NINETEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
SAINTS OF THE DAY ~ FEAST DAY: AUGUST 14, 2024
NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF THE ASSUMPTION: REMINDER – The 2024 Novena for the Assumption of Mary into Heaven begins, Tuesday, August 6 and ends on August 14. The novena is a prayer that commemorates the death of Mary and her assumption into Heaven, which is celebrated on August 15. We thank God for the successful completion of the Novena to Our Lady of the Assumption. May our Mother Mary intercede for us as she’s assumed into Heaven.🙏 [Novena link below]
REMINDER: SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY INTO HEAVEN (Holy Day of Obligation) ~ FEAST DAY: AUGUST 15TH
Greetings beloved family and Happy Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time.
On this feast day, as our children and children all over the world begin the new school year, with special intention through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, and the Saints, we pray for their safety and well-being, especially those beginning the new school year. May God grant them the courage to face new challenges and wisdom to make good choices. We pray for wisdom, knowledge, and understanding and for God’s guidance and protection upon them during this school year and always. We pray for safe travels, to and from school. We also pray for all teachers, staff and parents, and guardians. May the good Lord provide for those in need. And we continue to pray for peace, love, and unity in our families and our world. May God keep us all safe and well. Amen 🙏
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” ~ Proverbs 3:5-6
“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” ~ James 1:5
We continue to pray for the sick and dying. We especially pray for our loved ones who have recently died and we 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 from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy” | August 14, 2024 |
Watch “Holy Mass and Holy Rosary on EWTN on YouTube | August 14, 2024 |
Pray “Holy Rosary from Lourdes, France” |August 14, 2024 |
Pray “Holy Rosary from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy” | August 14, 2024 |
Pray “The Chaplet of Divine Mercy | from the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy” | August 14, 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: Wednesday August 14, 2024
Reading 1, Ezekiel 9 : 1-7 and Ezekiel 10 : 18-22
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 113:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
Gospel, Matthew 18:15-20
NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF THE ASSUMPTION: REMINDER – The 2024 Novena for the Assumption of Mary into Heaven begins, Tuesday, August 6 and ends on August 14. The novena is a prayer that commemorates the death of Mary and her assumption into Heaven, which is celebrated on August 15. Novena link below: https://www.virgosacrata.com/novena-to-our-lady-of-the-assumption.html
We thank God for the successful completion of the Novena to Our Lady of the Assumption. May our Mother Mary intercede for us as she’s assumed into Heaven.🙏
SAINT OF THE DAY: MEMORIAL OF SAINT MAXIMILIAN MARY KOLBE, PRIEST AND MARTYR ~ FEAST DAY: AUGUST 14TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Priest and Martyr. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe on this feast day, we humbly pray for our families and families all over the world, we pray for peace, love, justice and unity in our families and our world. We pray for those who are imprisoned, drug addicts and journalists. We pray for the poor and needy. We pray for the sick and dying, especially those who are sick with the coronavirus, heart diseases, lung diseases and those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, Pope Francis, the Clergy, for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, for the Church, for persecuted christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world.🙏
SAINT MAXIMILIAN MARY KOLBE, PRIEST AND MARTYR: St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe (1894-1941) was a Polish Franciscan Priest, Missionary and Martyr, who died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, during World War II, and is remembered as a “martyr of charity” for dying in place of another prisoner who had a wife and children. St. Maximilian is also celebrated for his missionary work, his evangelistic use of modern means of communication, and for his lifelong devotion to the Virgin Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception. All these aspects of St. Maximilian’s life converged in his founding of the Militia Immaculata. The worldwide organization continues St. Maximilian Kolbe’s mission of bringing individuals and societies into the Catholic Church, through dedication to the Virgin Mary.
St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe was born Raymond Kolbe in Poland on January 8, 1894. The son of a weaver and a midwife, a devout Christian family. As an impulsive and badly-behaved child, he prayed to the Virgin Mary for guidance, and when he was 10 years old he was visited by the Virgin Mary, who offered him obe of two crowns. One was white for purity and virginity and the other was red for martyrdom. St. Maximilian said he would accept both crowns. Radically changed by the incident, he entered the minor seminary of the Conventual Franciscan Order at age 13, in 1907. At age 20 he made his solemn vows as a Franciscan, earning a doctorate in philosophy the next year. Soon after, however, he developed chronic tuberculosis, which eventually destroyed one of his lungs and weakened the other. Ten years later, on October 16, 1917, while studying for the priesthood in Rome, in response to anti-Catholic demonstrations by Italian Freemasons, Friar Maximilian organized a group of six other Franciscan Friars and founded the Militia of the Immaculatae (Army of the Immaculate One) in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary to work for the conversion of sinners under her protection and to oppose the evil of Freemasonry. From it came the Knights of the Immaculate magazine that reached a circulation of 750,000, as well as a radio show, both of which became a resource for strengthening faith across Poland. The group’s founding coincided almost exactly with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and the Marian apparitions at Fatima, Portugal.
As a Franciscan priest, Fr. Maximilian returned to work in Poland during the 1920s. In 1927, he established an evangelization center near Warsaw called Niepokalanow, the “City of the Immaculata.” There, he promoted the Catholic faith through newspapers and magazines which eventually reached an extraordinary circulation, published from a monastery so large it was called the “City of the Immaculata.” By 1939, the City had expanded from eighteen friars to an incredible 800, making it the largest Catholic religious house in the world. In 1930 he traveled to the Far East and founded another comparable monastery in Nagasaki, Japan and established a Japanese Catholic press by 1936, along with a similarly ambitious monastery. From Japan, he went on to India where he furthered the Movement. That year, in 1936, he returned home to Poland for the last time because of ill health. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and Fr. Kolbe was arrested and imprisoned and released briefly. St. Maximilian was offered German citizenship because his father was German. He refused however and stayed in Poland with his monastery, providing shelters for refugees. During World War II, St. Maximilian Kolbe housed over 3,000 Polish refugees at his monastery, including about 2000 Jews. The monastery’s work attracted the anger of the Nazis. During this time when he was briefly freed in 1940, he published one last issue of the Knight of the Immaculata before his final arrest and transportation to the notorious concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1941 because of his effective work. There he endured special cruelty because he was a Catholic priest. St. Maximilian ministered to the prisoners.
On July 31, 1941, in reprisal for one prisoner’s escape, ten prisoners were chosen to die. At the beginning of August that year, these ten prisoners were sentenced to death by starvation in punishment for that one inmate’s escape. Moved by one man’s lamentation for his wife and children, Fr. Kolbe volunteered to die in his place. Survivors of the camp testified that the starving prisoners could be heard praying and singing hymns, led by the priest who had volunteered for an agonizing death. He was condemned to slow death in the starvation bunker and he patiently bore his sufferings. After being starved for two weeks, he was the last to die, enduring two weeks of starvation, thirst, and neglect and still found alive. On August 14, 1941, the night before the Church’s feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the impatient camp officials decided to hasten Fr. Kolbe’s death with a lethal injection, he was injected with carbolic acid. St. Maximilian Kolbe’s body was cremated by the camp officials on the feast of the Assumption. He had stated years earlier: “I would like to be reduced to ashes for the cause of the Immaculata, and may this dust be carried over the whole world, so that nothing would remain.” Pope John Paul II canonized St. Maximilian as a “martyr of charity” on October 10, 1982, the first saint to be so named. Present at the canonization was Francis Gajowniczec, the man whose life Father Kolbe had saved. St. Maximilian Kolbe is venerated on August 14th as the Patron Saint of families, journalists, prisoners, the pro-life movement, the chemically addicted, drug addicts.
PRAYER: Lord, You inflamed St. Maximilian with love for the Immaculate Virgin and filled him with zeal for souls and love for neighbor. Through his prayer, grant that we may work strenuously for Your glory in the service of others and so be made conformable to Your Son until death. Amen 🙏
QUOTES OF SAINT MAXIMILIAN MARY KOLBE
“For Jesus Christ I am prepared to suffer still more.”
“Prayer is powerful beyond limits when we turn to the Immaculata who is queen even of God’s heart.”
“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hetacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”
SCRIPTURE REFLECTIONS:
Bible Readings for today, Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr | Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB | https://bible.usccb.org/daily-bible-reading
Gospel Readong ~ Matthew 18:15-20
“If your brother listens to you, you have won him over”
“Jesus said to his disciples: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church. If he refuses to listen even to the Church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
In today’s Gospel reading according to St. Matthew, the Lord Jesus told His disciples to seek forgiveness and reconciliation with one another. He told them to get their fellow brethren to be forgiven and to be reconciled to the Church, especially when they had erred and become wayward in their paths and ways. God again showed His great mercy, forgiveness and love, calling on all of His people to return to Him, and He has provided us with the ways and means to embrace this great mercy, love and forgiveness. However, sin in all of its form is wicked and evil, and has no place before the Lord, and hence, we must reject those sins which we have committed, or else, they will keep us separated from God and His grace. That is why we are reminded that we have been given the free will and the freedom to choose our path and course in life, on whether we want to follow the path of righteousness and God’s grace, or whether we prefer to continue walking down the path of sin and disobedience against God. If we continue to disobey the Lord and sin against Him, then we must realise that in the end there will be nothing left for us but destruction and damnation, eternal separation from God just as how those people in Judah had suffered from their sins and disobedience against God. However, if we choose to repent from our sins and return to the Lord once again with renewed love and commitment towards Him, we will then be blessed and be reconciled, reunited and returned to His Holy Presence.
We can all take a wrong turning in our lives. We say or do something that hurts another person. It can be helpful at such times if someone, preferably someone we know and trust, gently points out to us where we have gone wrong. It takes courage to bring a wrong to someone’s attention and it takes humility to recognize that what the person is trying to show us is correct. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus says that we sometimes have to bring a wrong that someone has done to their attention. He clearly saw this as one expression of the responsibility we have for one another. We are to help one another towards virtue. We are to support one another in our efforts to do God’s will. However, what Jesus says here has to be seen in the light of something He said elsewhere in the Gospels. He tells us not to be trying to take the speck out of our brother’s and sister’s eye when we have a plank in our own eye. In other words, we are to be far more aware of our own failings than the failings of others. If we try to bring some wrong to someone’s attention, we do so out of a very deep sense of our own moral weaknesses. We are all sinners trying to help one another on the path towards the Lord. Jesus also states in today’s Gospel reading that our journeying together, our efforts to help one another towards virtue, has to be rooted in prayer. He declares, ‘Where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them’. The meeting in His name that Jesus refers to is a meeting for worship, for prayer. As a church we gather not around the words of the Jewish Law but around the words of Jesus, and when we do that Jesus will be among us, and He will be among us as Emmanuel, God-with-us. The first reading portrayed the ‘glory of the Lord’, the presence of God leaving the Jewish temple; the Gospel reading speaks of the presence of God, the presence of Jesus, God-with-us, among the disciples of Jesus. For the Lord to be with us whenever we gather to worship is a great privilege, a great grace. Yet, we are called to live in a way that is worthy of such a grace. The Lord who is present among us when we gather for prayer calls on us to reveal his presence to others when we rise from prayer and go about our daily tasks. In prayer we open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit, and it is only in the Spirit of the Lord that we can really support one another in our efforts to live as true disciples of the Lord.
In our first reading today from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel, God showed Ezekiel through the heavenly vision he experienced on what the people of Israel in Judah, in Jerusalem and all those who remained in the land of Judah would have to experience and endure, at that time when many among the people of God had been uprooted into exile in far-off and distant lands in Assyria and Babylon. Ezekiel himself witnessed this vision from his exile and time in Babylon during the years when the kingdom of Judah was in its final years of existence. Ezekiel was tasked to deliver the final fate of the kingdom of Judah and its people, to remind the rest of the people of God in exile not to continue to disobey the Lord just as their ancestors had done. That was why God showed Ezekiel the vision of His glory passing through Jerusalem, as His Presence passed through out of the Temple, the House that King Solomon once built for Him, out of the city of God’s people, the city which had seen the lamentations of many prophets and messengers of God, persecuted and martyred for their faith in Him throughout the many centuries since the Temple was established. It was the coming of God’s judgment over all those who have profaned His Holy Name, desecrated His Holy Temple and House, rejected His messengers and servants who had kept on bringing to them the patient and ever enduring love of God, which He had kept on manifesting and reminding His people throughout the centuries since He brought them to settle in the land that He has granted to them. It is a reminder for each and every one of us as well that while God is ever loving, forgiving, compassionate and kind towards us, and while He is always ever patient with His care and love towards each one of us, but we must not take this love for granted, and we must also realise that while He loves each one of us generously but He despises our sins and wickedness, all the things which we had done, which were all against the righteousness, justice and virtues which He has shown and taught us to do. The sins and wickedness that the people of Israel had done in the past all had to be accounted for, and God therefore told them through Ezekiel that they would have to bear witness and suffer the destruction of their city and kingdom, everything that they had found to be precious.
As we reflect on the words of the Sacred Scriptures today, we are all reminded that ultimately each and every one of us are beloved by the Lord and none of us are beyond His salvation and grace, as long as we are still willing to cooperate with Him and embrace Him as our loving Father and allowing Him to forgive us from our many sins and trespasses. Each and every one of us have been given many opportunities and chances to repent from our sins and turn away from our wickedness and evils, and God has also given us many assistance and help throughout our journey in life, strengthening our faith and encouraging us through His guidance and the Holy Spirit that He has sent to inflame our hearts with His love and zeal. Today, all of us are reminded that we should all be like the Saints, especially like St. Maximilian Kolbe, who we celebrate today and other saints, holy men and women of God, who have truly loved the Lord and loved their fellow brothers and sisters, even to the point of facing hardships, trials and even martyrdom in doing so. Let us all therefore strive as Christians to abandon our sinful attitudes and actions, embracing once again God’s love and grace, His forgiveness and mercy, not taking all these for granted. Let us all also follow in the footsteps of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who has truly shown his love both for the Lord and for his fellow men, as a most exemplary Christian, and whose examples we should also follow as well. Let us all be truly faithful once again to the Lord, and let us all be inspiration and great examples to one another in faith just as Saints have been our inspiration. May God in His infinite grace and mercy, grant us the grace to all strive to be ever more committed to the Lord and be good Christian role models in our everyday living, and let us all therefore commit ourselves anew to the Lord, and put our faith and trust completely in God from now on. Holy martyr, St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us sinners! Amen 🙏
DEVOTION OF THE MONTH OF AUGUST:
MONTH OF THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY: August is the Month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary! The Church dedicates the month of August to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is a dogma of the Catholic faith that Mary is the Immaculate Conception; that is, in preparation for the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity in her womb, she was conceived without the corruption of sin through the foreseen and infinite merits of her Son, Jesus Christ. Over the centuries, as saints and theologians reflected on how Mary pondered and treasured the sacred events from the life of Christ in her holy heart, as attested in Scripture, her pure heart was recognized as something to be imitated. Devotion to Our Lady’s purity of heart began to flower—so much so that in the 17th century, St. John Eudes promoted it alongside the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The devotion rose to a new level after the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, when Mary revealed an image of her Immaculate Heart to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco.
THE POPE’S MONTHLY INTENTIONS FOR 2024: FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST – FOR POLITICAL LEADERS: We pray that political leaders be at the service of their own people, working for integral human development and for the common good, especially caring for the poor and those who have lost their jobs.
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 been in vain. Now, Lord, come to our aid! 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, Nigeria, 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. We pray for all mothers, wives, those going through challenges in their marriages, Victims of verbal and spousal abuse, we pray for peace, love and unity in our families and our world. 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:
My perfect Lord, all that You ask of the Father is granted to You. Please draw me and all the members of Your Church into Your perfect prayer to the Father. May we participate in this prayer especially through the Sacred Liturgy, and also as we gather as two or more. May we pray only with You and in accord with Your perfect will.
My miraculous Lord, Your action in my life is truly glorious and amazing. You never fail to provide for me when I am in need. Help me to turn to You whenever I struggle so as to be filled with new hope in You. You are always faithful, dear Lord. I do place all my hope in You. Jesus, I trust in You ~ Amen 🙏
Save Us, Savior of the World. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and Most Precious Blood of Jesus, have mercy on us. Our Most Blessed Mother Mary; Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Priest and Martyr ~ Pray for us🙏
Thanking God for the gift of this day 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, and fruitful week🙏
Blessings and Love always, Philomena💖