PRAYER OF THE DAY

Prayer to St. Marianne Cope

Lord Jesus,

you who gave us your commandment of love of God and neighbor,

and identified yourself in a special way with the most needy of your people,

hear our prayer.

Faithful to your teaching,

St. Marianne Cope loved and served her neighbor,

especially the most desolate outcast,

giving herself generously and heroically for those afflicted by leprosy.

She alleviated their physical and spiritual sufferings,

thus helping them to accept their afflictions with patience.

Her care and concern for others manifested the great love you have for us.

Through her merits and intercession,

grant us the favor which we confidently ask of you so that the people of God,

following the inspiration of her life and apostolate,

may practice charity towards all according to your word and example.

Amen.

Through the intercession of St. Marianne Cope,

I ask for the grace of (mention your request).

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be

DAILY MASS READINGS

Thursday of the Second week in Ordinary Time

Reading

1 SM 18:6-9;19:1-7

When David and Saul approached

(on David’s return after slaying the Philistine),

women came out from each of the cities of Israel to meet King Saul,

singing and dancing, with tambourines, joyful songs, and sistrums.

The women played and sang:

“Saul has slain his thousands,

and David his ten thousands.”

Saul was very angry and resentful of the song, for he thought:

“They give David ten thousands, but only thousands to me.

All that remains for him is the kingship.”

And from that day on, Saul was jealous of David.

Saul discussed his intention of killing David

with his son Jonathan and with all his servants.

But Saul’s son Jonathan, who was very fond of David, told him:

“My father Saul is trying to kill you.

Therefore, please be on your guard tomorrow morning;

get out of sight and remain in hiding.

I, however, will go out and stand beside my father

in the countryside where you are, and will speak to him about you.

If I learn anything, I will let you know.”

Jonathan then spoke well of David to his father Saul, saying to him:

“Let not your majesty sin against his servant David,

for he has committed no offense against you,

but has helped you very much by his deeds.

When he took his life in his hands and slew the Philistine,

and the LORD brought about a great victory

for all Israel through him,

you were glad to see it.

Why, then, should you become guilty of shedding innocent blood

by killing David without cause?”

Saul heeded Jonathan’s plea and swore,

“As the LORD lives, he shall not be killed.”

So Jonathan summoned David and repeated the whole conversation to him.

Jonathan then brought David to Saul, and David served him as before.

Responsorial Psalm

PS 56:2-3, 9-10A, 10B-11, 12-13

R. In God I trust; I shall not fear.

Have mercy on me, O God, for men trample upon me;

all the day they press their attack against me.

My adversaries trample upon me all the day;

yes, many fight against me.

R. In God I trust; I shall not fear.

My wanderings you have counted;

my tears are stored in your flask;

are they not recorded in your book?

Then do my enemies turn back,

when I call upon you.

R. In God I trust; I shall not fear.

Now I know that God is with me.

In God, in whose promise I glory,

in God I trust without fear;

what can flesh do against me?

R. In God I trust; I shall not fear.

I am bound, O God, by vows to you;

your thank offerings I will fulfill.

For you have rescued me from death,

my feet, too, from stumbling;

that I may walk before God in the light of the living.

R. In God I trust; I shall not fear.

Gospel

MK 3:7-12

Jesus withdrew toward the sea with his disciples.

A large number of people followed from Galilee and from Judea.

Hearing what he was doing,

a large number of people came to him also from Jerusalem,

from Idumea, from beyond the Jordan,

and from the neighborhood of Tyre and Sidon.

He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd,

so that they would not crush him.

He had cured many and, as a result, those who had diseases

were pressing upon him to touch him.

And whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him

and shout, “You are the Son of God.”

He warned them sternly not to make him known.

SAINT OF THE DAY

January 23

St. Marianne Cope (1838-1918)

Though leprosy scared off most people in 19th-century Hawaii, that disease sparked great generosity in the woman who came to be known as Mother Marianne of Molokai. Her courage helped tremendously to improve the lives of its victims in Hawaii, 

a territory annexed to the United States during her lifetime (1898).

Mother Marianne’s generosity and courage were celebrated at her May 14, 2005, beatification in Rome. She was a woman who spoke “the language of truth and love” to the world, said Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. Cardinal Martins, who presided at the beatification Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, called her life “a wonderful work of divine grace.” Speaking of her special love for persons suffering from leprosy, he said, “She saw in them the suffering face of Jesus. 

Like the Good Samaritan, she became their mother.”

On January 23, 1838, a daughter was born to Peter and Barbara Cope of Hessen-Darmstadt, Germany. The girl was named after her mother. Two years later the Cope family emigrated to the United States and settled in Utica, New York. Young Barbara worked in a factory until August 1862, when she went to the Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Syracuse, New York. 

After profession in November of the next year, she began teaching at Assumption parish school.

Marianne held the post of superior in several places and was twice the novice mistress of her congregation. A natural leader, three different times she was superior of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, 

where she learned much that would be useful during her years in Hawaii.

