Churches of the Day

Wednesday of the Twenty- Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year 1

Belief in the true incarnation of the Son of God  in Jesus is the distinctive sign of the Christian faith

Saint of the Day; Sept 17;  1. St Robert Bellarmine, Jesuit bishop, cardinal and doctor of the Church,
Patron of Catechists

Saint of the Day; Sept 17; 2. St Hildegard founder of the monastery of Bingen around 1150,
musician, composer, writer , mystic, scientist and Doctor of the Church.
C/f A short life story of these saints can be found below today’s Readings and Reflection

FIRST READING
A reading from the first letter of St Paul to Timothy         3:14-16
The mystery of our religion is very deep.


At the moment of writing to you, I am hoping that I may be with you soon; but in case I should be delayed, I wanted you to know how people ought to behave in God's family - that is, in the Church of the living God, which upholds the truth and keeps it safe.
Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is very deep indeed: He was made visible in the flesh, attested by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed to the pagans, believed in by the world, and taken up in glory.

The Word of the Lord.               Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm            Ps  110:1-6 R/v2
Response                                Great are the works of the Lord.
Or                                              Alleluia!

1. I will thank the Lord with all my heart in the meeting of the just and their assembly.
Great are the works of the Lord; to be pondered by all who love them.                  Response

2. Majestic and glorious his work, his justice stands firm for ever.
He makes us remember his wonders. The Lord is compassion and love.               Response

3. He gives food to those who fear him; keeps his covenant ever in mind.
He has shown his might to his people by giving them the lands of the nations.    Response

Gospel  Acclamation          1 Thess 2: 13
Alleluia, alleluia!
Accept God's message  for what it really is, God's message
and not some human thinking.
Alleluia!

Or                                           Jn 6: 63
Alleluia, alleluia!
Your words are spirit and they are life: you have the message of eternal life.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL
The Lord be with you.                  And also with you
A reading from the Gospel according to Luke 7:31-35.     Glory to you O Lord
We played the pipes for you and you wouldn't dance; we sang dirges and you wouldn't cry.

Jesus said to the people:
'What description, then, can I find for the men of this generation? What are they like? They are like children shouting to one another while they sit in the market place: "We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn't dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn't cry."

'For John the Baptist comes, not eating bread, not drinking wine, and you say, "He is possessed."
The Son of Man comes, eating and drinking, and you say,
"Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners."
'Yet Wisdom has been proved right by all her children.'

The Gospel of the Lord.          Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.



Gospel Reflection     Wednesday,     Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time   Luke 7:31-35

Today’s first reading speaks of ‘the Church of the living God’ as ‘God’s family’. Within this family of faith, we look to God as our Father, to Mary as our Mother, and to Jesus as our brother and, also, as our Lord who, according to our reading, was ‘taken up in glory’ but is also ‘made visible in the flesh’. Within any good family, children have a special place. There is a recognition that they need the support and guidance of parents and guardians. There is often an appreciation also that children have much to give to other members of the family, as well as much to receive from them. Jesus was very aware that we all have much to receive and learn from children.

He declared on one occasion that we can only enter the kingdom of God if we receive it like a child, with the same openness and trusting spirit of the child. Today’s gospel reading suggests that Jesus was a keen observer of children at play. He saw in their play a pattern that helped him to interpret how his ministry and the ministry of John the Baptist was being received by others.
One group of children in the market square play at being musicians at a wedding but the second group of children won’t join in their game, refusing to dance. Then the first group play at singing dirges at a funeral but the second group of children wouldn’t join in their game by crying. It reminded Jesus of how many of his contemporaries were equally indifferent to his own joyful ministry and to the more sombre ministry of John the Baptist, claiming Jesus was just a glutton and drunkard and John was possessed. It is easy to label people whom we find challenging or disturbing in some way. It is a convenient way of keeping them at a distance. Yet, as Jesus suggests at the end of the gospel reading, the Wisdom of God can often be speaking powerfully to us through those we are inclined to dismiss. Like the son who was asked to go into the vineyard by his father in one of Jesus’ parables, we often need to reconsider our initial ‘no’ to some call that comes to us.
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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. and used with the permission of the publishers.  http://dltbooks.com/
The Scripture Reflection is made available with our thanks from Reflections on the Weekday Readings : Your word is a lamp for my feet and light for my path by Martin Hogan and published by Messenger Publications c/f www.messenger.ie/bookshop/

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Saints of the Day: Sept 17; 1. St Robert Bellarmine, spiritual director
Robert Bellarmine,  a spiritual director at the English College in Rome, encouraged the student priests there who were later to become martyrs. He was a Jesuit theologian and then a bishop.

Patrick Duffy reiterates his story here.

