|
Today's Readings
Reading I
Acts 9:26-31
When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples,
but they were all afraid of him,
not believing that he was a disciple.
Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles,
and he reported to them how he had seen the Lord,
and that he had spoken to him,
and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.
He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem,
and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord.
He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists,
but they tried to kill him.
And when the brothers learned of this,
they took him down to Caesarea
and sent him on his way to Tarsus.
The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at
peace.
It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32
R. (26a) I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your
people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I will fulfill my vows before those who fear the LORD.
The lowly shall eat their fill;
they who seek the LORD shall praise him:
"May your hearts live forever!"
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
All the ends of the earth
shall remember and turn to the LORD;
all the families of the nations
shall bow down before him.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
To him alone shall bow down
all who sleep in the earth;
before him shall bend
all who go down into the dust.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
And to him my soul shall live;
my descendants shall serve him.
Let the coming generation be told of the LORD
that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born
the justice he has shown.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Reading II
1 Jn 3:18-24
Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us,
we have confidence in God
and receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit he gave us.
Gospel
Jn 15:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples."
|
|
|
|
Saint Damien Joseph de
Veuster of Molokai
1840 - 1889
May 10
|
|
Born January 3, 1840 at
Tremeloo, Belgium; died April 15, 1889; declared venerable by Pope Pius VI
in 1977; canonized by Pope John Paul II on June 3, 1995.
Joseph de Veuster studied at the College of Braine-le-Comte, and in 1860
joined the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (the Picpus
Fathers), taking the name Damien. While still a novice in a Parisien
monastery, volunteered for missionary work in the southern seas, and was
refused because he was not yet ordained, but when one who should have gone
was prevented through illness, Damien was allowed to go in his stead. His
superiors need not have feared, for of the ten monks who sailed for Hawaii
in 1864, Damien's name and work to outlive them all.
Damien was ordained in Honolulu two months after his arrival and was given
a remote parish covering an area as large as his native Belgium, in a
barren and volcanic land, where with no white colleague and no church
building he began his work. He worked for nine years to evangelize the
peoples of Puno and Kohala.
First he labored with his own hands under a blazing sun to build a chapel,
then visited his parish from end to end, journeying past the craters and
lakes of fire and through the sulphurous fumes or the mud which followed
torrential rains. Often he took his life in his hands, as when once at
midnight he burst into a secret burial cave where 30 natives were engaged
in a ghoulish ritual. Without hesitation he interrupted the ceremony,
spilling their vessels of animal blood and with angry scorn tearing to
shreds their pagan symbols.
He is remembered most for his work among the lepers of Molokai, where the
authorities had established a self-supporting leper settlement to which
all who had contracted the high-contagious disease were compulsorily
deported and where under appalling conditions they were left to their
fate. When the call came in 1873 for a priest for Molokai, with the
proviso that under new government regulations he must remain there for
life, though whoever volunteered to go was almost certain to contract and
die of the disease, Damien pleaded for the post.
Within an hour he was on his way. At Honolulu he transferred to a ship
carrying 50 lepers, and at Molokai he was greeted by his new parishioners,
who lined the beach in the last stages of disease and despair. He found
only one hopeful sign among the squalor of his new surroundings--a rude
wooden chapel, where his first act was to kneel in prayer. He spent that
night in cleaning it, and was disturbed by the drunken laughter of the
dissolute--for it was a lawless community, by the cries of the dying, and
by the howling of the wild dogs that devoured the dead.
There follows the epic of his transformation of this living hell. In 1885,
at the age of 49 he himself caught the disease, but crippled and deformed,
he carried on, refusing to be transshipped for treatment. Before he died,
four other priests and a band of nurses had joined him, and under his
influence the island of death became a civilized welfare community.
Though he was often slandered during his lifetime, his holiness and
dedication were quickly recognized after his death. (Robert Louis
Stevenson wrote an impassioned defense of his character in 1905, which was
used to support the canonization.) His body was brought home, and this man
who was born a peasant and had spent his life, and sacrificed it, among
the banished lepers of Molokai, was buried like a prince in Antwerp
Cathedral (Delaney, Gill).
|
|
