ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
SAINTS OF THE DAY ~ FEAST DAY: JUNE 21, 2024
Greetings, beloved family and Happy Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time.
On this special feast day, with special intention through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, and the Saints, we pray for the sick and dying. We especially pray for our loved ones who have recently died and we continue to pray for the repose of their gentle souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, may the Lord receive them into the light of Eternal Kingdom. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them. May their gentle souls through the mercy of God rest in perfect peace with our Lord Jesus Christ… Amen 🙏 ✝️🕯✝️🕯✝️🕯
PRAYER FOR THE DEAD: In your hands, O Lord, we humbly entrust our brothers and sisters. In this life you embraced them with your tender love; deliver them now from every evil and bid them eternal rest. The old order has passed away: welcome them into paradise, where there will be no sorrow, no weeping or pain, but fullness of peace and joy with your Son & the Holy Spirit forever & ever. Amen🙏
Watch “Holy Mass and Holy Rosary on EWTN on YouTube | June 21, 2024 |
Watch “Holy Mass from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy” | June 21, 2024 |
Pray “Holy Rosary from Lourdes, France” |June 21, 2024 |
Pray “Holy Rosary from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy” | June 21, 2024 |
Pray “The Chaplet of Divine Mercy | from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy” | June 21, 2024 |
Pray “Holy Rosary ALL 20 Mysteries VIRTUAL🌹JOYFUL🌹LUMINOUS🌹SORROWFUL🌹GLORIOUS” on YouTube |
Memorare Chaplet | Prayer in Difficult Times (Powerful Prayer) |
Today’s Bible Readings, Friday, June 21, 2024
Reading 1, Second Kings 11:1-4, 9-18, 20
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 132:11, 12, 13-14, 17-18
Gospel, Matthew 6:19-23
SAINT OF THE DAY: MEMORIAL OF SAINT ALOYSIUS GONZAGA, RELIGIOUS (JESUIT SEMINARIAN) ~ FEAST DAY: JUNE 21ST Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (Jesuit Seminarian). Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, Saint Aloysius Gonzaga and all the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for all Youths, for Seminarian and the sick and dying, we particularly pray for those who are sick with cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for the poor and the needy, for peace, love and unity in our families and our world. And we continue to pray for the Church, the Clergy, with special intention for all Priests, for persecuted christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world.🙏
SAINT ALOYSIUS GONZAGA, RELIGIOUS (JESUIT SEMINARIAN): St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568–1591) was born on the 9th of March, 1568 to a noble Italian family, the eldest of seven children of Ferdinand Gonzaga, Marquis of Castiglione, his father was a compulsive gambler. The first words he pronounced were the holy names of Jesus and Mary. He grew up in a castle and and was destined for the military, he was trained from a very young age of four to be a soldier and courtier. At the age of eight he served in the court of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici. He was baptized in the womb, because his life was in danger. As a young boy, St. Aloysius always had a great desire to know and serve God, but his family life was not always supportive of this desire. At the age of nine Gonzaga made a private vow of chastity, a vow of perpetual virginity, and by a special grace was always exempted from temptations against purity. As a safeguard against sexual temptation he always kept his eyes downcast in the presence of women. St. Aloysius encountered many holy people in his lifetime; he received his first Communion from St. Charles Borromeo and studied under St. Robert Bellarmine. As a teen, he suffered from a kidney disease and in the process of recovery spent time in spiritual reading and prayer. He considered the disease a blessing, as it left him with plenty of time for prayer. At an early age he resolved to leave the world, and in a vision was directed by our Blessed Lady to join the Society of Jesus. At 18 he signed away his legal claim to his title and his family’s lands and entered the Jesuits. When St. Aloysius Gonzaga announced his intention to become a Jesuit, the Saint’s mother rejoiced on learning his determination to become a religious, but his father for three years refused his consent. Although his family wanted him to be a secular priest so that they could buy him a bishopric. However, he chose to become a Jesuit and at length Saint Aloysius obtained permission to enter the novitiate on November 25, 1585.
