Catholic Caucus: Daily Mass Readings, 01-04-05, Memorial, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

January 4, 2005
Memorial of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, religious

Psalm: Tuesday 4

Reading I
1 Jn 4:7-10

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only-begotten Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 72:1-2, 3-4, 7-8

R (see 11) Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
O God, with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king(s son;
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.
R Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
The mountains shall yield peace for the people,
and the hills justice.
He shall defend the afflicted among the people,
save the children of the poor.
R Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
Justice shall flower in his days,
and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
May he rule from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
R Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.

Gospel
Mk 6:34-44

When Jesus saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and he began to teach them many things.
By now it was already late and his disciples approached him and said,
(This is a deserted place and it is already very late.
Dismiss them so that they can go
to the surrounding farms and villages
and buy themselves something to eat.)
He said to them in reply,
(Give them some food yourselves.)
But they said to him,
(Are we to buy two hundred days( wages worth of food
and give it to them to eat?)
He asked them, (How many loaves do you have? Go and see.(
And when they had found out they said,
(Five loaves and two fish.)
So he gave orders to have them sit down in groups on the green grass.
The people took their places in rows by hundreds and by fifties.
Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples
to set before the people;
he also divided the two fish among them all.
They all ate and were satisfied.
And they picked up twelve wicker baskets full of fragments
and what was left of the fish.
Those who ate of the loaves were five thousand men.

From: 1 John 4:7-10

God is Love. Brotherly Love, the Mark of Christians

[7] Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and he who
loves is born of God and knows God. [8] He who does not love does not
know God; for God is love. [9] In this the love of God was made
manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that
we might live through him. [10] In this is love, not that we loved God
but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our
sins.

Commentary:

7-21. St John now expands on the second aspect of the divine
commandment (cf. 1 Jn 3:23)--brotherly love. The argument is along
these lines: God is love and it was he who loved us to begin with (vv.
7-10); brotherly love is the response which God's love calls for (vv.
11 16); when our love is perfect, we feel no fear (vv. 17-18);
brotherly love is an expression of love of God (vv. 19-21).

This is not tiresome repetition of the ideas already discussed (2:7-11;
3:11-18): contrary to the false teaching which is beginning to be
spread, charity is the sure mark, the way to recognize the genuine
disciple.

St Jerome hands down a tradition concerning the last years of St John's
life: when he was already a very old man, he used always say the same
thing to the faithful: "My children, love one another!" On one
occasion, he was asked why he insisted on this: "to which he replied
with these words worthy of John: 'Because it is the Lord's
commandment, and if you keep just this commandment, it will suffice"'
("Comm. in Gal.", III, 6, 10).

7. The divine attributes, God's perfections, which he has to the
highest degree, are the cause of our virtues: for example, because God
is holy, we have been given a capacity to be holy. Similarly, because
God is love, we can love. True love, true charity, comes from God.

8. "God is love": without being strictly speaking a definition (in 1:5
he says "God is light"), this statement reveals to us one of the most
consoling attributes of God: "Even if nothing more were to be said in
praise of love in all the pages of this epistle", St Augustine
explains, "even if nothing more were to be said in all the pages of
Sacred Scripture, and all we heard from the mouth of the Holy Spirit
were that 'God is love', there would be nothing else we would need to
look for" ("In Epist. Ioann. Ad Parthos", 7, 5).

God's love for men was revealed in Creation and in the preternatural
and supernatural gifts he gave man prior to sin; after man's sin, God's
love is to be seen, above all, in forgiveness and redemption (as St
John goes on to say: v. 9), for the work of salvation is the product
of God's mercy: "It is precisely because sin exists in the world, which
'God so loved . . . that he gave his only Son' (Jn 3:16), that God, who
'is love' (1 Jn 4:8), "cannot reveal himself other than as mercy". This
corresponds not only to the most profound truth of that love which God
is, but also to the whole interior truth of man and of the world which
is man's temporary homeland" (John Paul II, "Dives In Misericordia",
13).

