Go Out To All The World; Tell The Good News.

Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week
in Ordinary Time
Reading I
Galatians 2:1-2, 7-14
Brothers and sisters:
After fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem
with Barnabas, taking Titus along also.
I went up in accord with a revelation,
and I presented to them the Gospel
that I preach to the Gentiles–
but privately to those of repute–
so that I might not be running, or have run, in vain.
On the contrary,
when they saw that I had been entrusted
with the Gospel to the uncircumcised,
just as Peter to the circumcised,
for the one who worked in Peter
for an apostolate to the circumcised
worked also in me for the Gentiles,
and when they recognized the grace bestowed upon me,
James and Cephas and John,
who were reputed to be pillars,
gave me and Barnabas their right hands in partnership,
that we should go to the Gentiles
and they to the circumcised.
Only, we were to be mindful of the poor,
which is the very thing I was eager to do.

And when Cephas came to Antioch,
I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong.
For, until some people came from James,
he used to eat with the Gentiles;
but when they came,
he began to draw back and separated himself,
because he was afraid of the circumcised.
And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him,
with the result that even Barnabas
was carried away by their hypocrisy.
But when I saw that they were not on the right road
in line with the truth of the Gospel,
I said to Cephas in front of all,
“If you, though a Jew,
are living like a Gentile and not like a Jew,
how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
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Responsorial
Psalm 117
R. Go out to all the world, and tell the Good News.
Praise the LORD, all you nations,
glorify him, all you peoples!
R. Go out to all the world, and tell the Good News.
For steadfast is his kindness toward us,
and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever.
R. Go out to all the world, and tell the Good News.
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Gospel
Luke 11:1-4
Jesus was praying in a certain place,
and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”
He said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name,
your Kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test.”
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Blessed Marie-Rose Durocher
(1811-1849)

Canada was one diocese from coast to coast during the first eight years of Marie-Rose Durocher’s life. Its half-million Catholics had received civil and religious liberty from the English only forty-four years before. When Marie-Rose was twenty-nine, Bishop Ignace Bourget became bishop of Montreal. He would be a decisive influence in her life.

He faced a shortage of priests and sisters and a rural population that had been largely deprived of education. Like his counterparts in the United States, he scoured Europe for help and himself founded four communities, one of which was the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. Its first sister and reluctant co-foundress was Marie-Rose.

Eulalie Durocher was born in the village of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, near Montreal, Quebec, on October 6, 1811.the tenth of eleven children born to Olivier and Genevieve Durocher. She had a good education, was something of a tomboy, rode a horse named Caesar and could have married well. At sixteen she felt the desire to become a religious but was forced to abandon the idea because of her weak constitution. At eighteen, when her mother died, her priest brother invited her and her father to come to his parish in Beloeil, not far from Montreal. For thirteen years she served as housekeeper, hostess and parish worker. She became well known for her graciousness, courtesy, leadership and tact; she was, in fact, called “the saint of Beloeil.” Perhaps she was too tactful during two years when her brother treated her coldly.

As a young woman she had hoped there would someday be a community of teaching sisters in every parish, never thinking she would found one. But her spiritual director, Father Pierre Telmon, O.M.I., after thoroughly (and severely) leading her in the spiritual life, urged her to found a community herself. Bishop Bourget concurred, but Marie shrank from the prospect. She was in poor health and her father and her brother needed her.

She finally agreed and, with two friends, Melodie Dufresne and Henriette Cere, entered a little home in Longueuil, across the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal. With them were 13 young girls already assembled for boarding school. Longueuil became successively her Bethlehem, Nazareth and Gethsemani. She was thirty-two and would live only six more years -- years filled with poverty, trials, sickness and slander. The qualities she had nurtured in her “hidden” life came forward -- a strong will, intelligence and common sense, great inner courage and yet a great deference to directors. Thus was born an international congregation of women religious dedicated to education in the faith.

She was severe with herself and by today’s standards quite strict with her sisters. Beneath it all, of course, was an unshakable love of her crucified Savior.

On her deathbed the prayers most frequently on her lips were “Jesus, Mary, Joseph! Sweet Jesus, I love you. Jesus, be to me Jesus!” Before she died, she smiled and said to the sister with her, “Your prayers are keeping me here—let me go.”

She was beatified in 1982 by Pope John Paul II.

Comment:

The Christian triad has always been and will always be prayer, penance and charity. In our day we have seen a great burst of charity, a genuine interest in the poor. Countless Christians have experienced a deep form of prayer. But penance? We squirm when we read of terrible physical penance done by people like Marie-Rose. That is not for most people, of course. But the pull of a materialistic culture oriented to pleasure and entertainment is impossible to resist without some form of deliberate and Christ-conscious abstinence. That is part of the way to answer Jesus’ call to repent and turn completely to God.

Quote:

To a novice leaving religious life, Marie-Rose said: “Do not imitate those persons who, after having spent a few months as postulant or novice in a community, dress differently, even ludicrously. You are returning to the secular state. My advice is, follow the styles of the day, but from afar, as it were.”

Saint of the Day
American Catholic.org