Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

“Woe to you! You build the memorials of the prophets whom your ancestors killed.” (Luke 11:47.)

Saint Cyril of Alexandria comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed at Mass today:

“The Savior of all was rebuking the Pharisees as men who were wandering far from the right way and fallen into unbecoming practices. The band of wicked lawyers was indignant at these things, and one of them stood up to contradict the Savior’s declarations. He said, “Teacher, in saying these things, you reproach us also.” These men subject themselves to blame. Rather, the force of truth showed that they were liable to the same accusations as the Pharisees and were of one mind with them. They are partners of their evil deeds if they consider that what Christ said to the others was spoken also against them.

What wicked act were they guilty of in building the tombs of the saints? Were they not rather doing them a distinguished honor? What doubt can there be of this? It is necessary to see what Christ teaches us. From time to time, the ancestors of the Jews put to death the holy prophets who were bringing them the word of God and leading them into the right way. Their descendants, acknowledging that the prophets were holy and venerable men, built tombs over them, as bestowing on them an honor suitable to the saints. Their ancestors murdered them, but they, believing that they were prophets and holy men, became the judges of those who murdered them. By determining to pay honor to those who were killed, they accused the others of doing wrong. They, who condemned their ancestors for such cruel murders, were about to become guilty of equal crimes and commit the same, or rather more abominable, offenses. They murdered the Prince of life, the Savior and Deliverer of all. They also added to their wickedness toward him other abominable murders. They put Stephen to death, not for being accused of anything shameful but rather for admonishing them and speaking to them what is contained in the inspired Scriptures. Besides this, they committed other crimes against every saint who preached the gospel message of salvation to them.” (Commentary on Luke, Homily 85)

Collect

May Your grace, O Lord, we pray,
at all times go before us and follow after
and make us always determined
to carry out good works.
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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See, I will save my people

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Bishop and Great Western Father of the Church

An excerpt from his Treatise 26 on John

Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

No one comes to me unless the Father draws him. Do not think that you are drawn against your will; the will is drawn also by love. We must not be afraid of men who weigh words but are far from understanding what belongs above all to divine truth. They may find fault with this passage of Scripture and say to us: “How can I believe of my own free will if I am drawn to believe?” I answer: “It is not enough that you are moved by the will, for you are drawn also by desire.”

What does this mean, to be drawn by desire? Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. The heart has its own desires; it takes delight, for example, in the bread from heaven. The poet could say: “Everyone is drawn by his own desire,” not by necessity but by desire, not by compulsion but by pleasure. We can say then with greater force that one who finds pleasure in truth, in happiness, in justice, in everlasting life, is drawn to Christ, for Christ is all these things.

Are our bodily senses to have their desires, but not the will? If the will does not have its desires, how can Scripture say: The children of men will find their hope under the shadow of your wings, they will drink their fill from the plenty of your house, and you will give them drink from the running stream of your delights, for with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light.

Show me one who loves; he knows what I mean. Show me one who is full of longing, one who is hungry, one who is a pilgrim and suffering from thirst in the desert of this world, eager for the fountain in the homeland of eternity; show me someone like that, and he knows what I mean. But if I speak to someone without feeling, he does not understand what I am saying.

You have only to show a leafy branch to a sheep, and it is drawn to it. If you show nuts to a boy, he is drawn to them. He runs to them because he is drawn, drawn by love, drawn without any physical compulsion, drawn by a chain attached to his heart. “Everyone is drawn by his own desire.” This is a true saying, and earthly delights and pleasures, set before those who love them, succeed in drawing them. If this is so, are we to say that Christ, revealed and set before us by the Father, does not draw us? What does the soul desire more than truth? Why then does the soul have hungry jaws, a spiritual palate as it were, sensitive enough to judge the truth, if not in order to eat and drink wisdom, justice, truth, eternal life?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, that is, here on earth. They shall be satisfied, that is, in heaven. Christ says: I give each what he loves, I give each the object of his hope; he will see what he believed in, though without seeing it. What he now hungers for, he will eat; what he now thirsts for, he will drink to the full. When? At the resurrection of the dead, for I will raise him up on the last day.