9. God has revealed his love to men by sending his own Son; that is, it
is not only Christ's teachings which speak to us of God's love, but,
above all, his presence among us: Christ himself is the fullness of
revelation of God (cf. Jn 1:18; Heb 1:1) and of his love for men. "The
source of all grace is God's love for us, and he has revealed this not
just in words but also in deeds. It was divine love which led the
second Person of the most holy Trinity, the Word, the Son of God the
Father, to take on our flesh, our human condition, everything except
sin. And the Word, the Word of God, is the Word from which Love
proceeds (cf. "Summa Theologiae", I, q. 43, a. 5, quoting St Augustine,
"De Trinitate", IX, 10).

"Love is revealed to us in the incarnation, the redemptive journey
which Jesus Christ made on our earth, culminating in the supreme
sacrifice of the cross. And on the cross it showed itself through a new
sign: 'One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once
there came out blood and water' (Jn 19:34). This water and blood of
Jesus speaks to us of a self-sacrifice brought to the last extreme: 'It
is finished' (Jn 19:30)--everything is achieved, for the sake of love"
([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 162).

"Among us": it is difficult to convey in English everything the Greek
contains. The Greek expression means that the love of God was shown to
those who witnessed our Lord's life (the Apostles) and to all other
Christians, whose participate in this apostolic witness (cf. note on 1
Jn 1:1-3; this idea is repeated in vv. 14 and 16). But it also means
"within us", inside us, in our hearts, insofar as we partake of God's
own life by means of sanctifying grace: every Christian is a witness to
the fact that Christ has come so that men "may have life, and have it
abundantly" (Jn 10:10).

10. Given that love is an attribute of God (v. 8), men have a capacity
to love insofar as they share in God's qualities. So, the initiative
always lies with God.

When explaining in what love consists. St John points to its highest
form of expression: "he sent (his Son) to be the expiation of our sins"
(cf. 2:2). Similar turns of phrase occur throughout the letter: the
Son of God manifested himself "to destroy the works of the devil"
(3:8); "he laid down his life for us" (3:16). All these statements show
that: 1) Christ's death is a SACRIFICE in the strict sense of the word,
the most sublime act of recognition of God's sovereignty; 2) it is an
atoning sacrifice, because it obtains God's pardon for the sins of men;
3) it is the supreme act of God's love, so much so that St John
actually says, "in this is love."

What is amazing, St Alphonsus teaches, "is that he could have saved us
without suffering or dying and yet he chose a life of toil and
humiliation, and a bitter and ignominious death, even death on a cross,
something reserved for the very worst offenders. And why was it that,
when he could have redeemed us without suffering, he chose to embrace
death on the Cross? To show us how much he loved us" ("The Love of
Jesus Christ", chap. 1).

Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.

Reprinted with permission from

From: Mark 6:34-44

First Miracle of the Loaves

[34] As he (Jesus) landed he saw a great throng, and he had compassion
on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began
to teach them many things. [35] And when it grew late, his disciples
came to him and said, "This is a lonely place, and the hour is now
late; [36] send them away, to go into the country and villages round
about and buy themselves something to eat." [37] But he answered them,
"You give them something to eat." And they said to him, "Shall we go
and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to
eat?" [38] And he said to them, "How many loaves have you? Go and see."
And when they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish." [39] Then
he commanded them all to sit down by companies upon the green grass.
[40] So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. [41] And
taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and
blessed, and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set
before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. [42] And
they all ate and were satisfied. [43] And they took up twelve baskets
full of broken pieces and of the fish. [44] And those who ate the
loaves were five thousand men.

Commentary:

34. Our Lord had planned a period of rest, for himself and his
disciples, from the pressures of the apostolate (Mk 6:31-32). And he
has to change his plans because so many people come, eager to hear him
speak. Not only is he not annoyed with them: he feels compassion on
seeing their spiritual need. "My people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge" (Hos 4:6). They need instruction and our Lord wants to meet
this need by preaching to them. "Jesus is moved by hunger and sorrow,
but what moves him most is ignorance" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing
By", 109).

37. A denarius was what an artisan earned for a normal day's work. The
disciples must, therefore, have thought it little less than impossible
to fulfill the Master's command, because they would not have had this
much money.

