MAY 10, 2016 : TUESDAY OF THE SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTER

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Lectionary: 298

Reading 1ACTS 20:17-27

From Miletus Paul had the presbyters
of the Church at Ephesus summoned.
When they came to him, he addressed them,
“You know how I lived among you
the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia.
I served the Lord with all humility
and with the tears and trials that came to me
because of the plots of the Jews,
and I did not at all shrink from telling you
what was for your benefit,
or from teaching you in public or in your homes.
I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks
to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus.
But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem.
What will happen to me there I do not know,
except that in one city after another
the Holy Spirit has been warning me
that imprisonment and hardships await me.
Yet I consider life of no importance to me,
if only I may finish my course
and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s grace.

“But now I know that none of you
to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels
will ever see my face again.
And so I solemnly declare to you this day
that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you,
for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God.”

Responsorial PsalmPS 68:10-11, 20-21

R. (33a) Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
or:
R. Alleluia.
A bountiful rain you showered down, O God, upon your inheritance;
you restored the land when it languished;
Your flock settled in it;
in your goodness, O God, you provided it for the needy.
R. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Blessed day by day be the Lord,
who bears our burdens; God, who is our salvation.
God is a saving God for us;
the LORD, my Lord, controls the passageways of death.
R. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
or:
R. Alleluia.

AlleluiaJN 14:16

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I will ask the Father
and he will give you another Advocate
to be with you always.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

GospelJN 17:1-11A

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said,
“Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.
Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
I glorified you on earth
by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
Now glorify me, Father, with you,
with the glory that I had with you before the world began.

“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,
because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours
and everything of yours is mine,
and I have been glorified in them.
And now I will no longer be in the world,
but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”

www.usccb.org

Meditation:  "This is eternal life, that they know the Father the only true God"

In his Last Supper discourse Jesus speaks of his glory and the glory of his Father. What is this glory? It is the cross which Jesus speaks of here. How does the cross reveal his glory? In the cross God reveals the breadth of his great love for sinners and the power of redemption which cancels the debt of sin and reverses the curse of our condemnation. Jesus gave his Father the supreme honor and glory through his obedience and willingness to go to the cross. In times of defense the greatest honor belongs not to those who fought and survived but to those who gave the supreme sacrifice of their own lives for their fellow citizens.

Jesus speaks of the Father bringing glory to the Son through the great mystery of the Incarnation and Cross of Christ. God the Father gave us his only begotten Son for our redemption and deliverance from slavery to sin and death. There is no greater proof of God's love for each and every person on the face of the earth than the Cross of Jesus Christ. In the cross we see a new way of love - a love that is unconditional, sacrificial and generous beyond comprehension.

Jesus also speaks of eternal life. What is eternal life? It is more than simply endless time. Science and medicine today looks for ways to extend the duration of life; but that doesn't necessarily make life better for us here. Eternal life is qualitative more than quantitative. To have eternal life is to have the life of God within us. When we possess eternal life we experience here and now something of God's majesty, his peace, joy and love and the holiness which characterizes the life of God. 

Jesus also speaks of the knowledge of God. Jesus tells his disciples that they can know the only true God. Knowledge of God is not simply limited to knowing something about God, but we can know God personally. The essence of Christianity, and what makes it distinct from Judaism and other religions, is the knowledge of God as our Father. Jesus makes it possible for each of us to personally know God as our Father. To see Jesus is to see what God is like. In Jesus we see the perfect love of God - a God who cares intensely and who yearns over men and women, loving them to the point of laying down his life for them upon the Cross. Jesus is the revelation of God - a God who loves us completely, unconditionally  and perfectly. Do you seek unity of heart, mind and will with God and unity of love and peace with your neighbor?

"If only I possessed the grace, good Jesus, to be utterly at one with you! Amidst all the variety of worldly things around me, Lord, the only thing I crave is unity with you. You are all my soul needs.  Unite, dear friend of my heart, this unique little soul of mine to your perfect goodness. You are all mine; when shall I be yours?  Lord Jesus, my beloved, be the magnet of my heart; clasp, press, unite me for ever to your sacred heart.  You have made me for yourself; make me one with you.  Absorb this tiny drop of life into the ocean of goodness whence it came." (Prayer of Francis de Sales, 1567-1622)

Daily Quote from the early church fathers: Eternity will be ours when faith sees, by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.