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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Wednesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

“Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done, without overlooking the others.” (Luke 11:42.)

Saint Cyril of Alexandria comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed at Mass today:

“The transgression of one commandment transgresses the law. It proves the man to be without the law. When anyone disregards those commandments, which especially are important above the rest, what words will he find able to save him from deserved punishment? The Lord proved that the Pharisees merited these severe censures, saying, “Woe to you, Pharisees, who tithe mint, rue and all herbs and pass over judgment and the love of God!” You should have done these things and not passed by the others, that is, to leave them undone. They omitted as of no importance those duties which they were especially bound to practice, like justice and the love of God. They carefully and scrupulously observed, or rather commanded the people subject to their authority to observe, only those commandments that were means of great revenues for themselves.” (Commentary on Luke, Homily 84)

Collect

May Your grace, O Lord, we pray,
at all times go before us and follow after
and make us always determined
to carry out good works.
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 light that illumines all men

Saint Maximus of Turin

Bishop and Father of the Church

An excerpt from An Inquiry Addressed to Thalassius

Wednesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

The lamp set upon the lampstand is Jesus Christ, the true light from the Father, the light that enlightens every man who comes into the world. In taking our own flesh he has become, and is rightly called, a lamp, for he is the connatural wisdom and word of the Father. He is proclaimed in the Church of God in accordance with orthodox faith, and he is lifted up and resplendent among the nations through the lives of those who live virtuously in observance of the commandments. So he gives light to all in the house (that is, in this world), just as he himself, God the Word, says: No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Clearly he is calling himself the lamp, he who was by nature God, and became flesh according to God’s saving purpose.

I think the great David understood this when he spoke of the Lord as a lamp, saying: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. For God delivers us from the darkness of ignorance and sin, and hence he is greeted as a lamp in Scripture.

Lamp-like indeed, he alone dispelled the gloom of ignorance and the darkness of evil and became the way of salvation for all men. Through virtue and knowledge, he leads to the Father those who are resolved to walk by him, who is the way of righteousness, in obedience to the divine commandments. He has designated holy Church the lampstand, over which the word of God sheds light through preaching, and illumines with the rays of truth whoever is in this house which is the world, and fills the minds of all men with divine knowledge.

This word is most unwilling to be kept under a bushel; it wills to be set in a high place, upon the sublime beauty of the Church. For while the word was hidden under the bushel, that is, under the letter of the law, it deprived all men of eternal light. For then it could not give spiritual contemplation to men striving to strip themselves of a sensuality that is illusory, capable only of deceit, and able to perceive only decadent bodies like their own. But the word wills to be set upon a lampstand, the Church, where rational worship is offered in the spirit, that it may enlighten all men. For the letter, when it is not spiritually understood, bears a carnal sense only, which restricts its expression and does not allow the real force of what is written to reach the hearer’s mind.

Let us, then, not light the lamp by contemplation and action, only to put it under a bushel—that lamp, I mean, which is the enlightening word of knowledge—lest we be condemned for restricting by the letter the incomprehensible power of wisdom. Rather let us place it upon the lampstand of holy Church, on the heights of true contemplation, where it may kindle for all men the light of divine teaching.

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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Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

“After he had spoken, a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home. He entered and reclined at table to eat...” (Luke 11:37.)

Saint Cyril of Alexandria comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed at Mass today:

“The Pharisee invites him to an entertainment for his own purpose. The Savior of all submits to this for providence’s sake. He made the matter an opportunity of giving instruction, not consuming the time of their meeting in the enjoyment of food and delicacies but in the task of making those who were assembled there more virtuous. The dull Pharisee himself supplied an occasion for his speech, “because he wondered,” it says, “that he did not wash before dinner.” Did he wonder at him as having done something of which he approved, as being especially worthy of the saints? This was not his view. How could it be? On the contrary, he was offended because although he had the reputation of a righteous man and a prophet, he did not conform himself to their unreasonable customs.