Early  Life
Born in Montepulciano in Tuscany, Robert's father was a chief magistrate and his mother the sister of Pope Marcellus II (Marcello Cervini - 1555). After a broad education, Robert entered the Jesuits at 18. He taught classics and studied theology at Padua and Louvain, where he was ordained.

Theologian to Pope Clement VIII
Robert taught controversial theology - it was the Reformation time - and was recalled to teach at the Gregorian University, in Rome. He was also spiritual director to the English College when many of the students would have to face martyrdom when they went back to their home country. Then after three years as Jesuit provincial in Naples, Pope Clement VIII (Ippolito Aldobrandini, pope 1592-1650) called him to be his personal theologian. Subsequently he became a cardinal and archbishop of Capua. 'Almost' elected pope in 1605, the new pope, Paul V (Camillo Borghese), appointed him prefect of the Vatican Library.

Concurred in Galileo's Condemnation
Although Galileo was a personal friend, Bellarmine accepted the Ptolemaic view of 'the earth as the centre of the universe' and though he tried to persuade Galileo to present the Copernican view as theory and not as fact, he concurred in Galileo's condemnation.

Later Life 
Towards the end of his life he retired to the Jesuit novitiate in Rome and wrote a devotional work on The Art of Dying Well. He died on 17th September 1621 and is buried in the Lady Chapel of the Gesù, the main Jesuit church in Rome.

He was canonised in 1930 and declared a doctor of the Church the following year.

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Memorable Proverb for Today

Science without religion is lame,
Religion without science is blind.

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Saint of the Day 2.  Hildegard of Bingen, (1098–1179), prophetess of the value of 'Green'

Hildegard  was a German mystic, writer, composer, philosopher, Benedictine abbess, visionary, & polymath.
"Who is this woman?" asked Cistercian Pope Eugenius III, when shown her writings. "She rises out of the wilderness like a column of smoke from burning spices."

Hildegard had a big influence in her own day but was wiped out from Church consciousness for eight centuries, in recent years she has made a big comeback through feminism, and creation/environmental theology. The central theme of her theological writings is the life-giving power of God - what she called "the beauty of greenness" (pulchritudo viriditatis). There is also much recent interest in her music and poetry.

Patrick Duffy profiles this extraordinary medieval lady.

Childhood at Bermerstein and her formation
Born in 1098, the tenth child of noble parents Hildebert and Mechtild at Bermersheim near Mainz in the Rhineland, Hildegard was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg by Jutta von Spanheim and succeeded her as abbess when she died in 1136.

Visions
From the age of three she had experienced visions accompanied by headaches. On reporting them to her confessor, he encouraged her to write them down, and the headaches disappeared. Her confessor showed what she had written to the archbishop of Mainz, who appointed a monk named Volmar to be her secretary.

The Scivias
The archbishop showed the resulting work 'Scivias' (short for Scito vias Domini = "Know the ways of the Lord" 1142-52)  to the Cistercian Pope Eugenius III, then visiting Trier. "Who is this woman?" he asked when he read it. "She rises out of the wilderness like a column of smoke from burning spices." The book contains 26 visions about the Church, the relationship between God and man and redemption. It is a theology, telling the history of salvation centred on Jesus from creation to the Second Coming.

Her convent at Rupertsberg
Around 1147 Hildegard - possibly to secure a more independent role for herself and her sisters - left Disibodenberg and set up a convent in Rupertsberg near Bingen on the Rhine. The move caused a rift with the abbot and monks of the monastery of St Disibod - because of the feared loss of revenue - and stress to Hildegard, but within a few years she had a thriving community of fifty nuns.

Knowledge of Medicine
Hildegard cared for the sick nuns of her own community and from this experience she wrote two books on medicine. It describes herbal remedies and the circulation of the blood five centuries before the scientist Harvey developed his theories.

Poetry, Music and the Arts
A gifted poet and musician, she also produced hymns and canticles for her nuns to sing. These have recently been reproduced and are currently popular sales items. She also installed a piped-water system in her convent. She made illustrations for the Scivias and devised an early form of an international language like Esperanto.

Convent Under Interdict
Hildegard came into conflict with the Archbishop of Mainz when she took a decision to bury in the convent cemetery the body of a young nobleman, who had been excommunicated. She knew that the man had repented before he died and she had acted in good conscience. The archbishop put her monastery under 'interdict' thus depriving the community of the sacraments for some months and forbidding music in their church. Hildegard's response was to write a long letter to the bishop on sacred music to which she added: "Those therefore who, without good reason, impose silence on churches in which singing in God's honour should be heard will not deserve to hear the glorious choirs of angels praising the Lord in heaven."
The archbishop lifted the interdict!