41. This miracle is a figure of the Holy Eucharist: Christ performed it
shortly before promising that sacrament (cf. Jn 6:1ff), and the Fathers
have always so interpreted it. In this miracle Jesus shows his
supernatural power and his love for men--the same power and love as
make it possible for Christ's one and only body to be present in the
eucharistic species to nourish the faithful down the centuries. In the
words of the sequence composed by St Thomas Aquinas for the Mass of
Corpus Christi: "Sumit unus, sumunt mille, quantum isti, tantum ille,
nec sumptus consumitur" (Be one or be a thousand fed, they eat alike
that living bread which, still received, ne'er wastes away).

This gesture of our Lord--looking up to heaven--is recalled in the
Roman canon of the Mass: "Et elevatis oculis in caelum, ad Te Deum
Patrem suum omnipotentem" (and looking up to heaven, to you, his
almighty Father). At this point in the Mass we are preparing to be
present at a miracle greater than that of the multiplication of the
loaves--the changing of bread into his own body, offered as food for
all men.

42. Christ wanted the left-overs to be collected (cf. Jn 6:12) to teach
us not to waste things God gives us, and also to have them as a
tangible proof of the miracle.

The collecting of the leftovers is a way of showing us the value of
little things done out of love for God--orderliness, cleanliness,
finishing things completely. It also reminds the sensitive believer of
the extreme care that must be taken of the eucharistic species. Also,
the generous scale of the miracle is an expression of the largesse of
the messianic times. The Fathers recall that Moses distributed the
manna for each to eat as much as he needed but some left part of it for
the next day and it bred worms (Ex 16:16-20). Elijah gave the widow
just enough to meet her needs (1 Kings 17:13-16). Jesus, on the other
hand, gives generously and abundantly.

American Cathlic's Saint of the Day

January 4, 2005

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

(1774-1821)

Mother Seton is one of the keystones of the American Catholic Church. She founded the first American religious community for women, the Sisters of Charity. She opened the first American parish school and established the first American Catholic orphanage. All this she did in the span of 46 years while raising her five children.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton is a true daughter of the American Revolution, born August 28, 1774, just two years before the Declaration of Independence. By birth and marriage, she was linked to the first families of New York and enjoyed the fruits of high society. Reared a staunch Episcopalian by her mother and stepmother, she learned the value of prayer, Scripture and a nightly examination of conscience. Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, did not have much use for churches but was a great humanitarian, teaching his daughter to love and serve others.

The early deaths of her mother in 1777 and her baby sister in 1778 gave Elizabeth a feel for eternity and the temporariness of the pilgrim life on earth. Far from being brooding and sullen, she faced each new “holocaust,” as she put it, with hopeful cheerfulness.

At 19, Elizabeth was the belle of New York and married a handsome, wealthy businessman, William Magee Seton. They had five children before his business failed and he died of tuberculosis. At 30, Elizabeth was widowed, penniless, with five small children to support.

While in Italy with her dying husband, Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in action through family friends. Three basic points led her to become a Catholic: belief in the Real Presence, devotion to the Blessed Mother and conviction that the Catholic Church led back to the apostles and to Christ. Many of her family and friends rejected her when she became a Catholic in March 1805.

To support her children, she opened a school in Baltimore. From the beginning, her group followed the lines of a religious community, which was officially founded in 1809.

The thousand or more letters of Mother Seton reveal the development of her spiritual life from ordinary goodness to heroic sanctity. She suffered great trials of sickness, misunderstanding, the death of loved ones (her husband and two young daughters) and the heartache of a wayward son. She died January 4, 1821, and became the first American-born citizen to be beatified (1963) and then canonized (1975). She is buried in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Comment:

Elizabeth Seton had no extraordinary gifts. She was not a mystic or stigmatic. She did not prophesy or speak in tongues. She had two great devotions: abandonment to the will of God and an ardent love for the Blessed Sacrament. She wrote to a friend, Julia Scott, that she would prefer to exchange the world for a “cave or a desert.” “But God has given me a great deal to do, and I have always and hope always to prefer his will to every wish of my own.” Her brand of sanctity is open to everyone if we love God and do his will.

Quote:

Elizabeth Seton told her sisters, “The first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills it; and thirdly, to do it because it is his will.”

