Day: March 21, 2020

Saint Benedict

Father of Western Monasticism
(480-543)

Saint Benedict, blessed by grace as his prophetic name seemed to foretell, was born of a noble Italian family in Umbria, in the year 480. As a boy he showed great inclination for virtue, and maturity in his actions. He was sent to Rome at the age of seven, to be placed in the public schools. At the age of fourteen, alarmed by the licentiousness of the Roman youth, he fled to the desert mountains of Subiaco, forty miles from Rome, and was directed by the Holy Spirit into a deep, craggy, and almost inaccessible cave, since known as the Holy Grotto. He lived there for three years, unknown to anyone save a holy monk named Romanus, who clothed him with the monastic habit and brought him food. Continue reading →

Meditations for Each Day of Lent by St. Thomas Aquinas

Saturday After the Third Sunday

The Passion of Christ Reconciles us to God

We were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.–Rom. v. 10

The Passion of Christ brought about our reconciliation to God in two ways.

1. It removed the sin that had made the human race God’s enemy, as it says in Holy Scripture, To God the wicked and his wickedness are alike hateful (Wis. xiv. 9), and again, Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity (Ps. v. 7). Continue reading →

St. Photina

Martyr
(† 1st century)

Photina was the Samaritan woman with whom Jesus spoke at the well as was recounted in the Gospel of St. John, chapter four. Deeply moved by the experience, she took to preaching the Gospel, received imprisonment, and was finally martyred at Carthage. Another tradition states that Photina was put to death in Rome after converting the daughter of Emperor Nero and one hundred of her servants. She supposedly died in Rome with her sons Joseph and Victor, along with several other Christians, including Sebastian, Photius, Parasceve, Photis, Cyriaca, and Victor. They were perhaps included in the Roman Martyrology by Cardinal Cesare Baronius owing to the widely held view that the head of Photina was preserved in the basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls.

Prayer to St Photina

By the well of Jacob, O holy one,
thou didst find the Water of eternal and blessed life;
and having partaken thereof, O wise Photina,
thou went forth proclaiming Christ, the Anointed One.
Help us to follow thy example, Prayer to St Photina
and through our lives bring glory to the Lord and believers to the Church. Amen.

Devotion to the Five Holy Wounds of Jesus

Isaias liii.3-5: “Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and His look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought Him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by His bruises we are healed.” Continue reading →

Meditations for Each Day of Lent by St. Thomas Aquinas

Friday After the Third Sunday

It is by the Passion of Christ that we have been freed from the punishment due to sin

Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows.–Isaias liii. 4.

By the Passion of Christ we are freed from the liability to be punished for sin with the punish ment that sin calls for, in two ways, directly and indirectly.

We are freed directly inasmuch as the Passion of Christ made sufficient and more than sufficient satisfaction for the sins of the whole human race. Now once sufficient satisfaction has been made, the liability to the punishment mentioned is destroyed. Continue reading →