June 22 2020
Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 2 KGS 17:5-8, 13-15A, 18
Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, occupied the whole land
and attacked Samaria, which he besieged for three years.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel
the king of Assyria took Samaria,
and deported the children of Israel to Assyria,
setting them in Halah, at the Habor, a river of Gozan,
and the cities of the Medes.
This came about because the children of Israel sinned against the LORD,
their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt,
from under the domination of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and because they venerated other gods.
They followed the rites of the nations
whom the LORD had cleared out of the way of the children of Israel
and the kings of Israel whom they set up.
And though the LORD warned Israel and Judah
by every prophet and seer,
“Give up your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes,
in accordance with the entire law which I enjoined on your fathers
and which I sent you by my servants the prophets,”
they did not listen, but were as stiff-necked as their fathers,
who had not believed in the LORD, their God.
They rejected his statutes,
the covenant which he had made with their fathers,
and the warnings which he had given them, till,
in his great anger against Israel,
the LORD put them away out of his sight.
Only the tribe of Judah was left.
Responsorial Psalm 60:3, 4-5, 12-13
R. (7b) Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
O God, you have rejected us and broken our defenses;
you have been angry; rally us!
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
Have not you, O God, rejected us,
so that you go not forth, O God, with our armies?
Give us aid against the foe,
for worthless is the help of men.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
Alleluia HEB 4:12
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The word of God is living and effective,
able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 7:1-5
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’
while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church
Part Four: Prayer in the Life of Faith
17 The last part of the Catechism deals with the meaning and importance of prayer in the life of believers (Section One). It concludes with a brief commentary on the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer (Section Two), for indeed we find in these the sum of all the good things which we must hope for, and which our heavenly Father wants to grant us.
“For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)
MONDAY, JUNE 22ND Mt. 7:1-5 “You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”
To help us “remove the wooden beam from our eye”, let us pray earnestly the following prayer of the noble saint and martyr, Thomas More. May we reflect on each phrase and profit thereby, 1) to acknowledge my own wretched sins and throw myself on the mercy and love of God to remove them far from me; 2) to replace them with all the virtues necessary for holiness, 3) and to beg for great love of God for His own sake, such as burned in the heart of Saint Thomas More!
Prayer of Saint Thomas More…
Almighty God, take from me all vainglorious attitudes, all appetites of my own praise, all envy, covetousness, gluttony, sloth, and lechery, all wrathful affections, all appetite of revenging, all desire or delight of other folks’ harm, all pleasure in provoking any person to wrath and anger, all delight of rebuking or insulting any person in their affliction and calamity.
And give me, good Lord, a humble, lowly, quiet, peaceable, patient, charitable, kind, tender, and merciful mind, with all my works and all my words and all my thoughts to have a taste of your holy blessed Spirit.
Give me, good Lord, a full faith, a firm hope, and a fervent charity; a love for you, good Lord, incomparably above the love of myself; and that I love nothing to your displeasure, but everything for the sake of you.
Give me, good Lord, a longing to be with you, not for the avoiding of the calamities of this wretched world, nor so much for the avoiding of the pains of purgatory, nor of the pains of hell either, nor so much for the attaining of the joys of heaven in respect to my own benefit, but for a genuine love for you.
And bear me, Lord, your love and favor, which my love for you (no matter how great) could not deserve, but for your great goodness.
And pardon me, good Lord, that I am so bold to ask such great petitions, being such a vile and sinful wretch and so unworthy to attain the lowest. But yet, good Lord, such I am bound to wish for, and should be nearer the effectual desire of them if my many sins were not the hindrance.
From which, O glorious Trinity, grant in your goodness to wash me with that blessed blood that issued out of your tender body (O sweet Savior Christ) in the diverse torments of your most bitter Passion.
End of Prayer of Saint Thomas More
We can see that God answered this earnest prayer of his servant Thomas More with an outpouring of graces by the letter he wrote to his daughter Margaret from prison, where he was being held for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy of King Henry VIII over the Church in England. May we beg for the nobility of this Lover of God and the Church!
Letter by Saint Thomas More to his daughter Margaret…
Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in His merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God’s grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this his Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits He has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest.
I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God. Either He shall keep the king in that gracious frame of mind to continue to do me no harm, or else, if it be His pleasure that for my other sins, I am to suffer in this case as I shall not deserve, then His grace shall give me the strength to bear it patiently, and perhaps even gladly.
By the merits of His bitter passion joined to mine, and far surpassing in merit for me all that I can suffer myself, His bounteous goodness shall release me from the pains of purgatory and shall increase my reward in heaven besides.
I will not mistrust Him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to Him for help. And then I trust He shall place His holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.
And if He permits me to play Saint Peter further and to fall to the ground and to swear and forswear, may God our Lord in His tender mercy keep me from this, and let me lose if it so happen, and never win thereby! Still, if this should happen, afterward I trust that in His goodness He will look on me with pity as He did upon Saint Peter, and make me stand up again and confess the truth of my conscience afresh and endure here the shame and harm of my own fault.
And finally, Margaret, I know this well: that without my fault He will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, with good hope commit myself wholly to Him. And if He permits me to perish for my faults, then I shall serve as praise for His justice. But in good faith, Meg, I trust that His tender pity shall keep my poor soul safe and make me commend His mercy.
And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.
End of Letter by Saint Thomas More
Saint Thomas More, Pray for us!