Homily of the Day

Homily of the Day

Title:	Who Could Love That? God!
Author:	Monsignor Dennis Clark, Ph.D.
Date:	Tuesday, January 4, 2005

1 John 4:7-10; Mark 6:34-44

Most of us don’t have to dig very deep or think very long before coming up with multiple memories of our foolish choices, egregious errors, false certitudes, and outright ugly sins of various sizes and dimensions. In considerable discomfort we ask ourselves, “What did I have in my head? How could I have done that? If only those people could come back to life so I could tell them how sorry I am.”

We’ve all had that experience many times, if we have even the slightest degree of self-awareness and good conscience. Remembering it helps us see how utterly astonishing are the love and the affection that God lavishes upon us, even on the worst of our days. How can we explain it? Surely not from any merit of ours.

The fact is that God loves us because that’s who God is, Love Himself. When we get clear about that, two parallel emotions should well up in our hearts: relief and then gratitude. And that faces us with a challenge. How do we give adequate expression to our gratitude? Words alone aren’t enough.

The answer is elegantly simple: Do for one another what God does for us, namely, love one another without counting the cost. It’s all that God asks in return for His loving us, and doing it, following God’s example, will transform us more and more fully into God’s own likeness.

The Word Among Us

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Meditation
1 John 4:7-10

Enthralled by Jesus’ message, thousands of people sat on the grass listening to him for hours. They were so taken by him that they even forgot about eating (Mark 6:35-36)! Because it was so late, Jesus found it unacceptable to send them all away to find food. So he provided it for them instead (6:41-42). The miracle of the loaves and fishes proved to all those present that this was no ordinary teacher. Feeding on miraculously multiplied food—as well as Jesus’ words of divine wisdom—the people were nourished both in body and in soul.

We may not be able to sit in a grassy field and eat with Jesus today, but he still cares for us just as intimately. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, he is with us to teach us in Scripture and to nourish us with his body and blood. There at the altar, in the breaking of the bread, we experience a miracle over and over again, and with our “Amen,” we affirm our belief and our trust in his love and provision for us.

How can we emulate this generous gift of our Savior? If God so loved us, shouldn’t we also love one another (1 John 4:11)? Imagine, for instance, that at every Mass Jesus gives you your own “loaf of bread.” It’s his love, his power, and his grace, all of which you received at Communion. Now imagine that he points to the world around you and says, “You give them something to eat” (Mark 6:37).

Unlike the stunned disciples to whom Jesus first spoke these words, you don’t have to feel powerless. Christ is in you! From the time you leave church, you’ll find countless opportunities to give away what you’ve received: by sharing a kind word with a frustrated neighbor, by extending a comforting hand to a lonely coworker, by giving up some of your “down time” to help a friend in need, or just by loving and serving the people in your home. And the most amazing thing is that no matter how much you give away, you will never be lacking for yourself. In fact, the more you give, the more you receive. So let Jesus feed you, and then go out and give it away!

“Jesus, thank you for your gift of the Eucharist. Empower me to serve others with the compassion, generosity, and love that you give so freely.”

Mk 6:34-44
#	Douay-Rheims	Vulgate
34	And Jesus going out saw a great multitude: and he had compassion on them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.	et exiens vidit multam turbam Iesus et misertus est super eos quia erant sicut oves non habentes pastorem et coepit docere illos multa
35	And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came to him, saying: This is a desert place, and the hour is now past:	et cum iam hora multa fieret accesserunt discipuli eius dicentes desertus est locus hic et iam hora praeterivit
36	Send them away, that going into the next villages and towns, they may buy themselves meat to eat.	dimitte illos ut euntes in proximas villas et vicos emant sibi cibos quos manducent
37	And he answering said to them: Give you them to eat. And they said to him: Let us go and buy bread for two hundred pence, and we will give them to eat.	et respondens ait illis date illis manducare et dixerunt ei euntes emamus denariis ducentis panes et dabimus eis manducare
38	And he saith to them: How many loaves have you? go and see. And when they knew, they say: Five, and two fishes.	et dicit eis quot panes habetis ite et videte et cum cognovissent dicunt quinque et duos pisces
39	And he commanded them that they should make them all sit down by companies upon the green grass.	et praecepit illis ut accumbere facerent omnes secundum contubernia super viride faenum
40	And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds and by fifties.	et discubuerunt in partes per centenos et per quinquagenos
41	And when he had taken the five loaves, and the two fishes: looking up to heaven, he blessed, and broke the loaves, and gave to his disciples to set before them: and the two fishes he divided among them all.	et acceptis quinque panibus et duobus piscibus intuens in caelum benedixit et fregit panes et dedit discipulis suis ut ponerent ante eos et duos pisces divisit omnibus
42	And they all did eat, and had their fill.	et manducaverunt omnes et saturati sunt
43	And they took up the leavings, twelve full baskets of fragments, and of the fishes.	et sustulerunt reliquias fragmentorum duodecim cofinos plenos et de piscibus
44	And they that did eat, were five thousand men.	erant autem qui manducaverunt quinque milia virorum

