, and you will find in it the way of amendment for your souls.

In former times the blood of goats and the ashes of a calf were sprinkled on those who were unclean, but they were able to purify only the body. Now through the grace of God’s Word everyone is made abundantly clean. If we follow Christ closely we shall be allowed, even on this earth, to stand as it were on the threshold of the heavenly Jerusalem, and enjoy the contemplation of that everlasting feast, like the blessed apostles, who in following the Savior as their leader, showed, and still show, the way to obtain the same gift from God. They said: See, we have left all things and followed you. We too follow the Lord, and we keep his feast by deeds rather than by words.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

“I knew it because the LORD informed me: at that time you showed me their doings.” (Jeremiah 11:18.)

Saint Jerome offers the following insight on this verses from today’s First Reading:

“It is the consensus of all the church that these words are spoken by Christ through the person of Jeremiah. For the Father made it known to him how he should speak and revealed to him the zealotry of the Jews — he who was led like a lamb to the slaughter, not opening his mouth and not knowing. But the word sin is implicitly added to this last phrase, in agreement with what was said by the apostle: “When he did not know sin, he was made to be sin on our account.” And they said, “Let us put wood on his bread,” clearly referring to the cross on the body of the Savior, for he is the one who said, “I am the bread that descended from heaven.”

They also said “let us destroy (or eradicate) him from the land of the living.” And they conceived the evil in their soul that they would delete his name forever. In response to this, from the sacrament of the assumed body, the Son speaks to the Father and invokes his judgment while praising his justice and acknowledging him as the God who inspects the interior and the heart. He asks that the Father would return to the people what they deserve, saying, “Let me see your vengeance on them,” obviously referring only to those who continue in sin, not to those who repent. Concerning the latter, he said on the cross: “Father forgive them, for they do not realize what they are doing.” He also “disclosed his cause” to the Father, that he was crucified not because he deserved it but for the sins of the people, as he declared: “Behold, the prince of the world came and found nothing against me.” The Jews and our Judaizers believe that all of this was said only by Jeremiah, arguing from prophecy that the people have sustained these evils in their captivity. But I fail to see how they hope to prove that Jeremiah was the one crucified, since such an event is nowhere recorded in Scripture. Perhaps it is just a figment of their imagination.” (Six Books on Jeremiah, 2.)

Collect

May the working of Your mercy,
O Lord, we pray,
direct our hearts aright,
for without Your grace
we cannot find favor in Your sight.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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All human activity is to find itspurification in the paschal mystery

Second Vatican Council

An excerpt from Gaudium et Spes, 37-38.

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Holy Scripture, with which the experience of the ages is in agreement, teaches the human family that human progress, though it is a great blessing for man, brings with it a great temptation. When the scale of values is disturbed and evil becomes mixed with good, individuals and groups consider only their own interests, not those of others.

The result is that the world is not yet a home of true brotherhood, while the increased power of mankind already threatens to destroy the human race itself.

If it is asked how this unhappy state of affairs can be set right, Christians state their belief that all human activity, in daily jeopardy through pride and inordinate self-love, is to find its purification and its perfection in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

Man, redeemed by Christ and made a new creation in the Holy Spirit, can and must love the very things created by God. For he receives them from God, and sees and reveres them as coming from the hand of God.

As he gives thanks for them to his Benefactor, and uses and enjoys them in a spirit of poverty and freedom, he enters into true possession of the world, as one having nothing and possessing all things. For all things are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

The Word of God, through whom all things were made, himself became man and lived in the world of men. As perfect man he has entered into the history of the world, taking it up into himself and bringing it into unity as its head. He reveals to us that God is love, and at the same time teaches us that the fundamental law of human perfection, and therefore of the transformation of the world, is the new commandment of love.

He assures those who have faith in God’s love that the way of love is open to all men, and that the effort to restore universal brotherhood is not in vain. At the same time he warns us that this love is not to be sought after only in great things but also, and above all, in the ordinary circumstances of life.

He suffered death for us all, sinners as we are, and by his example he teaches us that we also have to carry that cross which the flesh and the world lay on the shoulders of those who strive for peace and justice.

Constituted as the Lord by his resurrection, Christ, to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given, is still at work in the hearts of men through the power of his Spirit. Not only does he awaken in them a longing for the world to come, but by that very fact he also inspires, purifies and strengthens those generous desires by which the human family seeks to make its own life more human and to achieve the same goal for the whole world.

The gifts of the Spirit are manifold. He calls some to bear open witness to the longing for a dwelling place in heaven, and to keep this fresh in the minds of all mankind; he calls others to dedicate themselves to the service of men here on earth, preparing by this ministry the material for the kingdom of heaven.