He pronounced his vows after two years, and studied, as was customary, philosophy and theology. A fervent penitent at all times, he was accustomed to say that he doubted whether without penance grace could continue to make headway against nature, which, when not afflicted and chastised, tends gradually to relapse into its unredeemed state, and thereby loses the habit of suffering. I am a crooked piece of iron, he said, and have come into religion to be made straight by the hammer of mortification and penance. While he was studying in Rome, during his last year of theology a malignant fever broke out in Rome. St. Aloysius volunteered to care for the sick during the outbreak of the plague, despite the delicateness of his own health. The Saint offered himself for the service of the sick, and was accepted for the dangerous duty. Several of the religious contracted the fever, and St. Aloysius was among them. He was at the point of death but recovered, only to relapse a little later into a slow fever, which after three months his fragile health could no longer resist. He died at the age of twenty-three, repeating the Holy Name, a little after midnight between the 20th and 21st of June, 1591 on the octave day of Corpus Christi. He died before completing his priestly studies. St. Aloysius was connected with two great figures of the Counter-Reformation: he received his First Holy Communion at the age of twelve from St. Charles Borromeo, and his Last Rites from St. Robert Bellarmine, both of whom served as his spiritual advisers. On the night of his death, St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi had a vision of him being received into great glory. In the sick, the helpless, the dying, St. Aloysius saw the crucified Christ. The man of the iron will who thought he could take Heaven by sheer determination surrendered at last to divine grace. St. Aloysius Gonzaga is the Patron Saint of youth and bodily purity; AIDS care-givers; AIDS patients; Catholic youth; Jesuit students; relief from pestilence; sore eyes; teenage children; teenagers; young people; now might be a patron of those who tend COVID-19 patients, our modern day plague. His feast day is June 21st.
Saint Aloysius’ Act of Dedication to the Virgin Mary: O Holy Mary, my Mother, into your blessed trust and custody, and into the care of your mercy I this day, every day, and in the hour of my death, commend my soul and body. To you I commit all my anxieties and miseries, my life and end of my life, that by your most holy intercession and by your merits all my actions may be directed and disposed according to your will and that of your Divine Son… Amen🙏
PRAYER: God, Author of all heavenly gifts, You gave St. Aloysius both a wonderful innocence of life and a deep spirit of penance. Through his merits grant that we may imitate his penitence… Amen🙏
SCRIPTURE REFLECTIONS:
Bible Readings for today, Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB |
https://bible.usccb.org/daily-bible-reading
Gospel Reading ~ Matthew 6:19-23
“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be”
“Jesus said to His disciples: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. “The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.”
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus contrasts two kinds of treasures, treasures on earth and treasures in heaven. He implies that treasures on earth are vulnerable to all kinds of external forces, such as the actions of the thief. In contrast, treasures in heaven are totally secure. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of being rich in the sight of God, which is equivalent to storing up treasures in heaven. Jesus is saying that it is not earthly treasures and possessions that make our life secure but being rich in the sight of God. The one person who was supremely rich in the sigh of God was His Son, Jesus, and we are rich in the sight of God to the extent that we are becoming conformed to the image of His Son, in the language of Saint Paul. Jesus shows us what being rich in the sight of God looks like. Rather than storing up treasures for Himself on earth, He emptied Himself in the service of others. He gave Himself away for others and this self-giving reached its completion on the cross. As He hung from the cross, He was supremely poor in the eyes of the world, but supremely rich in the sight of God. Insofar as we allow the risen Lord to live out His self-giving love in our lives, we too will be rich in the sight of God and our lives will be truly secure.