Elected provincial in 1877, Mother Marianne was unanimously re-elected in 1881. Two years later the Hawaiian government was searching for someone to run the Kakaako Receiving Station for people suspected of having leprosy. More than 50 religious communities in the United States and Canada were asked. When the request was put to the Syracuse sisters, 35 of them volunteered immediately. On October 22, 1883, Mother Marianne and six other sisters left for Hawaii where they took charge of the Kakaako Receiving Station outside Honolulu; on the island of Maui they also opened a hospital and a school for girls.

In 1888, Mother Marianne and two sisters went to Molokai to open a home for “unprotected women and girls” there. The Hawaiian government was quite hesitant to send women for this difficult assignment; they need not have worried about Mother Marianne! On Molokai she took charge of the home that St. Damien de Veuster [May 10, d. 1889] had established for men and boys. Mother Marianne changed life on Molokai by introducing cleanliness, pride and fun to the colony. 

Bright scarves and pretty dresses for the women were part of her approach.

Awarded the Royal Order of Kapiolani by the Hawaiian government and celebrated in a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, 

Mother Marianne continued her work faithfully. 

Her sisters have attracted vocations among the Hawaiian people and still work on Molokai.

Mother Marianne died on August 9, 1918 and was beatified in 2005 and canonized seven years later.

OFFICE OF READINGS

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will proclaim Your Praise!

Invitatory Psalm

Psalm 99 (100)

Come before the Lord, singing with joy.

Rejoice in the Lord, all the earth,

and serve him with joy.

Exult as you enter his presence.

Come before the Lord, singing with joy.

Know that the Lord is God.

He made us and we are his

– his people, the sheep of his flock.

Come before the Lord, singing with joy.

Cry out his praises as you enter his gates,

fill his courtyards with songs.

Proclaim him and bless his name;

for the Lord is our delight.

His mercy lasts for ever,

his faithfulness through all the ages.

Come before the Lord, singing with joy.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

world without end.

Amen.

Come before the Lord, singing with joy.

Hymn

Where true love is dwelling, God is dwelling there:

Love’s own loving Presence love does ever share.

Love of Christ has made us out of many one;

In our midst is dwelling God’s eternal Son.

Give him joyful welcome, love him and revere:

Cherish one another with a love sincere.

Psalm 43 (44)

In time of defeat

It was you who saved us, Lord:

we will praise your name without ceasing.

Our own ears have heard, O God,

and our fathers have proclaimed it to us,

what you did in their days, the days of old:

how with your own hand you swept aside the nations

and put us in their place,

struck them down to make room for us.

It was not by their own swords that our fathers took over the land,

it was not their own strength that gave them victory;

but your hand and your strength,

the light of your face,

for you were pleased in them.

You are my God and my king,

who take care for the safety of Jacob.

Through you we cast down your enemies;

in your name we crushed those who rose against us.

I will not put my hopes in my bow,

my sword will not bring me to safety;

for it was you who saved us from our afflictions,

you who set confusion among those who hated us.

We will glory in the Lord all the day,

and proclaim your name for all ages.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

world without end.

Amen.

It was you who saved us, Lord:

we will praise your name without ceasing.

Psalm 43 (44)

Spare us, Lord, do not let your people be put to shame.

But now, God, you have spurned us and confounded us,

so that we must go into battle without you.

You have put us to flight in the sight of our enemies,

and those who hate us plunder us at will.

You have handed us over like sheep sold for food,

you have scattered us among the nations.

You have sold your people for no money,

not even profiting by the exchange.

You have made us the laughing-stock of our neighbors,

mocked and derided by those who surround us.

The nations have made us a by-word,

the peoples toss their heads in scorn.

All the day I am ashamed,

I blush with shame

as they reproach me and revile me,

my enemies and my persecutors.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

world without end.

Amen.

Spare us, Lord, do not let your people be put to shame.

Psalm 43 (44)

Arise, Lord! Redeem us because of your love.

All this happened to us,

but not because we had forgotten you.

We were not disloyal to your covenant;

our hearts did not turn away;

our steps did not wander from your path;

and yet you brought us low,

with horrors all about us:

you overwhelmed us in the shadows of death.

If we had forgotten the name of our God,

if we had spread out our hands before an alien god —

would God not have known?

He knows what is hidden in our hearts.

It is for your sake that we face death all the day,

that we are reckoned as sheep to be slaughtered.

Awake, Lord, why do you sleep?

Rise up, do not always reject us.

Why do you turn away your face?

How can you forget our poverty and our tribulation?

Our souls are crushed into the dust,

our bodies dragged down to the earth.

Rise up, Lord, and help us.

In your mercy, redeem us.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

world without end.

Amen.

Arise, Lord! Redeem us because of your love.

Lord, to whom shall we go?

– You have the words of eternal life.

