Memorial of St. Justin the Martyr

Collect on the Memorial of St. Justin Martyr: "O God, who through the folly of the Cross wondrously taught Saint Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, grant us, through his intercession, that, having rejected deception and error, we may become steadfast in the faith".

And this food is called among us the Eucharist ... For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh" (St. Justin, First Apology, 66).

Feast of the Visitation of Mary

St. Luke 1.39-56: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant".

"The Canticle of Mary, the Magnificat, is the song both of the Mother of God and the Church; the song of the Daughter of Zion and the new People of God; the song of thanksgiving for the fullness of graces poured out in the economy of salvation and the song of the "poor" whose hope is met by the fulfillment of the promises made to our ancestors, 'to Abraham and his posterity for ever'" (CCC 2619).

Wednesday, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time (Year B)

St. Mark 10.32-45: "Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Tuesday, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time (Year B)

St. Mark 10.28-31: "Jesus said, 'Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age - houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions - and in the age to come eternal life'".

Monday, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time (Year B)

St. Mark 10.17-27: "Jesus looking at the rich young man loved him and said, 'You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me'".

Pentecost Sunday

St. John 20.19-23: "'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you'. When he had said this he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any they are retained'".

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created.

And You shall renew the face of the earth.

Memorial of St. Philip Neri

Collect on Memorial of St. Philip Neri: "O God, who never cease to bestow the glory of holiness on the faithful servants you raise up for yourself, graciously grant that the Holy Spirit may kindle in us that fire with which he wonderfully filled the heart of Saint Philip Neri".

"Wherever you are on earth, however long you remain on earth, the Lord is near, do not be anxious about anything" (St. Augustine)

Friday, Seventh Week of Easter

St. John 21.15-19: "Jesus said to him the third time, 'Simon son of John, do you love me?' Peter felt hurt because Jesus said to him a third time, 'Do you love me?' And Peter said to him, 'Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.' Jesus said to him, 'Feed my sheep.'"

"Jesus entrusted a specific authority to Peter: 'I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.' The "power of the keys" designates authority to govern the house of God, which is the Church. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, confirmed this mandate after his resurrection: 'Feed my sheep'" (CCC# 553). 

Thursday, Seventh Week of Easter

St. John 17.20-26: "The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me".

"Where there are sins, there are also divisions, schism, heresies and disputes. Where there is virtue, however, there also are harmony and unity, from which arise the one heart and one soul of all believers" (Origen).

Wednesday, Seventh Week of Easter

St. John 17.11-19: "As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth".

"...Evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the evil one, the angel who opposes God. The devil is the one who "throws himself across" God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ" (CCC# 2851).

Tuesday, Seventh Week of Easter

St. John 17.1-11: "I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one".

"What an astonishing mystery! There is one Father of the universe, one Logos of the universe, and also one Holy Spirit, everywhere one and the same; there is also one virgin become mother, and I should like to call her "Church"" (St. Clement of Alexandria).

Monday, Seventh Week of Easter

St. John 16.29-33: "The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace".

Feast of the Ascension

St. Mark 16.15-20: "'Go into the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation'... So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up to heaven and sat down at the right hand of God".

The Church was founded for the purpose of spreading the kingdom of Christ throughout the earth for the glory of God the Father, to enable all men to share in His saving redemption, and that through them the whole world might enter into a relationship with Christ. All activity of the Mystical Body directed to the attainment of this goal is called the apostolate, which the Church carries on in various ways through all her members. For the Christian vocation by its very nature is also a vocation to the apostolate. No part of the structure of a living body is merely passive but has a share in the functions as well as life of the body: so, too, in the body of Christ, which is the Church, "the whole body . . . in keeping with the proper activity of each part, derives its increase from its own internal development" (Eph. 4:16).

Indeed, the organic union in this body and the structure of the members are so compact that the member who fails to make his proper contribution to the development of the Church must be said to be useful neither to the Church nor to himself.

