How Sweet To My Taste Is Your Promise, Sweeter Than Honey To My Mouth.

Friday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Reading I
Revelation 10:8-11
I, John, heard a voice from heaven speak to me.
Then the voice spoke to me and said:
“Go, take the scroll that lies open
in the hand of the angel
who is standing on the sea and on the land.”
So I went up to the angel
and told him to give me the small scroll.
He said to me, “Take and swallow it.
It will turn your stomach sour,
but in your mouth
it will taste as sweet as honey.”
I took the small scroll
from the angel’s hand and swallowed it.
In my mouth it was like sweet honey,
but when I had eaten it,
my stomach turned sour.
Then someone said to me,
“You must prophesy again
about many peoples, nations,
 tongues, and kings.”
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Responsorial
Psalm 119
R. How sweet to my taste is your promise!
In the way of your decrees I rejoice,
as much as in all riches.
R. How sweet to my taste is your promise!
Yes, your decrees are my delight;
they are my counselors.
R. How sweet to my taste is your promise!
The law of your mouth is to me more precious
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
R. How sweet to my taste is your promise!
How sweet to my palate are your promises,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
R. How sweet to my taste is your promise!
Your decrees are my inheritance forever;
the joy of my heart they are.
R. How sweet to my taste is your promise!
I gasp with open mouth
in my yearning for your commands.
R. How sweet to my taste is your promise!
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Gospel
Luke 19:45-48
Jesus entered the temple area
and proceeded to drive out
those who were selling things,
saying to them,
“It is written:
 My house shall be a house of prayer,
but you have made it a den of thieves.”
And every day he was teaching
in the temple area.
The chief priests, the scribes,
and the leaders of the people, meanwhile,
were seeking to put him to death,
but they could find no way
to accomplish their purpose
because all the people
were hanging on his words.
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St. Agnes of Assisi
1197-1253

Agnes was the sister of St. Clare and her first follower. When Agnes left home two weeks after Clare’s departure, their family attempted to bring Agnes back by force. They tried to drag her out of the monastery, but all of a sudden her body became so heavy that several knights could not budge it. Her uncle Monaldo tried to strike her but was temporarily paralyzed. The knights then left Agnes and Clare in peace.

Agnes matched her sister in devotion to prayer and in willingness to endure the strict penances which characterized their lives at San Damiano. In 1221 a group of Benedictine nuns in Monticelli (near Florence) asked to become Poor Clares. St. Clare sent Agnes to become abbess of that monastery. Agnes soon wrote a rather sad letter about how much she missed Clare and the other nuns at San Damiano. After establishing other Poor Clare monasteries in northern Italy, Agnes was recalled to San Damiano in 1253 when Clare was dying.

Agnes followed Clare in death three months later. Agnes was canonized in 1753.

Comment: 

God must love irony; the world is so full of it. In 1212, many in Assisi surely felt that Clare and Agnes were wasting their lives and were turning their backs on the world. In reality, their lives were tremendously life-giving, and the world has been enriched by the example of these poor contemplatives.

Quote: 

Charles de Foucald, founder of the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, said: "One must pass through solitude and dwell in it to receive God’s grace. It is there that one empties oneself, that one drives before oneself all that is not God, and that one completely empties this little house of our soul to leave room for God alone. In doing this, do not fear being unfaithful toward creatures. On the contrary, that is the only way for you to serve them effectively" (Raphael Brown, Franciscan Mystic, p. 126).

Saint of the Day
American Catholic.org