"We are distanced from eternity to the extent that we are changeable. But eternal life is promised to us through the truth. Our faith, however, stands as far apart from the clear knowledge of the truth as mortality does from eternity. At the present we put faith in things done in time on our account, and by that faith itself we are cleansed. In this way, when we have come to sight, as truth follows faith, so eternity may follow on mortality. Our faith will become truth, then, when we have attained to that which is promised to us who believe. And that which is promised to us is eternal life. And the Truth - not that which shall come to be according to how our faith shall be, but that truth that always exists because eternity is in it - the Truth then has said, 'And this is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.' When our faith sees and comes to be truth, then eternity shall possess our now changed mortality." (excerpt from ON THE TRINITY 4.18.24.34)

www.dailyscripture.net

TUESDAY, MAY 10, JOHN 17:1-11a
Easter Weekday
(Acts 20:17-27; Psalm 68)

KEY VERSE: "I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do" (v.4).
TO KNOW: Jesus was about to complete the work his Father had given him. His "hour" had come, the moment for him to fulfill his mission on earth through his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus is the high priest who offered himself as a victim for the salvation of the world. He would bring glory to God through his saving death, and God would in turn glorify him. Jesus had come into the world to reveal the true nature and character of God. He prayed that those who believed that he was the one sent by his Father would share eternal life with him. Jesus asked the Father to protect his followers from all evil. He prayed that the Church would be united in love and demonstrate the oneness that he has with the Father.
TO LOVE: Is there someone who needs my prayers for protection from evil?
TO SERVE: Risen Lord, help me to participate in your work on earth.

Optional Memorial of Saint Damien Joseph de Veuster of Moloka'i, priest

The "Leper Priest of Moloka'i," named Joseph at birth, received the name Damien in religious life when he joined the Sacred Hearts Fathers in 1860. In 1864, he was sent to Honolulu, Hawaii where he worked in missions. In 1873, he went to the leper colony on Moloka'i, after volunteering for the assignment. Damien cared for lepers of all ages, but was particularly concerned about the children segregated in the colony. Although he contracted leprosy in 1885 he continued to build hospitals, clinics, and churches, and some six hundred coffins. He died on April 15, on Moloka'i. Robert Louis Stevenson defended Damien against a slanderous attack in 1905. Damien was canonized on October 11, 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. It was during Damien’s years at Moloka'i that a Norwegian doctor, Gerhard Hansen, first identified the bacillus of leprosy. Today, Hansen’s disease, as leprosy is now called, can be slowed and sometimes totally halted, but it still remains a serious illness. The World Health Organization estimates that there are currently 10-12 million cases of Hansen’s disease worldwide. 

www.togetherwithgodsword.com

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Tue 10th. Acts 20:17-27. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth—Ps 67(68):10-11, 20-21. John 17:1-11.
‘You know what my way of life has been.’ (Acts 20:18)

Readings

A final legacy.

In the first reading today Paul gives a final address to the elders of Ephesus summarising some of the main points of his life and ministry. He knew it was the last time he would see them, so it was like his final legacy.

Have you ever thought what kind of legacy you would like to leave? Our dreams of what we can accomplish or become in life can be quite limited especially as we get older. We might accept far less than God actually wants to do in us and through us.

Whatever we think of our legacy, it’s good to remember that ‘nothing is impossible’ (Luke 1:37). God needs us to help spread his kingdom and as long as we can breathe and are willing he can accomplish wonderful things through us. Why not give him a chance and say today: ‘Here I am Lord, I come to do your will. Pour out your power and strength, that, with you, I may accomplish more than I can ask or imagine’.

www.pray.com.au

MINUTE MEDITATIONS 

Loving Action

There surely is a world of difference between the prayer of action and that of silence or word. Here it is not by listening and responding, not by diving down into silence, but by acting, by doing, that I communicate with God. Whatever I can do lovingly can become prayer of action.

— from The Way of Silence 

May 10
St. Damien de Veuster of Moloka'i
(1840-1889)

When Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840, few people in Europe had any firsthand knowledge of leprosy (Hansen's disease). By the time he died at the age of 49, people all over the world knew about this disease because of him. They knew that human compassion could soften the ravages of this disease.

Forced to quit school at age 13 to work on the family farm, Joseph entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary six years later, taking the name of a fourth-century physician and martyr. When his brother Pamphile, a priest in the same congregation, fell ill and was unable to go to the Hawaiian Islands as assigned, Damien quickly volunteered in his place. In May 1864, two months after arriving in his new mission, Damien was ordained a priest in Honolulu and assigned to the island of Hawaii.

In 1873, he went to the Hawaiian government's leper colony on the island of Molokai, set up seven years earlier. Part of a team of four chaplains taking that assignment for three months each year, Damien soon volunteered to remain permanently, caring for the people's physical, medical and spiritual needs. In time, he became their most effective advocate to obtain promised government support.

Soon the settlement had new houses and a new church, school and orphanage. Morale improved considerably. A few years later he succeeded in getting the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, led by Mother Marianne Cope (January 23), to help staff this colony in Kalaupapa.

Damien contracted Hansen's disease and died of its complications. As requested, he was buried in Kalaupapa, but in 1936 the Belgian government succeeded in having his body moved to Belgium. Part of Damien's body was returned to his beloved Hawaiian brothers and sisters after his beatification in 1995.

Damien was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009.

When Hawaii became a state in 1959, it selected Damien as one of its two representatives in the Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

Comment:

Some people thought Damien was a hero for going to Molokai and others thought he was crazy. When a Protestant clergyman wrote that Damien was guilty of immoral behavior, Robert Louis Stevenson vigorously defended him in an "Open Letter to Dr. Hyde."

