Posted on 08/19/2005 7:56:39 AM PDT by Salvation
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The crosses with which our path through life is strewn associate us
with Jesus in the mystery of His crucifixion. -St. John Eudes
From: Matthew 22:34-40
The Greatest Commandment of All
| Friday, August 19, 2005 St. Louis, Bishop (Optional Memorial) |
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| This litany to the Blessed Virgin Mary was composed during the Middle Ages. The place of honor it now holds in the life of the Church is due to its faithful use at the shrine of the Holy House at Loreto. It was definitely approved by Sixtus V in 1587, and all other Marian litanies were suppressed, at least for public use. Its titles and invocations set before us Mary's exalted privileges, her holiness of life, her amiability and power, her motherly spirit and queenly majesty. The principle that has been followed in their interpretation is the one enunciated by the same Pius IX: "God enriched her so wonderfully from the treasury of His divinity, far beyond all angels and saints with the abundance of all heavenly gifts, that she . . .should show forth such fullness of innocence and holiness, than which a greater under God is unthinkable and which, beside God, no one can even conceive in thought." Hence, whatever virtue and holiness is found in angels and saints must be present in Mary in an immeasurably higher degree. Listen to the Litany to the Blessed Virgin Mary in RealAudio |
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| Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, hear us. God the Father of Heaven, God the Son, Redeemer of the world, God the Holy Spirit, Holy Trinity, One God, Holy Mary, Holy Mother of God, Holy Virgin of virgins, . Mother of Christ, . Mother of divine grace, Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother inviolate, Mother undefiled, Mother most amiable, Mother most admirable, Mother of good counsel, Mother of our Creator, Mother of our Savior, Mother of the Church, Virgin most prudent, Virgin most venerable, Virgin most renowned, Virgin most powerful, Virgin most merciful, Virgin most faithful, Mirror of justice, Seat of wisdom, Cause of our joy, Spiritual vessel, Vessel of honor, Singular vessel of devotion, Mystical rose, Tower of David, . Tower of ivory, House of gold, Ark of the covenant, Gate of Heaven, Morning star, Health of the sick, Refuge of sinners, Comforter of the afflicted, Help of Christians, pray for us. Queen of angels, Queen of patriarchs, Queen of prophets, Queen of apostles, Queen of martyrs, Queen of confessors, Queen of virgins, Queen of all saints, Queen conceived without Original Sin, Queen assumed into Heaven, Queen of the holy Rosary, Queen of families, Queen of peace, Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Pray fo us, O holy Mother of God, |
Christ, have mercy on us. Christ, graciously hear us. Have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us. pray for us pray for us pray for us pray for us Spare us, O Lord. Graciously spare us, O Lord. Have mercy on us. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. |
| General: Let us pray- Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord God, that we Thy servants may enjoy perpetual health of mind and body, and by the glorious intercession of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, be delivered from present sorrow and enjoy everlasting happiness. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen |
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| During Advent: Let us pray - O God, you willed that, at the message of an angel, your word should take flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary; grant to your suppliant people, that we, who believe her to be truly the Mother of God, may be helped by her intercession with you. Through the same Christ our Lord. . Amen. |
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| From Christmas to the Purification: Let us pray - O God, by the fruitful virginity of Blessed Mary, you bestowed upon the human race the rewards of eternal salvation; grant, we beg you, that we may feel the power of her intercession, through whom we have been made worthy to receive the Author of life, our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and reigns with you forever and ever. Amen. |
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| During Paschaltime: Let us pray - O God, who by the Resurrection of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, granted joy to the whole world, grant, we beg you, that through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, his Mother, we may attain the joys of eternal life. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. |
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August 19, 2005 ![]() Optional Memorial of St. John Eudes, priest Old Calendar: St. John Eudes, confessor
St. John Eudes Born on a farm in northern France, St. John was a religious, a parish missionary, founder of two religious communities and a great promoter of the devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He joined the religious community of the Oratorians and was ordained a priest at twenty-four. During severe plagues in 1627 and 1631, he volunteered to care for the stricken in his own diocese. Lest he infect his fellow religious, he lived in a huge cask in the middle of a field during the plague. At age thirty-two, John became a parish missionary. His gifts as preacher and confessor won him great popularity. He preached over one hundred parish missions, some lasting from several weeks to several months. In his concern with the spiritual improvement of the clergy, he realized that the greatest need was for seminaries. He had permission from his general superior, the bishop and even Cardinal Richelieu to begin this work, but the succeeding general superior disapproved. After prayer and counsel, John decided it was best to leave the religious community. The same year he founded a new one, ultimately called the Eudists (Congregation of Jesus and Mary), devoted to the formation of the clergy by conducting diocesan seminaries. The new venture, while approved by individual bishops, met with immediate opposition, especially from Jansenists and some of his former associates. John founded several seminaries in Normandy, but was unable to get approval from Rome (partly, it was said, because he did not use the most tactful approach).