Our argument is this. “O foolish Pharisee, you boast much of your knowledge of the sacred Scriptures. You are always quoting the law of Moses. Tell us where Moses gave you this commandment? What commandment ordained by God requires people to wash before eating? The waters of sprinkling were indeed given by the command of Moses for the cleansing of bodily uncleanness, as being a type of the baptism which really is holy and cleansing, even that in Christ. Those who were called to the priesthood were also bathed in water. The divine Moses bathed Aaron and the Levites. The law thereby declared by means of the baptism enacted in type and shadow that even its priesthood did not have what is sufficient for sanctification. On the contrary, it needs divine and holy baptism for the true cleansing.” (Commentary on Luke, “Homily 83”)

Collect

May Your grace, O Lord, we pray,
at all times
go before us and follow after
and make us always determined
to carry out good works.
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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Light everlasting in the temple of the eternal high priest

Saint Columban

Abbot

An excerpt from An Instruction On Compunction

Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

How blessed, how fortunate, are those servants whom the Lord will find watchful when he comes. Blessed is the time of waiting when we stay awake for the Lord, the Creator of the universe, who fills all things and transcends all things.

How I wish he would awaken me, his humble servant, from the sleep of slothfulness, even though I am of little worth. How I wish he would enkindle me with that fire of divine love. The flames of his love burn beyond the stars; the longing for his overwhelming delights and the divine fire ever burn within me!

How I wish I might deserve to have my lantern always burning at night in the temple of my Lord, to give light to all who enter the house of my God. Give me, I pray you, Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and my God, that love that does not fail so that my lantern, burning within me and giving light to others, may be always lighted and never extinguished.

Jesus, our most loving Savior, be pleased to light our lanterns, so that they might burn for ever in your temple, receiving eternal light from you, the eternal light, to lighten our darkness and to ward off from us the darkness of the world.

Give your light to my lantern, I beg you, my Jesus, so that by its light I may see that holy of holies which receives you as the eternal priest entering among the columns of your great temple. May I ever see you only, look on you, long for you; may I gaze with love on you alone, and have my lantern shining and burning always in your presence.

Loving Savior, be pleased to show yourself to us who knock, so that in knowing you we may love only you, love you alone, desire you alone, contemplate only you day and night, and always think of you. Inspire in us the depth of love that is fitting for you to receive as God. So may your love pervade our whole being, possess us completely, and fill all our senses, that we may know no other love but love for you who are everlasting. May our love be so great that the many waters of sky, land and sea cannot extinguish it in us: many waters could not extinguish love.

May this saying be fulfilled in us also, at least in part by your gift, Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom be glory 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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Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

“While still more people gathered in the crowd, he said to them, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah.”” (Luke 11:29.)

Saint Ephrem the Syrian offers the following insight on this verse from today’s Gospel proclamation:

“The sign of Jonah served the Ninevites in two ways. If they would have rejected it, they would have gone down to Sheol alive like Jonah, but they were raised from the dead like him because they repented. Just as in the case of our Lord, who was set for the fall and the rising of many, people either lived through his being killed or died through his death. They were asking him for a sign from heaven like thunder. Jonah, after he went up from within the fish, was a negative sign to the Ninevites, because he proclaimed the destruction of their city. The disciples were also this way after the resurrection of our Lord.” (Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, 10.)

Collect

May Your grace, O Lord, we pray,
at all times go before us and follow after
and make us always determined
1 to carry out good works.
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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We are made holy by our sharing in Christ’s body and blood

Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe

Bishop

An excerpt from Against Fabianus

Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

In our offering of the holy sacrifice we fulfill the command of our Savior, as recorded by the apostle Paul: The Lord Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said: This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. The same way, after the supper, he took the cup saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you shall proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

This sacrifice is offered, then, to proclaim the Lord’s death; it is offered in remembrance of him who laid down his life for our sake. As he says: Greater love than this no one has, that one lay down his life for his friends. Because Christ died for us out of love, we ask, when we make remembrance of his death at the time of sacrifice, that we too may be granted love through the coming of the Holy Spirit. We pray that by the love which Christ had for us when he braved the cross, we may receive the grace of the Spirit and be crucified to the world, and the world to us. The death Christ died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. Let us imitate our Lord’s death, and also live a new life. Strengthened with the gift of his love, let us die to sin and live for God.