Jesus in today’s Gospel reading from the Sermon on the Mount invite us to ask the question, ‘Where does our treasure lie?’ ‘What is it that we truly treasure?’ As Jesus makes a contrast between treasures on earth and treasures in heaven, He calls on us to store up treasures in heaven rather than treasures on earth. What does it mean to store up treasures in heaven? According to the Gospels, Jesus speaks about being rich in the sight of God, as distinct from being rich in worldly terms. We are rich in the sight of God when we use our possessions in the service of others, to promote their well-being. The Samaritan in the parable of the Good Samaritan is a good example of such a person. He had earthly resources; mention is made of oil, wine, a horse, money. That would suggest he was reasonably well-off in the culture of the time. Yet, he used his earthly treasures to store up treasure in heaven, to become rich in the sight of God, by placing them at the disposal of someone from whom everything had been taken and who was literally at death’s door. This is what Jesus had referred to a little earlier in this Sermon on the Mount as letting our light shine in the sight of all, so that, seeing our good works, they may give praise to God in heaven. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’. The Samaritan treasured the broken man lying by the road side more than he treasured his possessions, and, so, his heart was moved by his plight. He is very much the Jesus figure we are all called to grow up into. Jesus continues to call on us to store up treasures in heaven rather than treasures on earth.
Our first reading today from the Second Book of Kings of Israel and Judah details the story of the usurpation done by Queen Athaliah of Judah, at the time when the Queen Mother Athaliah attempted and successfully managed to seize power in the kingdom for herself after her son, King Ahaziah of Judah was killed by Jehu, the new King of Israel appointed by God. King Ahaziah perished partly because of his sins, in his failures to bring the people of God to obey God’s Law and commandments, but his mother Athaliah committed an even greater sin and wickedness before God and man alike, she attempted to eradicate the entirety of the descendants of her son, and the extended family in order to secure power for herself.bThrough all of that, Athaliah had committed a truly grave sin before God, for the murders that she had carried out not just one but so many innocent people, not sparing even women and children on this. Why did Athaliah do so? While the full reason and details were not highlighted in the records in the Scriptures but based on other comparable events and similar actions by other figures throughout history pointed to greed and desire for worldly power, glory, fame, ambition for more personal gains among other things. It was likely that Athaliah had one of these as her motive to carry out such heinous acts and wickedness. But through what we heard in these series of events in today’s reading, we are all reminded that God would always be with His beloved and faithful ones, and while challenges might come upon them, but they would be triumphant in the end. That was how we heard of the survival of Joash, one of the descendants of the late king and helped him to survive the massacre when all the other relatives and members of the royal family were purged and massacred. Joash was protected by God, saved and helped to be prepared as future king under the guidance of the priest Jehoiada, whom we heard then eventually orchestrating the return of the House of David to power. Through the support of the people and others who disliked Queen Athaliah’s authoritarian rule, that was how Queen Athaliah met her ignominious end, overthrown and punished to death for all the wicked deeds which she had done all those years ago. King Joash of Judah ascended to the throne and restored the rule of the House of David just as God intended it.
As we reflect on the words of the Sacred Scriptures today, each and every one of us are reminded that we are all called to focus our attention and our whole lives upon the Lord our God, Who should be the sole focus and reason of our existence. We should not easily allow ourselves to be swayed by the many temptations, coercions, pressures and desires present all around us that we lose our focus and sight on what is truly important, and forgetting that as Christians, we are God’s holy and beloved people, and we should always strive to be worthy of Him at all times, in all of our words, actions and deeds, in our every interactions and commitments in life. Let us all therefore do our best so that our lives may truly be holy and worthy of God, focusing on Him and not on the many temptations of worldly pleasures and all the other things which may tempt and distract us away from the path towards salvation and eternal life in God. Many of our predecessors had fallen into this path, as the earlier example of Queen Athaliah of Judah had shown us. God has given us all the means and the help to lead us towards righteousness in Him, and we should therefore follow the examples of our holy predecessors, like that of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, who we celebrate today, so that we may truly be good role models and inspirations for one another in our Christian faith and life. May God in His infinite grace and mercy, grant us His grace and may the Lord be with us always, and may He bless our every efforts and endeavours in life, and grant us His grace, now and forevermore. Amen 🙏
DEVOTION OF THE MONTH OF JUNE: The month of June is set apart for devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “From among all the proofs of the infinite goodness of our Savior none stands out more prominently than the fact that, as the love of the faithful grew cold, He, Divine Love Itself, gave Himself to us to be honored by a very special devotion and that the rich treasury of the Church was thrown wide open in the interests of that devotion.” These words of Pope Pius XI refer to the Sacred Heart Devotion, which in its present form dates from the revelations given to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1673-75.