Yet he makes all free, so that, by denying their love of self and taking up all earth’s resources into the life of man, all may reach out to the future, when humanity itself will become an offering acceptable to God.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

“For, not thinking rightly, they said among themselves: “Brief and troubled is our lifetime; there is no remedy for our dying, nor is anyone known to have come back from Hades.” (Wisdom 2:1.)

Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the First Reading proclaimed at Mass today:

“They are corrupt, they do abominable things, no one does what is right.” Listen to these corrupt people. They in fact “have spoken among themselves, reasoning unsoundly.” Corruption begins with bad faith. From there it passes to depraved habits, later leading to the most violent injustice. This is, in general, the ladder one climbs. What, then, did they say among themselves, thinking badly, “our life is short and sorrowful”? From this mistaken conviction proceeds what the apostle also spoke of: “Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we die.” But in the book of Wisdom this wantonness is described more thoroughly: “Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither. Let us leave signs of our enjoyment.” And after this more thorough description of wantonness, what do we read? “Let us kill the poor, just person,” which is as much as to say, “God does not exist.” (Exposition of the Psalms)

Collect

O God, Who have prepared
fitting helps for us in our weakness,
grant, we pray, that we may receive
their healing effects with joy
and reflect them in a holy way of life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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The paschal sacrament brings togetherin unity of faith those physicallyseparated from each other

Saint Athansius of Alexandria

Bishop and Great Eastern Father of the Church

An excerpt from his Easter Letter (Letter 5)

Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Brethren, how fine a thing it is to move from festival to festival, from prayer to prayer, from holy day to holy day. The time is now at hand when we enter on a new beginning: the proclamation of the blessed Passover, in which the Lord was sacrificed. We feed as on the food of life, we constantly refresh our souls with his precious blood, as from a fountain. Yet we are always thirsting, burning to be satisfied. But he himself is present for those who thirst and in his goodness invites them to the feast day. Our Savior repeats his words: If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

He quenched the thirst not only of those who came to him then. Whenever anyone seeks him he is freely admitted to the presence of the Savior. The grace of the feast is not restricted to one occasion. Its rays of glory never set. It is always at hand to enlighten the mind of those who desire it. Its power is always there for those whose minds have been enlightened and who meditate day and night on the holy Scriptures, like the one who is called blessed in the holy psalm: Blessed is the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked, or stood where sinners stand, or sat in the seat of the scornful, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

Moreover, my friends, the God who first established this feast for us allows us to celebrate it each year. He who gave up his Son to death for our salvation, from the same motive gives us this feast, which is commemorated every year. This feast guides us through the trials that meet us in this world. God now gives us the joy of salvation that shines out from this feast, as he brings us together to form one assembly, uniting us all in spirit in every place, allowing us to pray together and to offer common thanksgiving, as is our duty on the feast. Such is the wonder of his love: he gathers to this feast those who are far apart, and brings together in unity of faith those who may be physically separated from each other.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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A Prayer on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph,Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary

God our Father,

You gave to us the just-man Saint Joseph,

who was completely obedient

to the call of the Holy Spirit,

by being spouse of the

Virgin Mother of God

and watching like a father over Jesus,

Your Only Begotten Son.

Gracious Father,

charge once again Saint Joseph,

to watch over us as he watched over

Mary and Your Son, Jesus:

to know Your Will,

to be given the grace to carry it out faithfully, and

the wisdom to respond to Your love for us.

Saint Joseph,

guard and protect us from all that keeps us

from following more closely

Jesus

in the unfolding mysteries

of the Father’s plan for our salvation
and the salvation of the world.

As in all things,

we make this prayer through

our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,

Who lives and reigns with You,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God, forever and ever. Amen.

Solemnity of Saint Joseph,Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“... when your days have been completed and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, sprung from your loins, and I will establish his kingdom.” (2 Samuel 7:12.)

Saint Basil the Great offers the following insight on this verse from today's First Reading:

“However, the tribe of Judah did not fail until he came for whom it was reserved, who did not himself sit upon a material throne, for the kingdom of Judea had now been transferred to Herod, the son of Antipater, the Ascalonite, and to his sons, who divided Judea into four provinces when Pilate was governor and Tiberius held the power over the whole Roman province. But his indestructible kingdom he calls the throne of David on which the Lord sat. He himself is “the expectation of nations,” not of the least part of the world. “For there will be the root of Jesse,” it is said, “and he who rises up to rule the Gentiles, in him the Gentiles will hope.” “For I have placed you for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles.” “And I shall establish,” it is said, “his seed forever, and his throne as the days of the heavens.” (Letter 236)

Collect

Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that by Saint Joseph’s intercession
Your Church may constantly watch over
the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation,
whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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