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Wednesday of the Fourteenth week in Ordinary Time

Commentary of the day
Vatican Council II
Message to Rulers (trans. Walter Abbott)

"As you go, make this proclamation: 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' "

To all those who hold temporal power, what does the Church ask of you today?... She asks of you only liberty, the liberty to believe and to preach her faith, the freedom to love her God and serve Him, the freedom to live and to bring to men her message of life. Do not fear her. She is made after the image of her Master, whose mysterious action does not interfere with your prerogatives but heals everythirig human of its fatal weakness, transfigures it, and fills it with hope, truth, and beauty.

Allow Christ to exercise His purifying action on society! Do not crucify Him anew. This would be a sacrilege for He is the Son of God. This would be suicide for He is the Son of man. And we, His humble ministers, allow us to spread everywhere without hindrance the gospel of peace on which we have meditated during this Council. Of it, your peoples will be the first beneficiaries, since the Church forms for you loyal citizens, friends of social peace and progress.

On this solemn day when she closes the deliberations of her twenty-first Ecumenical Council, the Church offers you through our voice her friendship, het services, her spiritual and moral forces. She addresses to you all her message of salvation and blessing. Accept it, as she offers it to you, with a joyous and sincere heart and pass it on to your peoples!

'We read in the chronicles of the discalced Carmelites that a Father, named Julian of St. Paul, although he had studied but little, preached with such success that the people came in crowds to hear him and were converted, every one of them deriving much fruit from his sermons. Some one having asked what good could be found in this preacher, whom every one went to hear, the following answer was given to him: "We go to hear him, because he is a saint: he sheds tears during Mass, he sleeps little, he always goes about with his eyes cast down, he is always praying, he speaks only of God and of our welfare; and therefore we do what he tells us." John de Avila had then reason to say that the first and most important rule for preaching well is to love God.'

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori