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Daily Readings for:February 07, 2015
(Readings on USCCB website)

Collect: Grant us, Lord our God, that we may honor you with all our mind, and love everyone in truth of heart. 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 Minestrone

ACTIVITIES

o Explaining the Mass and Sacraments

o Preschool Parent Pedagogy: Planning the Teaching of our Faith

o Teaching About the Mass

o Teaching the Trinity

o Teaching Through Example

o The Sign of the Cross

o What Truths to Teach

o Why teach at home?

PRAYERS

o Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes

LIBRARY

o I Will Arise and Return to My Father | Pope John Paul II

· Ordinary Time: February 7th

· Saturday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time

· Old Calendar: St. Romuald, abbot

· According to the 1962 Missal of St. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Romuald, abbot, the anniversary of the translation of his relics in 1481. His feast in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is celebrated on June 19, the day he died in 1027.

· The Supreme Lover
The Goodness of God means that God gives us what we need for our perfection, not what we want for our pleasure and sometimes for our destruction. As a sculptor, He sometimes applies the chisel to the marble of our imperfect selves and knocks off huge chunks of selfishness that His image may better stand revealed. Like a musician, whenever He finds the strings too loose on the violin of our personality, He tightens them even though it hurts, that we may better reveal our hidden harmonies.

· As the Supreme Lover of our soul, He does care how we act and think and speak. What father does not want to be proud of his son? If the father speaks with authority now and then to his son, it is not because he is a dictator, but because he wants him to be a worthy son. Not even progressive parents, who deny discipline and restraint, are indifferent to the progress of their children. So long as there is love, there is necessarily a desire for the perfecting of the beloved.

· That is precisely the way God's goodness manifests itself to us. God really loves us and, because He loves us, He is not disinterested. He no more wants you to be unhappy than your own parents want you to be unhappy. God made you not for His happiness, but for yours, and to ask God to be satisfied with most of us as we really are, is to ask that God cease to love.

· — Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

The Word Among Us

Meditation: Hebrews 13:15-17, 20-21

Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise. (Hebrews 13:15)

On February 28, 1944, a young Dutch woman named Corrie ten Boom and her family were arrested and sent to concentration camps for running a safe house for Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. In the midst of great suffering, Corrie’s sister, Betsie, reminded her that the Scriptures called them to thank God in everything. So they did. They even thanked God for the infestation of fleas in the barracks. As they persisted in giving thanks, they noticed that the guards left them alone. They were able to hold Bible studies and led many fellow prisoners to Christ. They later found out that the guards stayed away because of the fleas!

On one level, this story shows that God works through all things. But on another level, it shows how praising the Lord does something deeper in us. It helps us focus on the Lord so that we can experience his life and freedom more deeply. As Corrie and Betsie praised God, they paid less attention to their hardships and more attention to the other prisoners and their need for Jesus.

Praising God helps us find that place of “restful waters” that refresh and restore us (Psalm 23:2). As we offer God our praise and thanks, we become more aware of his greatness. As a result, difficulties no longer loom as large. Recalling God’s greatness opens us up to his wisdom and direction. It helps us to receive his love, which casts out all fear. It fills us with courage and peace.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus told the disciples to “come away … and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). Praising and thanking God is one way we can do just that. We don’t need to be behind closed doors to do it! We can praise him sitting in the car, on an elevator, or in the middle of a lunch break. Even while talking to a neighbor, we can lift our hearts to Jesus and thank him for who he is and what he has done for us. As Corrie and Betsie ten Boom discovered, the more we praise God, the more he sustains us—no matter how many “fleas” we see!

“Father, you are both mighty and humble. Thank you for your love and mercy. I praise you for holding me in the palm of your hand.”

Psalm 23:1-6
Mark 6:30-34