For God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Indeed our sharing in the Lord’s body and blood when we eat his bread and drink his cup teaches us that we should die to the world, and that we should keep our life hidden with Christ in God, crucifying our flesh with its vices and evil desires.

That is why all the faithful who love God and their neighbor truly drink the cup of the Lord’s love even though they may not drink the cup of his bodily suffering. And becoming inebriated from it, they put to death whatever in their nature is rooted in earth. They clothe themselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not indulge fleshly desires. They do not fix their gaze on visible things, but contemplate things which the eye cannot see. Thus they drink the Lord’s cup by preserving the holy bond of love; without it, even if a man should deliver his body to be burned, he gains nothing. But the gift of love enables us to become in reality what we celebrate as mystery in the sacrifice.

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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Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12.)

Origen of Alexandria (part 2 of Pope Benedict’s reflections on Origen) comments on this verse from the First Reading proclaimed at Mass today:

“Jesus endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and therefore is seated at the right hand of God. And those who imitate him by disregarding the shame shall sit with him and rule in the heavens with him, who came not to bring peace upon the earth but upon the souls of his followers and to bring a sword upon the earth. Since “the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart,” this word above all now bestows on our souls the prize of that peace which surpasses all understanding, which he left to his apostles. And it brings a sword between the earthly image and the heavenly in order that when he receives our heavenly image we may be made fully heavenly, if we are worthy not to be cut in two.” (Exhortation to Martyrdom, 37.)

Collect

May your grace, O Lord, we pray,
at all times go before us and follow after
and make us always determined
to carry out good works.
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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My name is great among the nations

Saint Cyril of Alexandria

Bishop and Father of the Church

An excerpt from A Commentary on Haggi

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

When our Savior came, he appeared as a divine temple, glorious beyond any comparison, far more splendid and excellent than the older temple. He exceeded the old as much as worship in Christ and the gospels exceeds the cult of the laws, as much as truth exceeds its shadows.

Furthermore, I might point out that originally there was just one temple at Jerusalem, in which one people, the Israelites, offered their sacrifices. Since the only-begotten Son became like us, and as Scripture says, though he was Lord and God, he has shone upon us, the rest of the world has been filled with places of worship. Now there are countless worshipers who honor the universal God with spiritual offerings and fragrant sacrifices. This surely, is what Malachi foretold, speaking, as if in the person of God: I am a great king, says the Lord; my name is honored among the nations, and everywhere there is offered to my name the fragrance of a pure sacrifice.

With justice, therefore, do we say that the final temple, the Church, will be more glorious. To those who are so solicitous for the Church and labor for its construction, Haggai declares that a gift will be made, a gift from heaven given by the Savior. That gift is Christ himself, the peace of all men: through him we have access in the one Spirit to the Father. The prophet goes on to say: I will give peace to this place and peace of soul to save all who lay the foundation to rebuild the temple. Christ too says somewhere: My peace I give you. Paul will teach how profitable this is for those who love: The peace of Christ, he says, which surpasses all understanding will keep your minds and hearts. Isaiah, the seer, made the same prayer: O Lord our God, give us peace, for you have given us everything. Once a man has been found worthy of Christ’s peace, he can easily save his soul and guide his mind to carry out exactingly the demands of virtue.

Haggai, therefore, declares that peace will be given to all who build. One builds the Church either as a teacher of the sacred mysteries, as one set over the house of God, or as one who works for his own good by setting himself forth as a living and spiritual stone in the holy temple, God’s dwelling place in the Spirit. The results of these efforts will profit such men so that each will be able to gain his own salvation without difficulty.

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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