He is probably best known for the central theme of his writings: Jesus as the source of holiness, Mary as the model of the Christian life. His devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary led Pius XI to declare him the father of the liturgical cult of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He was also the author of several books which served his work, e.g., The Ideal Confessor and The Apostolic Preacher. He died at the age of seventy-nine. Excerpted from the Saint of the Day, Leonard Foley, O.F.M. Symbols: Priest with or presenting the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Things to Do:
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![]() Heart MessagePsalms 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet Anda light to my path. John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." The Bible teaches that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. The ancient lamp, with its olive oil and wick, teaches us a valuable truth. There is something that exists called "darkness" and when there is no light we cannot see where we are going. But when there is "light" we can see the way ahead of us and know the direction that we are going. |
| Matthew 22:34-40 | ||
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| # | Douay-Rheims | Vulgate |
| 34 | But the Pharisees, hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together. | Pharisaei autem audientes quod silentium inposuisset Sadducaeis convenerunt in unum |
| 35 | And one of them, a doctor of the law, asked him, tempting him: | et interrogavit eum unus ex eis legis doctor temptans eum |
| 36 | Master, which is the great commandment in the law? | magister quod est mandatum magnum in lege |
| 37 | Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind. | ait illi Iesus diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo et in tota anima tua et in tota mente tua |
| 38 | This is the greatest and the first commandment. | hoc est maximum et primum mandatum |
| 39 | And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. | secundum autem simile est huic diliges proximum tuum sicut te ipsum |
| 40 | On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. | in his duobus mandatis universa lex pendet et prophetae |

Naomi returns to Bethlehem
Bible Moralisée, Vienna, c.1122
You find the most amazing pictures.
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Ruth 1:1,3-6,14-16,22 / Mt 22:34-40 By the time that Jesus came, the Israelites had been pondering, probing, and struggling for many centuries to hear what God had to say to them. Ever so slowly, as is recorded in the Old Testament, they had come to understand a great deal about who God is and what he has in mind for us. But what they had were still fragments. Jesus put those pieces together and provided the missing links. And nowhere is that more plain than in today's gospel. In answer to the lawyer's question, "Which law is the most important?" Jesus gave an answer that looks so easy but is in fact a brilliant melding and expansion of Old Testament texts. He starts by quoting Deuteronomy verbatim, "Love God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind." And then he takes a text from Leviticus, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and transforms the word "neighbor" to mean everybody and not just your countrymen. And finally, he connects the two passages, the one about God and the one about neighbor, and makes them indivisible, telling us, "you can't say you love God whom you cannot see, if you don't love your neighbor whom you can see." No wonder Jesus made the lawyers nervous. It's a tough and demanding way of living, but it's the only way that will ever bring us joy, the only road that will ever lead us to communion. |
Friday August 19, 2005 Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (Ruth 1:1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22) Gospel (St. Matthew 22:34-40)
As Our Lord tells us in the Gospel that the greatest of all the commandments is to love the Lord with our whole heart and soul and strength, again, we have to ask ourselves: Just exactly what does that mean? How do we do this?
It means, first of all, that we have to have a relationship with Him. You cannot love somebody with whom you do not have a relationship because love is a reciprocal relationship. You can think about some movie star or some musician that you really like, and you can say, Oh, I just love this person so much! You can enjoy their work, but you really cannot love the person if you do not know the person. You can know about the person. Maybe you have researched your movie star and you think this is a great person, but you still cannot truly love the person unless you have a relationship with the individual. So it is not about knowing merely some facts about the person, but it is about knowing the person. We cannot love what we do not know. Consequently, we have to come to know God not just know about Him but to know Him as a person. Therefore, we need to be in a relationship with Him. So, first and foremost, it means spending time with Him in prayer.
Then it means exactly what we hear about in the first reading, except we hear that on the human level. We hear Ruth telling her mother-in-law Naomi, I will go wherever you go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people will be my people. That is exactly what we have to do with God. Our Lord Himself told us that. When the man came to Him and said, Ill follow you wherever you go, He said, The birds of the air have nests and the foxes have lairs, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Are we willing to do that, to follow Him wherever it is that He tells us to go, wherever He leads? If you love someone completely, you will go with them wherever they go regardless of what kind of inconvenience it might cause. All you need to do is look at a marriage situation. If your spouse were to get a job someplace, would you say: Well, have fun. Go ahead. Ill stay right here? No. You would say: Well sell the house, well pack up the kids, were going to move. I go where you go. That is what we have to be willing to do with God.
Obviously, we could say, God is everywhere, so I dont have to go anywhere. Well, if God says, You go, then you go. That is what it is going to require. Are we really putting God first? Most of us give a lot of lip service to God, but the real question is: Do we love Him? and how much do we love Him? I oftentimes point out to the kids in school that the one you love the most is probably the one with whom you spend the most time. Do we love the TV more than we love God? How much time do we spend in front of the Blessed Sacrament? How much time do we spend in front of the TV set? It kind of tells us where our priorities are when we look at things that way. We can ask ourselves just very bluntly and seriously in prayer: How much do I really love God? Do I love Him more than anything else in the world?
Would I be willing to give up anything and everything for God? If the answer to that is no then we are not loving God first and foremost with our whole heart and soul and strength.
That is something exceedingly difficult, that we would be willing to give up spouse, that we would be willing to give up children. If God were to call them home, would you be angry and bitter and call God names and kick and scream and be terribly upset? You are certainly going to grieve. But are we willing to put God first? This is a very, very difficult thing that the Lord is asking. Yet we can honestly look at it and say, If God only wants the best then if I truly love Him He is going to provide what is the best, not only for me but for those whom I love in this world. And so we have to trust Him. We have to enter more and more deeply into union with Him, and that requires that we have to be vulnerable, which none of us likes to do. It requires that we have to trust when we cannot see Him, we cannot hear Him, we cannot feel Him, we cannot pick up the phone and call Him and hear His voice. Trusting is very, very difficult, once again.
God is asking something of us that is not easy, but we do have to understand that this is going to be the fulfillment of our entire lives because it is the purpose for which we were created. All that Jesus is telling us here is what we were created to do. But if you ever wonder how badly sin has messed us up, you have it right here. God had to become one of us and command us Imagine that! He had to command us to do the very thing He created us to do. That is a pretty sad reality. And even with that commandment that has been right there in front of us for two thousand years, most of us still do not and cannot do it. That is how badly sin has affected us.
So we realize that what sounds like this real nice idea and all of us I am sure would sit back and say, Yeah, thats what Id like to do, to love God with my whole heart and soul and strength the reality is most of us really do not will it. It sounds like a nice concept; the reality is a different matter. Most of us really do not want it because most of us love ourselves with our whole heart and soul and strength, and we do not love God and we do not love our neighbor unless there is something in it for ourselves. That is the opposite of love. Love is selfless. Most of us are selfish. We need to overcome self, and that requires an awful lot. To die to self in order to live for another is a very painful and difficult thing. That is why most of us are unwilling to even make very many steps in the direction of loving God with our whole heart and soul and strength.
That is what we really need to look at and wrestle with in prayer because not only is it the commandment that we as Christian people are given (imagine when we stand before God and He says, Here is My commandment, how did you do? How are we going to answer? What are we going to be able to say?), but even without it being a commandment, it is what is at the very heart of our being because it is the very purpose for which we were created. So the other half of that is: Do we want to fulfill the purpose of our existence? Do we want to know the fulfillment in our lives that can only come from doing what we were created to do?
All Our Lord is doing here is coming down and loving us and telling us that if we want true happiness and true fulfillment that this is how we are going to achieve it. It is the purpose of our creation. It is the only means to our fulfillment. It is to love and not to love yourself! first and foremost, to love God with your whole heart and soul and strength; and secondly, to love your neighbor, to love those around you and that flows from your love for God so, above all else, that God is the top priority, and to love Him with our whole being.
* This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.
| Friday, August 19, 2005 Meditation Matthew 22:34-40 Jewish law, even in the time of Christ, was elaborate. Centuries of revelation and tradition had resulted in commands, instructions, and guidelines governing almost every aspect of life and faith, right down to the tithing of garden herbs (Luke 11:42). In addition, various groups such as the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and others each interpreted and taught about the law in different, sometimes conflicting, ways. Its no wonder some people were confused! When some of the Pharisees who opposed Jesus asked him what was the greatest of all commandments, however, you get the sense that they were not really searching for the truth. Rather, aware of a myriad of possible interpretations, they were hoping that he might say something that could embroil him in controversy and maybe even discredit himself as a rabbi. Jesus reply, however, was not simply his spin on Jewish law and tradition. Instead, he reminded his hearers that love is at the heart of Judaismand, by extension, his gospel as well. God created us out of love; he loved us before we even existed (Ephesians 1:4); he will always love us (Psalm 100:5). This is a love that brings life, embraces it entirely, and remains steadfast to that life until the end. Jesus taught that as God loves us, so too are we to love himand one another. How is this possible? Some days it seems hard enough to love ourselves, let alone other peopleor even Godwholeheartedly! But God knows how he created us. He hasnt given us an impossible mission. How we do it is to ask him to fill our hearts with his love. Then, that love will start flowing back to him in praise and out to others in acceptance, forgiveness, and service. Its not too hard for God to soften a hard heart, to warm a cold one, to restore a broken one, or to breathe life into a unresponsive one. In fact, this is something God loves to do! We have only to ask. No special prayers are necessary. Simple words, spoken quietly, even silently, are sufficient. Its that easy, because God is so good. Come, Holy Spirit, fill my heart today. I want to love you with everything in me, and to love others, but I need your love to do it. Ruth 1:1,3-6,14-16,22; Psalm 146:5-10 |
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