Ss Cyril and Methodius: "my brother’s keeper"

... offer to God a sacrifice of praise.

-- Ps 50:1 and 8, 16bc-17, 20-21

From the Sermon on the Mount onwards, Jesus insists on conversion of heart: reconciliation with one's brother before presenting an offering on the altar, love of enemies, and prayer for persecutors, prayer to the Father in secret, not heaping up empty phrases, prayerful forgiveness from the depths of the heart, purity of heart, and seeking the Kingdom before all else. This filial conversion is entirely directed to the Father.

-- CCC 2608

Monday, Week 6: "when you encounter various trials"

Consider it all joy.

-- Jas 1:1-11

The Holy Spirit makes us discern between trials, which are necessary for the growth of the inner man, and temptation, which leads to sin and death. We must also discern between being tempted and consenting to temptation. Finally, discernment unmasks the lie of temptation, whose object appears to be good, a "delight to the eyes" and desirable, when in reality its fruit is death.

God does not want to impose the good, but wants free beings. . . . There is a certain usefulness to temptation. No one but God knows what our soul has received from him, not even we ourselves. But temptation reveals it in order to teach us to know ourselves, and in this way we discover our evil inclinations and are obliged to give thanks for the goods that temptation has revealed to us.

-- CCC 2847

Sixth Sunday B: ""I do will it. Be made clean." Rescinding the HHS mandate "the only complete solution to this religious liberty problem"

"If you wish, you can make me clean." "I do will it. Be made clean."
-- Mark 1, 40-45

"First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans — nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion. All the other mandated 'preventive services' prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease. Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate altogether." (US Bishops' statement on HHS mandate and so-called compromise of 10 Feb 2012)

"Prayer to Jesus is answered by him already during his ministry, through signs that anticipate the power of his death and Resurrection: Jesus hears the prayer of faith, expressed in words (the leper, Jairus, the Canaanite woman, the good thief) or in silence (the bearers of the paralytic, the woman with a hemorrhage who touches his clothes, the tears and ointment of the sinful woman). The urgent request of the blind men, "Have mercy on us, Son of David" or 'Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!' has-been renewed in the traditional prayer to Jesus known as the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" Healing infirmities or forgiving sins, Jesus always responds to a prayer offered in faith: 'Your faith has made you well; go in peace.' "
--CCC 2616

"The political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist it, and to ensure especially:

"-the freedom to establish a family, have children, and bring them up in keeping with the family's own moral and religious convictions;

"-the protection of the stability of the marriage bond and the institution of the family;

"-the freedom to profess one's faith, to hand it on, and raise one's children in it, with the necessary means and institutions;

"-the right to private property, to free enterprise, to obtain work and housing, and the right to emigrate;

"-in keeping with the country's institutions, the right to medical care, assistance for the aged, and family benefits;

"- the protection of security and health, especially with respect to dangers like drugs, pornography, alcoholism, etc.;

"- the freedom to form associations with other families and so to have representation before civil authority.
-- CCC 2211

"Second, the common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself. Development is the epitome of all social duties. Certainly, it is the proper function of authority to arbitrate, in the name of the common good, between various particular interests; but it should make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on.

"St. Augustine wonderfully summarizes the three dimensions of Jesus' prayer: 'He prays for us as our priest, prays in us as our Head, and is prayed to by us as our God. Therefore let us acknowledge our voice in him and his in us.'"
-- CCC 1908

Our Lady of Lourdes: "be glad because of her"

... all you who love her."

-- Isaiah 66:10-14c

This twofold movement of prayer to Mary has found a privileged expression in the Ave Maria:

Hail Mary [or Rejoice, Mary]: the greeting of the angel Gabriel opens this prayer. It is God himself who, through his angel as intermediary, greets Mary. Our prayer dares to take up this greeting to Mary with the regard God had for the lowliness of his humble servant and to exult in the joy he finds in her.

Full of grace, the Lord is with thee: These two phrases of the angel's greeting shed light on one another. Mary is full of grace because the Lord is with her. The grace with which she is filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace. "Rejoice . . . O Daughter of Jerusalem . . . the Lord your God is in your midst." Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is "the dwelling of God . . . with men." Full of grace, Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell in her and whom she is about to give to the world.

Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. After the angel's greeting, we make Elizabeth's greeting our own. "Filled with the Holy Spirit," Elizabeth is the first in the long succession of generations who have called Mary "blessed." "Blessed is she who believed. . . . " Mary is "blessed among women" because she believed in the fulfillment of the Lord's word. Abraham. because of his faith, became a blessing for all the nations of the earth. Mary, because of her faith, became the mother of believers, through whom all nations of the earth receive him who is God's own blessing: Jesus, the "fruit of thy womb."

-- CCC 2676

S Scholastica: "“It is not good for the man to be alone.”

this one shall be called ‘woman,’

-- Gn 2:18-25

God created man and woman together and willed each for the other. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. "It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him." None of the animals can be man's partner. The woman God "fashions" from the man's rib and brings to him elicits on the man's part a cry of wonder, an exclamation of love and communion: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Man discovers woman as another "I", sharing the same humanity.

-- CCC 371

The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality. Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one's neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.

-- CCC 2347

Thursday, Week 5: "Let the children be fed first"

"Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."

--Mk 7:24-30

"First Holy Communion. Having become a child of God clothed with the wedding garment, the neophyte is admitted 'to the marriage supper of the Lamb' and receives the food of the new life, the body and blood of Christ. The Eastern Churches maintain a lively awareness of the unity of Christian initiation by giving Holy Communion to all the newly baptized and confirmed, even little children, recalling the Lord's words: 'Let the children come to me, do not hinder them.' The Latin Church, which reserves admission to Holy Communion to those who have attained the age of reason, expresses the orientation of Baptism to the Eucharist by having the newly baptized child brought to the altar for the praying of the Our Father."

-- CCC 1244

Saint Josephine Bakhita: "God created man in his image"

in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.

-- Gn 1:20-2:4a

But above all, the crossing of the Red Sea, literally the liberation of Israel from the slavery of Egypt, announces the liberation wrought by Baptism:

You freed the children of Abraham from the slavery of Pharaoh,
bringing them dry-shod through the waters of the Red Sea,
to be an image of the people set free in Baptism.

-- CCC 1221