In the Church there is a diversity of ministry but a oneness of mission. Christ conferred on the Apostles and their successors the duty of teaching, sanctifying, and ruling in His name and power. But the laity likewise share in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ and therefore have their own share in the mission of the whole people of God in the Church and in the world. (Decreee on the Apostolate of the Laity, Second Vatican Council).

Saturday, Sixth Week of Easter

St. John 16.23-28: "Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive so that your joy may be complete".

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" (Jesus Prayer).

Friday, Sixth Week of Easter

St. John 16.20-23: "So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you".

"To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in Saint John's Gospel: “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (16:22). We must think along these lines if we want to understand the object of Christian hope, to understand what it is that our faith, our being with Christ, leads us to expect"(Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi).

Thursday, Sixth Week of Easter

Acts 17.15,22-18.1: "Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, 'Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown I proclaim to you...while God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead'".

Wednesday, Sixth Week of Easter

St. John 16.12-15: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth".

"The mission of the Magisterium (the Pope and the bishops united with him) is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is the Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the people of God abide in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals"(CCC# 890). 

Tuesday, Sixth Week of Eater

St. John 16.5-11: "I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you".

"Since Easter, the Holy Spirit has proved the word wrong about sin, i.e., proved that the world has not believed in him whom the Father has sent. But this same Spirit who brings sin to light is also the Consoler who gives the human hart grace for repentance and conversion"(CCC# 1433). 

Sixth Sunday of Easter

St. John 15.9-17: "You are my friends if you do what I command you, I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends...No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends".

"I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love...I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that love embraces every time and every place, that love is everlasting. Then, nearly ecstatic with joy, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found me calling! My call is love. I have found my role in the Church...In the heart of the Church I will be love" (St. Térèse of Lisieux).

Wednesday, Fifth Week of Easter

St. John 15.1-8: "Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me".

"If God causes you to suffer much, it is a sign that he has great designs for you, and that he certainly intends to make you a saint. And if you wish to become a great saint, entreat him to give you much opportunity for suffering; for there is no wood better to kindle the fire of holy love than the wood of the Cross, which Christ used for his own sacrifice of boundless charity" (St. Ignatius of Loyola).

Tuesday, Fifth Week of Easter

St. John 14.27-31: "When the hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father, Jesus said to his disciples: 'Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you".

"Love itself is the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest" (St. Augustine).

Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

St. John 14.21-26: "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you".

"Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eucharistic Prayer II).

Fifth Sunday of Easter

St. John 15.1-8: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit".

"From the beginning, Jesus associated his disciples with his own life, revealed the mystery of the Kingdom to them, and gave them a share in his mission, joy and sufferings. Jesus spoke of a still more intimate communion between him and those who would follow him: 'Abide in me, and I in you...I am the vine, you are the branches'. And he proclaimed a mysterious and real communion between his own body and ours: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him'".

Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

St. John 14.7-14: "Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it".

"Jesus Christ, the one high priest of the new and eternal Covenant, 'entered not into a sanctuary made by human hands...but into heaven itself, now to appear on our behalf'. There Christ permanently exercises his priesthood, 'for he always lives to make intercession' for 'those who draw near to God through him'" (CCC 662).  

Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

St. John 14.1-6: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me...I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me".

Feast of St Philip and St. James

First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians 15.1-8: "I would remind you brothers and sisters of the good news that I proclaimed to you. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received".

"Ever family can be traced back to its origins. That is why we can say that all these great churches constitute that one original Church of the apostles, for it is by them that they all come. They are all primitive, all apostolic, because they are all one. They bear witness to this unity by the peace in which they all live, the brotherhood which is their name, the fellowship to which they are pledged" (Tertullain, From the Treatise on the Prescription of Heretics).

Memorial of Saint Athanasius

"Almighty and ever-living God, who raised up the Bishop Saint Athanasius as an outstanding champion of your Son's divinity, mercifully grant that, rejoicing in his teaching and his protection, we may never cease to grow in knowledge and love of you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever" (Collect for the feast of St. Athanasius).

"God became man so that man might become God" (St. Athanasius).