Behave Like God, As His Very Dear Children.

Monday of the Thirtieth Week
in Ordinary Time
Reading I
Ephesians 4:32–5:8
Brothers and sisters:
Be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another
as God has forgiven you in Christ.

Be imitators of God, as beloved children,
and live in love, as Christ loved us
and handed himself over for us
as a sacrificial offering to God
for a fragrant aroma.
Immorality or any impurity or greed
must not even be mentioned among you,
as is fitting among holy ones,
no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk,
which is out of place,
but instead, thanksgiving.
Be sure of this,
that no immoral or impure or greedy person,
that is, an idolater, has any inheritance
in the Kingdom of Christ and of God.

Let no one deceive you with empty arguments,
for because of these things
the wrath of God is coming
upon the disobedient.
So do not be associated with them.
For you were once darkness,
but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light.
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Responsorial
Psalm 1
R. Behave like God as his very dear children.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R. Behave like God as his very dear children.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R. Behave like God as his very dear children.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R. Behave like God as his very dear children.
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Gospel
Luke 13:10-17
Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.
And a woman was there
who for eighteen years
had been crippled by a spirit;
she was bent over,
completely incapable of standing erect.
When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,
“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
said to the crowd in reply,
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured,
not on the sabbath day.”
The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!
Does not each one of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his ass from the manger
and lead it out for watering?
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free
on the sabbath day from this bondage?”
When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;
and the whole crowd rejoiced
at all the splendid deeds done by him.
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St. Antônio de Sant’Anna Galvão
(1739-1822)

God’s plan in a person’s life often takes unexpected turns which become life-giving through cooperation with God’s grace.

Born in Guarantingueta near São Paulo (Brazil), Antônio attended the Jesuit seminary in Belem but later decided to become a Franciscan friar. Invested in 1760, he made final profession the following year and was ordained in 1762.

In São Paulo, he served as preacher, confessor and porter. Within a few years he was appointed confessor to the Recollects of St. Teresa, a group of nuns in that city. He and Sister Helena Maria of the Holy Spirit founded a new community of sisters under the patronage of Our Lady of the Conception of Divine Providence. Sister Helena Maria’s premature death the next year left Father Antônio responsible for the new congregation, especially for building a convent and church adequate for their growing numbers.

He served as novice master for the friars in Macacu and as guardian of St. Francis Friary in São Paulo. He founded St. Clare Friary in Sorocaba. With the permission of his provincial and the bishop, he spent his last days at the "Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora da Luz," the convent of the sisters’ congregation he had helped establish.

He was beatified in Rome on October 25, 1998, and canonized in 2007.

Comment:

Holy women and men cannot help calling our attention to God, to God’s creation and to all the people whom God loves. The lives of holy people are so oriented toward God that this has become their definition of "normal." Do people see my life or yours as a living sign of God’s steadfast love? What might have to change for that to happen?

Quote: 

During the beatification homily, Pope John Paul II quoted from the Second Letter to Timothy (4:17), "The Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the word fully," and then said that Antônio "fulfilled his religious consecration by dedicating himself with love and devotion to the afflicted, the suffering and the slaves of his era in Brazil." The pope continued, "His authentically Franciscan faith, evangelically lived and apostolically spent in serving his neighbor, will be an encouragement to imitate this ‘man of peace and charity.’"

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