Wednesday, February 8
Don’t be late to break-fast
With the season of Lent and its practice of fasting arriving in a couple of weeks, it’s a little puzzling to remember that Jesus was a great breaker of fasts and violator of religious food rules—that was one thing that got him into trouble with the authorities. His followers gathered grain on the Sabbath because they were starving. He ate with sinners and outcasts. He simply did not follow the rules, but for a purpose: to show how the rules should not control but rather serve to bring a person into a more loving relationship with God and neighbor. What makes a person holy is not external observance but internal faith and love, which leads to right behavior.TODAY’S READINGS: 1 Kings 10:1-10; Mark 7:14-23 (331)
“Everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile . . . . But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles.”
CONTRIBUTORS
Alice Camille, Daniel Grippo, Caroline Hopkinson, Father Larry Janowski, O.F.M., Ann O’Connor, Joel Schorn, Patrice J. Tuohy, and Sister Julie Vieira, I.H.M.
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Jesus called the people to him again and said, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that goes into someone from outside can make that person unclean; it is the things that come out of someone that make that person unclean. Anyone who has ears for listening should listen!’ When he had gone into the house, away from the crowd, his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Even you — don’t you understand? Can’t you see that nothing that goes into someone from outside can make that person unclean, because it goes not into the heart but into the stomach and passes into the sewer? And he went on, ‘It is what comes out of someone that makes that person unclean. For it is from within, from the heart, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a person unclean.’
The Saint of the day: St Jerome Emiliani
We know very little about the early life of St. Jerome Emiliani(or Miani Miano also). Born in Venice in 1486, and like all important families followed a military career. In 1511 Castelnuovo was captured while fighting in the League of Cambrai. During his captivity, he dedicated himself to meditate on the impermanence of worldly power, as happened ten years after St. Ignatius of Loyola. Unexpectedly, was released a month later, and then felt alive vocation dedicated to serving the poor, the sick, young women abandoned and "repentance". A very vast field. After a short "novitiate" as a penitent with Giampietro Carafa, the future Paul IV, Jerome was ordained in 1518.
Ten years later there was a tremendous shortage throughout the region and then a plague epidemic, then Jerome sold everything he had, including home furnishings, and devoted himself to the care of the infected. We had to bury the dead, and it was getting dark. But we also had to think about the living, especially in children who had lost their parents, and women who by necessity engaged in prostitution. Verona, Brescia, Como, Bergamo was the field of his beneficent action. It was then in Somasca founded the Order of Clerics Regular, designed to help orphans and the poor. Parents were Somaschi who made the big project of the founder: the institution of free schools for all and in the adoption of the revolutionary method called "dialogical method".
St. Jerome Emiliani died on the groove: while attending plague patients Somasca, was attacked by the same fever and died among its favorite sons: the poor and sick, who had devoted all his efforts. It was on February 8, 1537. He was canonized in 1767 and in 1928 Pius XI named him patron of orphans and abandoned youth. Before the calendar reform, his feast was celebrated on July 20.He is patron saint of orphans and abandoned children.
Prayer
Almighty and eternal God
may your servant Jerome
help us be better Christians
so we can love you more
each day.
We ask this through Christ our
Lord.
AMEN
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