Quote:

During the canonization homily, Pope Benedict XVI said: "Let us remember before this noble figure that it is charity which makes unity, brings it forth and makes it desirable. Following in Saint Paul's footsteps, Saint Damien prompts us to choose the good warfare (1 Tm 1:18), not the kind that brings division but the kind that gathers people together. He invites us to open our eyes to the forms of leprosy that disfigure the humanity of our brethren and still today call for the charity of our presence as servants, beyond that of our generosity."

www.americancatholic,org

LECTIO DIVINA: JOHN 17,1-11A

Lectio Divina: 

 Tuesday, May 10, 2016

1) OPENING PRAYER

Lord our God,
your Son Jesus Christ
carried out the mission you had given him,
without fear and in all faithfulness to you.
God, give us a bit
of his sense of mission.
Give us the strength of the Spirit
to speak your word as it is,
bold and demanding,
without compromising or giving in
to the changing moods and fashions of the day.
And may our lives be like an open book
in which people can read your word.
We ask you this through Christ our Lord.

2) GOSPEL READING - JOHN 17,1-11A

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you; so that, just as you have given him power over all humanity, he may give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him. And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

I have glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. Now, Father, glorify me with that glory I had with you before ever the world existed. I have revealed your name to those whom you took from the world to give me. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now at last they have recognised that all you have given me comes from you for I have given them the teaching you gave to me, and they have indeed accepted it and know for certain that I came from you, and have believed that it was you who sent me.

It is for them that I pray. I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. All I have is yours and all you have is mine, and in them I am glorified. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.

3) REFLECTION

• In today’s Gospel, in that of tomorrow and of day after tomorrow, we will meditate on the words that Jesus addressed to the Father at the moment of his farewell, when leaving. John keeps these words and puts them in Jesus’ mouth during his last encounter with the disciples. It is the Testament of Jesus in the form of a prayer, also called the Priestly Prayer (Jn 17, 1-26).

• Chapter 17 of the Gospel of John is the end of a long reflection of Jesus, begun in chapter 15, on the mission in the world. The communities preserved these reflections in order to be able to understand better the difficult moment that they were going through: tribulations, abandonment, doubts, and persecution. The long reflection ends with the prayer of Jesus for the communities. In it are expressed the sentiments and concerns which, according to the Evangelist, indwelled Jesus at that moment in which he was going out, leaving this world and going toward the Father. With these sentiments and with this concern Jesus now finds himself before his Father, interceding for us. Because of this the Priestly Prayer is also the Testament of Jesus. Many persons, in the moment when they leave forever, leave some message. Everyone keeps the important words of a father and of the mother, especially when they are the last moments of life. To keep these words is like keeping the persons. It is a form of respect and of affection.

• Chapter 17 is a diverse text. It is a friendlier one rather than one of reasoning. In order to grasp well the whole sense, it is not sufficient to reflect with the head, with reason. This text has to be meditated upon and accepted also in the heart. It is a text not so much to be discussed, but to meditate on and to reflect. Therefore, do not be worried if you do not understand it immediately. This text demands a whole life to meditate it and to deepen it. Such a text should be read, meditated on, thought, read again, repeated, savoured, as one does with a good sweet in the mouth. One turns it and turns it in the mouth until it is finished. For this, close the eyes, keep silence within you and listen to Jesus who speaks to you, transmitting in his Testament his greatest concern, his last will. Try to discover which is the point on which Jesus insists the most and, which he considers the most important.

• John 17, 1-3: “Father, the hour has come!” It is the long awaited hour (Jn 2, 4; 7,30; 8, 20; 12, 23.27; 13, 1; 16, 32). It is the moment of the glorification which will take place through the Passion, Death and Resurrection. In reaching the end of his mission, Jesus looks back and proceeds to a revision. In this prayer, he expresses the most intimate sentiment of his heart and the profound discovery of his soul: the presence of the Father in his life.

• John 17, 4-8: Father, they will recognize that I come from you! In reviewing his own life Jesus sees himself as a manifestation of the Father for the friends whom the Father has given him. Jesus does not live for himself. He lives in order that all may have a flash of goodness and of love which are enclosed in the Name of God which is Abba, Father.

• John 17, 9-11a: All I have is yours and all you have is mine! At the moment of leaving the world, Jesus expresses to the Father his concern and prays for the friends whom he leaves behind; and that they will continue in the world, but they are not of the world. They are of Jesus, they are God’s, and they are signs of God and of Jesus in this world. Jesus is concerned about the persons who remain, and he prays for them.

4) FOR PERSONAL CONFRONTATION

• Which are the words which orientate your life and which are from persons whom you love? If you were about to die which would be the message that you would like to leave to your family and to your community?

• Which is the word of the Testament of Jesus which struck you the most? Why?

5) CONCLUDING PRAYER

Blessed be the Lord day after day,
he carries us along, God our Saviour.
This God of ours is a God who saves;
from Lord Yahweh comes escape from death. (Ps 68,19-20)

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