Friday 12 June 2020
Friday of week 10 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Friday of week 10 in Ordinary Time
The Explanations of the Psalms by Saint Ambrose: Psalm 1
The delightful book of the psalms
Although the whole of Scripture breathes God’s grace upon us, this is especially true of that delightful book, the book of the psalms. Moses, when he related the deeds of the patriarchs, did so in a plain and unadorned style. But when he had miraculously led the people of Israel across the Red Sea, when he had seen King Pharaoh drowned with all his army, he transcended his own skills (just as the miracle had transcended his own powers) and he sang a triumphal song to the Lord. Miriam the prophetess herself took up a timbrel and led the others in the refrain: Sing to the Lord: he has covered himself in glory, horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.
History instructs us, the law teaches us, prophecy foretells, correction punishes, morality persuades; but the book of psalms goes further than all these. It is medicine for our spiritual health. Whoever reads it will find in it a medicine to cure the wounds caused by his own particular passions. Whoever studies it deeply will find it a kind of gymnasium open for all souls to use, where the different psalms are like different exercises set out before him. In that gymnasium, in that stadium of virtue, he can choose the exercises that will train him best to win the victor’s crown.
If someone wants to study the deeds of our ancestors and imitate the best of them, he can find a single psalm that contains the whole of their history, a complete treasury of past memories in just one short reading.
If someone wants to study the law and find out what gives it its force (it is the bond of love, for whoever loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law) let him read in the psalms how love led one man to undergo great dangers to wipe out the shame of his entire people; and this triumph of virtue will lead him to recognise the great things that love can do.
And as for the power of prophecy – what can I say? Other prophets spoke in riddles. To the psalmist alone, it seems, God promised openly and clearly that the Lord Jesus would be born of his seed: I promise that your own son will succeed you on the throne.
Thus in the book of psalms Jesus is not only born for us: he also accepts his saving passion, he dies, he rises from the dead, he ascends into heaven, he sits at the Father’s right hand. The Psalmist announced what no other prophet had dared to say, that which was later preached by the Lord himself in the Gospel.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Blessed Alphonsus Mary Mazurek and Companions, Priest and Martyrs
From the addresses of Pope John Paul II
Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness
“Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness: the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” (Mt 5:10) In a particular way, this beatitude places the events of Good Friday before our eyes. Christ was condemned to death as a criminal, and then crucified. On Calvary it seemed he had been abandoned by God and left at the mercy of people’s derision.
The Gospel proclaimed by Christ was put to a radical test: those who were present at the event cried out, “He is the king of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him” (Mt 27:42). Christ does not descend from the cross since he is faithful to his Gospel. He suffers human injustice. Only in this way, in fact, is he able to accomplish the justification of mankind.
Above all, he wanted the words of the sermon on the mount to be verified in himself: “Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you” (Mt 5:11-12).
To whom do these words still apply? To many, many people throughout humanity’s history, to whom it was given to suffer persecution for the sake of justice. We know that the first three centuries after Christ were marked by persecutions, at times terrible, particularly under some Roman emperors from Nero to Diocletian. Even though these ceased from the time of the Edict of Milan, nevertheless they broke out again in various historical eras, in numerous places throughout the world.
Even our century has written a great martyrology. I myself, over the twenty years of my pontificate, have elevated to the glory of the altar numerous groups of martyrs: Japanese, French, Vietnamese, Spanish, Mexican. How many there were during the period of the Second World War and under the communist totalitarian system! They suffered and gave their life in the Hitlerian or Soviet extermination camps.
The time has now come to remember all these victims and to render due honour to them. These are often Nameless, “unknown soldiers” as it were, of God’s great cause, as I wrote in the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (37). It is also good to speak of them on Polish land, since here there was a particular sharing in this contemporary martyrology. They are an example for us to follow. From their blood we should draw strength for the sacrifice of our life, which we ought to offer to God every day. They are an example for us to give a courageous witness of fidelity to the Cross of Christ, as they did.
I am happy that I was able to beatify, among the one hundred and eight martyrs, Blessed Father Alphonsus Mary Mazurek, a pupil, and much later, a well-deserving educator in the minor seminary connected to the Discalced Carmelite monastery. I had an occasion of meeting personally with this witness to Christ, who in 1944, as prior of the Czerna monastery, sealed his faithfulness to God with death through martyrdom. I kneel in veneration before his relics which rest in the church of Saint Joseph and I thank God for the gift of the life, the martyrdom and sanctity of this great religious.
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Blessed Hilary Januszewski, Priest, Martyr
From the Canonical Process for the beatification of Hilary Januszewski, priest and martyr
He gave his life that others might live
Paweł Januszewski was born in Krajenki, Poland, June 11, 1907. At the age of twenty he sensed a vocation to the Carmelite Order and entered the Order in the friary of Cracow, taking the religious name Hilary. He was sent to Rome, to the International College of St Albert, for his theological studies, and there be made his solemn vows, and in 1934 he was ordained to the priesthood. The following year, having earned the degree of Lector in Theology and having won the prize awarded to the best prepared student by the Roman Academy of St Thomas Aquinas, be returned to his homeland. There he was named prefect of clerics and sacristan in the friary of Cracow. In 1939, when war was immanent, he was named prior of the same friary.
Father Hilary was inflexible in his demands on himself, but very charitable with others. He showed special concern for the sick and the needy. He was widely known for his devotion, a quality particularly evident in his apostolic zeal, in his celebration of Holy Mass, in his prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours, in other religious practices and in his fervent love for his Order. He spent long periods before the miraculous image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the church of Cracow. He gave frequent, well-prepared conferences to the clerics, and he took great pains as bursar to see to it that everyone without distinction – clerics, brothers, priests – had what he needed.
On December 4, 1940, the Gestapo arrested several religious. Father Hilary, who spoke German fluently, did everything possible to free them; he even offered himself in place of an aged and infirm confrère. So began his Calvary, which was to end in the concentration camp at Dachau.
There he was assigned to the arduous labour in the fields; regardless of his situation, he never forgot he was a priest and religious: a man of prayer who gave good example and exhorted the others to hope for a better future. He encouraged them, he ministered to them, he helped them. When he received some little gift from his confrères in Cracow, he shared it with them in all simplicity. He consoled his fellow prisoners with the hope of returning to Poland, and he inspired them saying: “You are to return to Cracow and work in the Lord’s vineyard.”
Evenings, after the final roll call, the Carmelite prisoners gathered together, always secretly, for prayer. Carmelites of other countries also participated, such as the Dutch Carmelite Blessed Titus Brandsma.
When the war was almost over and rescue seemed finally near, an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out. None of those responsible for the care of the victims was willing to help them.
At that point the authorities turned to the priests: thirty-two of them volunteered for this service, fully aware that they were facing almost certain death. Among them was Father Hilary.
Archbishop Kozlowski, a Jesuit, survived the camp and provided the following testimony: “Their decision was truly heroic, dictated by true love of neighbour. What we experienced during those five years could have annihilated any ideals. The ruthless struggle for survival could have been a source of selfishness and indifference toward others. But these heroic priests are a clear witness that the commandment of love, love of neighbour, promulgated by Christ is not pure utopianism, but rather an authentic reality that conquers even where blind hatred is master.”
Father Hilary confided in one of his friends, “I have made my decision, even though I am aware I will not come out of there alive.” He served the infected victims for twenty days, with some hundred dying each day. He himself died on the Feast of the Annunciation in 1945, a few days before the death camp was freed. Fr Hilary Paweł Januszewski was called to the glory of Christ, and so – filled with hope – ended his young life.
Copyright © 1996-2020 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.