Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
“For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)
MONDAY, OCTOBER 26th Lk. 13: 10-17 “Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering. This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the Sabbath day from this bondage?”
- Gratitude to our good God leads to a deeper love for God that finds expression in our love for others. “Brotherly love is the real visible expression of the love of the invisible Father. It is the sign and witness of this love and cannot be separated from it.” (Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel)
- The depth of our love is measured by our compassion for others in their want and need, by our willingness to suffer with them and for them! Compassion for physical poverty, like the woman in today’s Gospel who for eighteen years was crippled, bent over, completely incapacitated of standing erect. We can easily feel compassion for her, suffer with her and for her, and feel gratitude for Jesus’ miracle of healing. We all have people in our lives who are suffering physically, mentally, or emotionally, who are in need of our compassion and love right now!
- However, sometimes we struggle with having compassion for others in their spiritual poverty – such as those who are crippled, bent over, suffocating in their sins, especially when their sins impact us! Condemnation is the opposite of compassion. Failure to be compassionate, merciful, and forgiving toward them is our own spiritual poverty. Jesus is our model – scourged, crowned with thorns, and nailed to the cross of crucifixion, Jesus looked at His persecutors and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
- There is yet another form of spiritual poverty – losing our faith and hope in the triumph of love – in the triumph and glory of the cross – in our lives and the lives of others! Prayer of Blessed Miguel Pro: “I believe, O Lord; but strengthen my faith. Heart of Jesus, I love Thee; but increase my love. Heart of Jesus, I trust in Thee; but give greater vigor to my confidence. Heart of Jesus, I give my heart to Thee; but so enclose it in Thee that it may never be separated from Thee.”
Let us reflect now on the wisdom of three saints, and beg to grow in charity and gratitude!
1. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, our spiritual father exhorts us to give gratitude to God:
“It seems to me in the light of the Divine Goodness, that ingratitude is the most abominable of sins. For it is a forgetting of the gracious benefits and blessings received. As such it is the cause, beginning, and origin of all sins and misfortunes. On the contrary, the grateful acknowledgment of blessings and gifts received is loved and esteemed not only on earth but in heaven.”
Saint Ignatius, Pray for us!
SUSCIPE – Prayer prayed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola
Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty,
my memory, my understanding and my will.
All that I am and all that I possess, You have given to me.
I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will.
Give me only Your love and Your grace,
with these I will be rich enough and desire nothing more.
Your love and your grace are enough for me.
2. Venerable Solanus Casey (+1957) Capuchin Franciscan priest and the first man born in the United States to be declared Venerable. In his service as porter, Solanus became known for his spiritual counsel and miracles.
His spirituality consisted in union with God through prayer and gratitude deep-seated in the certainty of God’s goodness. The disappointments, humiliations, and family tragedies of Solanus’ life could not deter him from believing in God’s goodness and seeking union with God.
Ven. Solanus Casey quotes:
“We are all called to have our lives blend with God’s. An essential key in this blending is gratitude.”
“Gratitude is the first sign of a thinking, rational creature. It’s ‘Heaven Begun’, for the grateful on earth. Our gratitude ought to be unconditional, thanking God for events yet unknown, and even for those that are distasteful or distressing to our nature. Always be thankful to the good God.”
“Worry is a weakness from which very few of us are entirely free. We must be on guard against this most insidious enemy of our peace of soul. Instead, let us foster confidence in God, and thank Him ahead of time for whatever He chooses to send us. Confidence is the very soul of prayer.”
“Blending is the experience of complete union with God. We really shouldn’t know where God’s life ends and our life begins. We are to become the translation, the sacraments, the images of God in the world.”
Ven. Solanus Casey, Pray for us!
3. Saint Bernadette Soubirous (+1879)
Our Lady appeared to Bernadette in 18 visions at a grotto in Lourdes, France. Our Lady was dressed in white with a blue sash and she was holding a rosary. She told Bernadette to dig in the ground and a spring appeared, which we know as the miraculous waters of Lourdes. Her message was to do penance and pray for sinners.
On her last appearance, Our Lady told Bernadette her name. “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Just four years earlier the Church had proclaimed the Immaculate Conception of Mary a dogma of faith. Meaning that from the moment Mary was conceived in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, Mary was preserved from original sin. Moreover, Mary never committed a sin in her life. Of all mankind, Mary alone is the sinless one! For this reason, the poet Wordsworth called Mary, “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”
Last Testament of Saint Bernadette from Abbe Francois Trochu’s biography of her life.
Quote: Saint Bernadette looked at her life in simple thanksgiving for everything. Her testament is an exceptional statement of gratitude. In her words:
+ For the poverty in which my mother and father lived, for the failure of the mill, all the hard times, for the awful sheep, for constant tiredness, thank you, my God!
+ For lips, which I was feeding too much, for the dirty noses of the children, for the guarded sheep, I thank you!
+ Thank you, my God, for the prosecutor and the police commissioner, for the policemen, and for the harsh words of Father Peyramale!
+ For the days in which you came, Mary, for the ones in which you did not come, I will never be able to thank you…only in Paradise.
+ For the slap in the face, for the ridicule, the insults, and for those who suspected me for wanting to gain something from it, thank you, my Lady.
+ For my spelling, which I never learned, for the memory that I never had, for my ignorance and for my stupidity, thank you.
* For the fact that my mother died so far away, for the pain I felt when my father instead of hugging his little Bernadette called me, “Sister Marie-Bernard”, I thank you, Jesus.
+ I thank you for the heart you gave me, so delicate and sensitive, which you filled with bitterness.
+ For the fact that Mother Josephine proclaimed that I was good for nothing, thank you.
+ For the sarcasm of the Mother Superior: her harsh voice, her injustices, her irony and for the bread of humiliation, thank you.
+ Thank you that I was the privileged one when it came to be reprimanded, so that my sisters said, “How lucky it is not to be Bernadette.”
+ Thank you for the fact that it is me, who was the Bernadette threatened with imprisonment because she had seen you, Holy Virgin; regarded by people as a rare animal; that Bernadette so wretched, that upon seeing her, it was said, “Is that it?”
+ For this miserable body which you gave me, for this burning and suffocating illness, for my decaying tissues, for my de-calcified bones, for my sweats, for my fever, for my dullness and for my acute pains, thank you, my God.
+ And for this soul which you have given me, for the desert of inner dryness, for your night and the lightning, for your silences and your thunders, for everything.
+ For you-when you were present and when you were not—thank you, Jesus.
End Saint Bernadette, from Saint Bernadette Soubirous, by Abbe Francois Trochu
Bernadette became a Sister of Charity and served in the infirmary and the sacristy. One day after she entered the convent, someone asked Bernadette if she felt bad not seeing the Blessed Virgin anymore. Saint Bernadette replied: “What does one do with a broom when one has finished sweeping? Why, put it in a corner.”
Saint Bernadette died 16 April 1879 at age 35 of tuberculous. Her body is incorrupt. A light wax covers her face and hands.
St. Bernadette, pray for us!
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St. Peter Chanel Church, Hawaiian Gardens, CA