First Reading

Deuteronomy 9:7-21,25-29

The sin of the people and Moses' intercession

These are the words that Moses spoke beyond Jordan to the whole of Israel:

Remember; never forget how you provoked the Lord your God in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt you have been rebels against the Lord. At Horeb you provoked the Lord, and the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. I had gone up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord was making with you. I stayed forty days and forty nights on the mountain, eating no bread, drinking no water. The Lord gave me the two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God, and all the words on them that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the Assembly. At the end of the forty days and forty nights, after he had given me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant, the Lord said to me, “Leave this place, go down quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have broken faith. They have been quick to leave the way I marked out for them; they have made themselves an idol of cast metal.” Then the Lord said to me, “I have seen this people, and what a headstrong people they are! Let me destroy them, 

and wipe out their name from under heaven, and make out of you a nation mightier and greater than they.”

So I went down the mountain again and it was blazing with fire, and in my hands were the two tablets of the covenant. And I looked and there you were, you had been sinning against the Lord your God. You had made yourself a calf of cast metal; you had been quick to leave the way the Lord marked out for you. I seized the two tablets and with my two hands threw them down and broke them before your eyes. Then I fell prostrate before the Lord; as before, I passed forty days and forty nights eating no bread and drinking no water, for all the sin you had committed in doing what was displeasing to the Lord, thus arousing his anger. For I was afraid of this anger, of the fury which so roused the Lord against you that he was ready to destroy you. And once more the Lord heard my prayer. The Lord was enraged with Aaron too and was ready to destroy him, and I pleaded for Aaron also. That work of sin, the calf you had made, I took and burned and broke to pieces, 

and grinding it to fine dust I threw its dust into the stream that comes down from the mountain.

So I fell prostrate before the Lord and lay there these forty days and forty nights, for the Lord had said he would destroy you. And I pleaded with the Lord. My Lord, I said, do not destroy your people, your heritage whom in your greatness you have redeemed, whom you have brought out of Egypt with your mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; take no notice of this people’s stubbornness, their wickedness, and their sin, so that it may not be said in the land from which you brought us, “the Lord was not able to bring them to the land he promised them. 

It was because he hated them that he brought them out, to die in the wilderness.” 

But they are your people and your heritage whom you brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.

Responsory

Moses pleaded with the Lord his God.

Lord, he said, why vent your anger against this people of yours?

Let the storm of your anger pass; remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,

to whom you swore to give a land flowing with milk and honey. 

So the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

The Lord said to Moses,

‘You have won my favor. 

You alone do I know above all others.’

So the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

Second Reading

From a letter

by Fulgentius of Ruspe, bishop

Christ lives for ever to make intercession for us

Notice, at the conclusion of our prayer we never say, “through the Holy Spirit,” but rather, “through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord.” Through the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus Christ became man, the mediator of God and man. He is a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. By shedding his own blood he entered once and for all into the Holy Places. He did not enter a place made by human hands, a mere type of the true one; but, he entered heaven itself, 

where he is at God’s right hand interceding for us. 

Quite correctly, the Church continues to reflect this mystery in her prayer.

This mystery of Jesus Christ the high priest is reflected in the apostle Paul’s statement: Through him, then, let us always offer the sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that profess belief in his name. We were once enemies of the Father, but have been reconciled through the death of Christ. Through him then we offer our sacrifice of praise, our prayer to God. He became our offering to the Father, and through him our offering is now acceptable. It is for this reason that Peter the apostle urges us to be built up as living stones into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God through Jesus Christ. This then is the reason why we offer prayer to God our Father, but through Jesus Christ our Lord.

When we speak of Christ’s priesthood, what else do we mean than the incarnation? Through this mystery, the Son of God, though himself ever remaining God, became a priest. To him along with the Father, we offer our sacrifice. Yet, through him the sacrifice we now offer is holy, living and pleasing to God. Indeed, if Christ had not sacrificed himself for us, we could not offer any sacrifice. For it is in him that our human nature becomes a redemptive offering. When we offer our prayers through him, our priest, we confess that Christ truly possesses the flesh of our race. Clearly the Apostle refers to this when he says: Every high priest is taken from among men. He is appointed to act on behalf of these same men in their relationship to God; 

he is to offer gifts and sacrifices to God.

We do not, however, only say “your Son” when we conclude our prayer. We also say, “who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit.” In this way we commemorate the natural unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is clear, then, 

that the Christ who exercises a priestly role on our behalf is the same Christ who enjoys a natural unity and equality with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Responsory

Let us be confident in approaching the throne of grace:

we shall receive mercy from the Son of God and find grace to help us in time of need.

For it is not as if we had a high priest incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us.

We shall receive mercy from the Son of God and find grace to help us in time of need.

Let us pray.

Almighty God,

ruler of all things in heaven and on earth,

listen favorably to the prayer of your people,

and grant us your peace in our day.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Let us praise the Lord.

– Thanks be to God.