THE POPE’S MONTHLY INTENTIONS FOR 2024: FOR THE MONTH OF JUNE – FOR MIGRANTS FLEEING THEIR HOMES: We pray that migrants fleeing from war or hunger, forced to undertake journeys full of danger and violence, find welcome and new opportunities in the countries that receive them.
https://www.usccb.org/prayers/popes-monthly-intentions-2024
PRAYER FOR PEACE ~ POPE FRANCIS:
Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!
We have tried so many times and over so many years to resolve our conflicts by our own powers and by the force of our arms. How many moments of hostility and darkness have we experienced; how much blood has been shed; how many lives have been shattered; how many hopes have been buried… But our efforts have beķķen in vain. Now, Lord, come to our ajnid! Grant us peace, teach us peace; guide our steps in the way of peace. Open our eyes and our hearts, and give us the courage to say: “Never again war!”; “With war everything is lost”. Instill in our hearts the courage to take concrete steps to achieve peace. Lord, God of Abraham, God of the Prophets, God of Love, you created us and you call us to live as brothers and sisters. Give us the strength daily to be instruments of peace; enable us to see everyone who crosses our path as our brother or sister. Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace, our trepidation into confident trust, and our quarreling into forgiveness. Keep alive within us the flame of hope, so that with patience and perseverance we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation. In this way may peace triumph at last, and may the words “division”, “hatred” and “war” be banished from the heart of every man and woman. Lord, defuse the violence of our tongues and our hands. Renew our hearts and minds, so that the word which always brings us together will be “brother”, and our way of life will always be that of: Shalom, Peace, Salaam! Amen🙏
During this Ordinary Time, please let us all continue to pray for peace all over the world, particularly in Africa, the Middle East, for an end to the current war in Israel-Palestine, and the Ukraine-Russia conflicts and for peace in our families and throughout our divided and conflicted World. Amen 🙏
Prayers for Peace | https://mycatholic.life/catholic-prayers/prayers-for-peace/
PRAYER INTENTIONS: During this season of the Ordinary Time, through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and all the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for our children and children all over the world, we pray for their health, safety and well-being, we particularly pray for those who have no one to care for them and those who are terminally ill, we pray for God’s Divine healing upon them. Every life is a gift. We pray for God’s deliverance from impossible causes or situations. We pray for the souls in Purgatory and the repose of the gentle soul of our beloved family members who recently passed away and the souls of all the faithful departed, may the Lord receive them into the light of Eternal Kingdom. For all widows and widowers. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, Pope Francis, the Bishops, the Clergy and all those who preach the Gospel. We pray for Vocation to the Priesthood and Religious life. We particularly pray for all Youths and all Seminarians, with special intention for those Seminarians who will be ordained into Priesthood. For the Church, for persecuted Christians, for all the innocent who suffer violence due to political or religious unrest, for the conversion of sinners and Christians all over the world. Amen🙏
Let us pray:
God of all glory, You and You alone are worthy of all my praise. Your will and Your will alone must become the foundation of all that I choose in life. Give me the spiritual insight I need to look deeply at all that motivates me and all of my most interior intentions in life. May all of my intentions and all of my actions have as their goal Your eternal glory. Jesus, I trust in You ~ Amen 🙏
Save Us, Savior of the World. Our Most Blessed Mother Mary and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious ~ Pray for us🙏
Thanking God for the gift of this day and the gift of the Holy Spirit and praying for justice, peace, love and unity in our families and our world and for God’s Divine Mercy and Grace upon us all. Have a blessed, safe, grace-filled, and relaxing weekend 🙏
Blessings and Love always, Philomena 💖