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Daily Readings for:January 30, 2015
(Readings on USCCB website)

Collect: Almighty ever-living God, direct our actions according to your good pleasure, that in the name of your beloved Son we may abound in good works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

RECIPES

o Poor Man's Feast

ACTIVITIES

o Life of St. Martina

PRAYERS

o Hymn to St. Martina

o Novena for Purification

· Ordinary Time: January 30th

· Friday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

Old Calendar: St. Martina, virgin and martyr

According to the 1962 Missal of St. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Martina who was a Roman virgin born of an illustrious family. Both of her parents died while she was very young. She distributed among the poor the immense wealth which she inherited and so laid up for herself unfailing treasures in heaven. With great constancy she refused to offer sacrifices to false gods. She was tortured in various inhuman ways, she was exposed to the attacks of beasts in the amphitheater, and was finally beheaded about the year 228.

St. Martina
She was a noble Roman virgin, who glorified God, suffering many torments and a cruel death for her faith, in the capital city of the world, in the third century. There stood a chapel consecrated to her memory in Rome, which was frequented with great devotion in the time of St. Gregory the Great. Her relics were discovered in a vault, in the ruins of her old church and translated with great pomp in the year 1634, under the Pope Urban VIII, who built a new church in her honor, and composed himself the hymns used in her office in the Roman Breviary. The city of Rome ranks her among its particular patrons. The history of the discovery of her relics was published by Honoratus of Viterbo, an Oratorian.

— Taken from Vol. I of The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company.

Patron: Nursing mothers; Rome, Italy.

Symbols: Maiden with a lion; being beheaded by a sword; tortured by being hung on a two-pronged hook; receiving a lily and the palm of martyrdom from the Virgin and Child.

Things to Do:

Read about the Roman Church dedicated to St Luke the Evangelist and St Martina.
Pray to St. Martina for the courage to destroy those idols of our affections, to which we are so prone to offer the sacrifice of our hearts. Examine your conscience and try to identify what these idols might be.

The Word Among Us

Meditation: Mark 4:26-34

3rd Week in Ordinary Time

The seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. (Mark 4:27)

In the film Mr. Holland’s Opus, the lead character is Glenn Holland, a composer working on a symphony who takes a job as a high school music teacher to support himself and his wife. At first he is frustrated by teaching and dreams only of finishing his composition. But he gradually learns to love his job and to see how much he has taught his students—and how much they have taught him. The film’s message is best expressed in a verse from a John Lennon song that Holland sings for his deaf son, Cole: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

Unexpected results is also a theme in these two parables. The farmer can’t predict his harvest from just planting seeds. And someone who knows nothing about mustard plants can’t possibly imagine that they grow from such small seeds. But that’s the point. It’s often the case that when we’re working on one thing, God is doing something else in our hearts, creating something new that we can’t recognize until we look back and see it.

This means that you can relax a bit. Of course, try to stay vigilant at avoiding sin and growing in virtue. But let it be a confident, happy vigilance, secure in the knowledge that God will bring growth in the areas he knows you need the most. Just plant your seeds and tend your garden as you think best, and know that your heavenly Father will bring his good work to completion in you (Philippians 1:6).

God doesn’t always show us what he is doing in our lives, but that’s okay. In fact, it can be very comforting. Rather than expending so much energy trying to figure everything out, we can devote ourselves simply to loving God, loving our neighbors, and helping the needy. If we can focus just on this, we can rest assured that our heavenly Father will take care of everything else!

“Lord, thank you that you have an awesome plan for my life—even if I can’t see it all. Help me to trust you day by day. Lord, I place my life in your hands!”

Hebrews 10:32-39
Psalm 37:3-6, 23-24, 39-40