When she was about sixty, she devoted five years going around actively preaching and teaching and speaking to all kinds of people.

Death and Influence
Active to the last, Hildegard died on 17 September 1179.  Though many miracles were reported during her life and at her tomb, she was never formally canonised, but she is listed as a saint for that day in the Roman Martyrology.

Hildegard's Relics

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Memorable Sayings  for Today

“The future will either be green or not at all.”
– Bob Brown -

“The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity.
This Word manifests itself in every creature.”
- Hildegard of Bingen -

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The Twenty Fifth Sunday in  Ordinary Time, Year C

Jesus does not approve of the dishonesty of the steward but comments on how attentive to profit making
so many people  are. Christians too can easily become apathetic about life's true values.

FIRST READING 

A reading from the Book of the prophet  Amos        8:4-7
Against those who 'buy up the poor for money'.

Listen to this, you who trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the country, you who say,
'When will New Moon be over so that we can sell our corn, and sabbath, so that we can market our wheat?
Then by lowering the bushel, raising the shekel,
by swindling and tampering with the scales,
we can buy up the poor for money,
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and get a price even for the sweepings of the wheat.'

The Lord swears it by the pride of Jacob, 'Never will I forget a single thing you have done'

The Word of the Lord                Thanks be to God. 

Responsorial Psalm            Ps 112
Response                                 Praise the Lord, who raises the poor.
Or                                               Alleluia!

1. Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord!
May the name of the Lord be blessed both now and for evermore!                             Response

2. High above all nations is the Lord, above the heavens his glory.
Who is like the Lord, our God, who has risen on high to his throne
yet stoops from the heights to look down, to look down upon heaven and earth?   Response

3. From the dust he lifts up the lowly, from the dung heap he raises the poor
to set him in the company of princes, yes, with the princes of his people.                 Response


SECOND READING          

A reading from the first letter of St Paul to Timothy       2:1-8
There should be prayers offered for everyone to God who wants everyone to be saved.

My advice is that, first of all, there should be prayers offered for everyone - petitions, intercessions and thanksgiving - and especially for kings and others in authority, so that we may be able to live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet. To do this is right, and will please God our saviour: he wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth. For there is only one God, and there is only one mediator between God and mankind, himself a man, Christ Jesus, who sacrificed himself as a ransom for them all. He is the evidence of this, sent at the appointed time, and I have been named a herald and apostle of it and - I am telling the truth and no lie - a teacher of the faith and the truth to the pagans.

In every place, then, I want the men to lift their hands up reverently in prayer, with no anger or argument.

The Word of the Lord                   Thanks be to God. 

Gospel  Acclamation              Acts 16: 14
Alleluia, alleluia!
Open our heart, O Lord, to accept the words of your Son.
Alleluia!

Or                                                  2 Cor 8: 9
Alleluia, alleluia!
Lord Jesus was rich, but he became poor for your sake,
to make you rich out of his poverty.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL                               

The Lord be with you.               And with your spirit
A reading from the Gospel according to Luke     16:1-13
You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.

Jesus said to his disciples,
'There was a rich man and he had a steward denounced to him for being wasteful with his property. He called for the man and said, "What is this I hear about you? Draw me up an account of your stewardship because you are not to be my steward any longer."
Then the steward said to himself, "Now that my master is taking the stewardship from me, what am I to do? Dig? I am not strong enough. Go begging? I should be too ashamed.
Ah, I know what I will do to make sure that when I am dismissed from office there will be some to welcome me into their homes."

Then he called his master's debtors one by one. To the first he said, "How much do you owe my master?" "One hundred measures of oil" was the reply.
The steward said, "Here, take your bond; sit down straight away and write fifty".
To another he said, "And you, sir, how much do you owe?" "One hundred measures of wheat" was the reply.
The steward said, "Here, take your bond and write eighty".

'The master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness. For the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.'

'And so I tell you this: use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity. The man who can be trusted in little things can be trusted in great; the man who is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in great. If then you cannot be trusted with money, that tainted thing, who will trust you with genuine riches? And if you cannot be trusted with what is not yours, who will give you what is your very own?

'No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.'

The Gospel of the Lord            Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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 Shorter  form

GOSPEL                               

A reading from the Gospel according to Luke     16:10-13
Theme: You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.

Jesus said to his disciples,
"The man who can be trusted in little things can be trusted in great; the man who is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in great. If then you cannot be trusted with money, that tainted thing, who will trust you with genuine riches? And if you cannot be trusted with what is not yours, who will give you what is your very own?

'No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.'

The Gospel of the Lord            Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

For homily resources for this Sunday's Gospel click here:  https://www.catholicireland.net/sunday-homily/



Taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, published and copyright 1966,  by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc, and used by permission of the publishers.