Monday 27 June 2022
Monday of week 13 in Ordinary Time
or Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop, Doctor
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Monday of week 13 in Ordinary Time
From a sermon by Saint Augustine
He is the Lord our God, and we are the people of his pasture
The words we have sung contain our declaration that we are God’s flock: For he is the Lord our God who made us. He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands. Human shepherds did not make the sheep they own; they did not create the sheep they pasture. Our Lord God, however, because he is God and Creator, made for himself the sheep which he has and pastures. No one else created the sheep he pastures, nor does anyone else pasture the sheep he created.
In this song we have declared that we are his flock, the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hands. Let us listen therefore to the words he addresses to us as his sheep. Earlier he addressed the shepherds, but now he speaks to the sheep. We listened to those earlier words of his and we – the shepherds – trembled, but you listened without a qualm.
What is to happen when we hear these words today? Are we in turn to be without a qualm while you tremble? By no means! We are shepherds, and the shepherd listens and trembles not only at what is said to the shepherds but also at what is said to the sheep. If he does listen without a qualm to what is said to his sheep, he is not concerned for them. And further, on that occasion we asked you in your charity to remember two points about us: first, that we are Christians, and second, that we are placed in charge. Because we are placed in charge, we are ranked among the shepherds, if we are good; but because we are Christians, we too are members of the flock with you. Therefore, whether the Lord is addressing the shepherds or the sheep, we must listen to all his words and tremble; our hearts must always remain concerned.
And so, my brothers, let us listen to the words with which the Lord upbraids the wicked sheep and to the promises he makes to his own flock. You are my sheep, he says. Even in the midst of this life of tears and tribulations, what happiness, what great joy it is to realise that we are God’s flock! To him were spoken the words: You are the shepherd of Israel. Of him it was said: The guardian of Israel will not slumber, nor will he sleep. He keeps watch over us when we are awake; he keeps watch over us when we sleep. A flock belonging to a man feels secure in the care of its human shepherd; how much safer should we feel when our shepherd is God. Not only does he lead us to pasture, but he even created us.
You are my sheep, says the Lord God. See, I judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. What are goats doing here in the flock of God? In the same pastures, at the same springs, goats – though destined for the left – mingle with those on the right. They are tolerated now, but will be separated later. In this way the patience of the flock develops and becomes like God’s own patience. For it is he who will do the separating, placing some on the left and others on the right.
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Other choices for today:
Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop, Doctor
From a letter by Saint Cyril of Alexandria, bishop
Defender of the divine motherhood of the Virgin Mary
That anyone could doubt the right of the holy Virgin to be called the Mother of God fills me with astonishment. Surely she must be the Mother of God if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, and she gave birth to him! Our Lord’s disciples may not have used those exact words, but they delivered to us the belief those words enshrine, and this has also been taught us by the holy fathers.
In the third book of his work on the holy and consubstantial Trinity, our father Athanasius, of glorious memory, several times refers to the holy Virgin as “Mother of God.” I cannot resist quoting his own words: “As I have often told you, the distinctive mark of holy Scripture is that it was written to make a twofold declaration concerning our Saviour; namely, that he is and has always been God, since he is the Word, Radiance and Wisdom of the Father; and that for our sake in these latter days he took flesh from the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and became man.”
Again further on he says: “There have been many holy men, free from all sin. Jeremiah was sanctified in his mother’s womb, and John while still in the womb leaped for joy at the voice of Mary, the Mother of God.” Athanasius is a man we can trust, one who deserves our complete confidence, for he taught nothing contrary to the sacred books.
The divinely inspired Scriptures affirm that the Word of God was made flesh, that is to say, he was united to a human body endowed with a rational soul. He undertook to help the descendants of Abraham, fashioning a body for himself from a woman and sharing our flesh and blood, to enable us to see in him not only God, but also, by reason of this union, a man like ourselves.
It is held, therefore, that there are in Emmanuel two entities, divinity and humanity. Yet our Lord Jesus Christ is nonetheless one, the one true Son, both God and man; not a deified man on the same footing as those who share the divine nature by grace, but true God who for our sake appeared in human form. We are assured of this by Saint Paul’s declaration: When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law and to enable us to be adopted as sons.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour
The icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in the church of St Alphonsus Liguori in Rome.
The Glories of Mary by St Alphonsus Mary de' Liguori
To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve
Truly unfortunate are we, poor children of Eve. Guilty before God of her fault, and condemned to the same penalty, we have to wander about in this valley of tears as exiles from our country, and to weep over our many afflictions of body and soul. But blessed is he who, in the midst of these sorrows, often turns to the comfortress of the world, to the refuge of the unfortunate, to the great Mother of God, and devoutly calls upon her and invokes her!
The holy Church carefully teaches us, “her children”, with what attention and confidence we should unceasingly have recourse to this loving protectress, and for this purpose commands a worship peculiar to Mary. This is what Mary desires. She wishes us always to seek her and invoke her aid, not as if she were begging of us these honours and marks of veneration (for they are in no way proportioned to her merit) but she desires them that, by such means, our confidence and devotion may be increased, and that, so, she may be able to give us greater succour and comfort. She, in the exercise of her mercy, knows not how to act differently from God: as he flies at once to the assistance of those who beg his aid, faithful to his promise, Ask, and you shall receive, so Mary, whenever she is invoked, is at once ready to assist him who prays to her. Nor should the multitude of our sins diminish our confidence that Mary will grant our petitions when we cast ourselves at her feet. She is the mother of mercy: but mercy would not be needed did none exist who require it. On this subject Richard of St Lawrence remarks that “as a good mother does not shrink from applying a remedy to her child infected with ulcers, however nauseous and revolting they may be, so also is our good mother unable to abandon us when we have recourse to her, that she may heal the wounds caused by our sins, however loathsome they may have rendered us”.
This good mother’s compassion is so great, and the love she bears us is such that she does not even wait for our prayers in order to assist us, but, as St Anselm says, she is beforehand with those who desire her protection. Her love for us is so tender, that in our wants she anticipates our prayers, and her mercy is more prompt to help us than we are to ask her aid. “And this arises,” adds Richard of St Victor, “from the fact that the heart of Mary is so filled with compassion for poor sinners, that she no sooner sees our miseries than she pours her tender mercies upon us. Nor is it possible for this benign queen to behold the want of any soul without immediately assisting it.”
Should there be anyone who doubts as to whether Mary will aid him if he has recourse to her, Innocent III thus reproves him: “Who is there that ever, when in the night of sin, had recourse to this sweet Lady without being relieved? Such a case certainly never did and never will occur.”
Let all, then, say with full confidence, in the words of that beautiful prayer addressed to the Mother of mercy, and commonly attributed to St Bernard: “Remember, O most loving virgin Mary, that it is a thing unheard of in any age that anyone had recourse to your protection and was left unaided.”
Copyright © 1996-2022 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.