One Bread, One Body

<< Tuesday, January 4, 2005 >>

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

1 John 4:7-10

Psalm 72

Mark 6:34-44

View Readings

“MY THREE SONS”

“Love, then, consists in this...that [God] has loved us and has sent His Son as an Offering for our sins.” —1 John 4:10

I have three sons, and many of you have sons as well. When I look at God’s love for us through His selfless offering of His own Son for our sins (1 Jn 4:10), I realize how far short I fall of the definition of love that God the Father reveals. I can’t even conceive of a situation in which I would love a group of sinful and rebellious people enough to let one of my sons be born in a cave and placed in a manger, or be beaten and killed on their behalf.

“Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him may not die but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). “Love, then, consists in this: not that we have loved God but that He has loved us and has sent His Son as an Offering for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). “God is Love” (1 Jn 4:8), and “love is of God” (1 Jn 4:7). God says to you: “With age-old love I have loved you” (Jer 31:3). He wants you to “grasp fully...the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, and experience this love which surpasses all knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19).

As the last week of the Christmas season concludes, look again at the Christ-Child, God’s only Son, Who is the incarnate Love of God poured out into the world and into our hearts (Rm 5:5). “Live in His love” (Jn 15:10).

Prayer: “Father, how wonderful Your care for us! How boundless Your merciful love! To ransom a slave You gave away Your Son” (from the Easter Vigil exultet).

Promise: “Everyone who loves is begotten of God and has knowledge of God.” —1 Jn 4:7

Praise: St. Elizabeth educated countless children because of her faith in and love for one Child.

FEAST OF THE DAY

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was born in 1774 and was raised in the
Episcopalian religion. She was a daughter in one of the more
important families of New York and enjoyed many of the fruits that
wealth and high social class had to offer. Elizabeth developed her
personal holiness after the example of her mother and later her
stepmother. She learned the value of personal prayer, read regularly
from Scripture and practiced a nightly examination of conscience.
From her father, a doctor, Elizabeth learned how to love and serve
others.

At the age of nineteen, Elizabeth married a wealthy businessman,
William Seton. The marriage bore five children before William was
killed by tuberculosis. While William was battling the disease, the
family traveled to Italy and stayed with a Catholic family. By
witnessing this family, Elizabeth began to feel drawn to Catholicism.
In March 1805, a year after the death of her husband, Elizabeth was
welcomed into the Church and faced rejection from much of the
society that she had grown up with.

In order to support herself and her children, Elizabeth opened a
school in Baltimore, Maryland and began to form a group that was
later to become a new religious community. The community was
recognized in 1812 and became the first community of religious
women in the United States. Elizabeth died in 1821 and was
beatified in 1963. In 1975, Elizabeth was canonized and became the
first American-born citizen to be canonized.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God;
secondly, to do it in the manner he wills it; and thirdly to do it
because it is his will. -St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

TODAY IN HISTORY

274 St Eutychian begins his reign as Pope

TODAY'S TIDBIT

Ten Commandments, are also known as the Decalogue, and are handed on to us
in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy.
In the book of Exodus, the Commandments are found at Ex 20:1-17.
I the LORD am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
You shall have no other gods besides me.
You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.
Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbors house, nor anything else that
belongs to him. (abridged, from Ex 20:1-17)

INTENTION FOR THE DAY

Please pray that we may all have greater dedication for following the
Ten Commandments.

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