Antiphon
Rom 5: 5; cf. 8, 11
The love of God has been poured into our hearts
through the Spirit of God dwelling within us (E.T. alleluia).
Collect
O God, who never cease to bestow the glory of holiness
on the faithful servants you raise up for yourself,
graciously grant
that the Holy Spirit may kindle in us that fire
with which he wonderfully filled
the heart of Saint Philip Neri.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever.
Amen.
Memorial of Saint Philip Neri
Priest
Reading
ACTS 20:17-27
From Miletus Paul had the presbyters
of the Church at Ephesus summoned.
When they came to him, he addressed them,
“You know how I lived among you
the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia.
I served the Lord with all humility
and with the tears and trials that came to me
because of the plots of the Jews,
and I did not at all shrink from telling you
what was for your benefit,
or from teaching you in public or in your homes.
I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks
to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus.
But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem.
What will happen to me there I do not know,
except that in one city after another
the Holy Spirit has been warning me
that imprisonment and hardships await me.
Yet I consider life of no importance to me,
if only I may finish my course
and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s grace.
“But now I know that none of you
to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels
will ever see my face again.
And so I solemnly declare to you this day
that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you,
for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God.”
Responsorial Psalm
PS 68:10-11, 20-21
R. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
A bountiful rain you showered down, O God, upon your inheritance;
you restored the land when it languished;
Your flock settled in it;
in your goodness, O God, you provided it for the needy.
R. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
Blessed day by day be the Lord,
who bears our burdens; God, who is our salvation.
God is a saving God for us;
the LORD, my Lord, controls the passageways of death.
R. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
Alleluia
JN 14:16
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I will ask the father
and he will give you another Advocate
to be with you always.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
JN 17:1-11A
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said,
“Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.
Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
I glorified you on earth
by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
Now glorify me, Father, with you,
with the glory that I had with you before the world began.
“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,
because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours
and everything of yours is mine,
and I have been glorified in them.
And now I will no longer be in the world,
but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”
May 26
Saint Phillip Neri
(1515 - 1595)
At an early age, Philip abandoned the chance to become a businessman, moved to Rome from Florence, and devoted his life and individuality to God. After three years of philosophy and theology studies, he gave up any thought of ordination.
The next 13 years were spent in a vocation unusual at the time—
that of a layperson actively engaged in prayer and the apostolate.
As the Council of Trent (1545-63) was reforming the Church on a doctrinal level, Philip’s appealing personality was winning him friends from all levels of society, from beggars to cardinals. He rapidly gathered around himself a group of laypersons won over by his audacious spirituality. Initially, they met as an informal prayer and discussion group, and also served poor people in Rome.
At the urging of his confessor, Philip was ordained a priest and soon became an outstanding confessor himself, gifted with the knack of piercing the pretenses and illusions of others, though always in a charitable manner and often with a joke. He arranged talks, discussions, and prayers for his penitents in a room above the church. He sometimes led “excursions” to other churches,
often with music and a picnic on the way.
Some of Philip’s followers became priests and lived together in community. This was the beginning of the Oratory, the religious institute he founded. A feature of their life was a daily afternoon service of four informal talks, with vernacular hymns and prayers. Giovanni Palestrina was one of Philip’s followers, and composed music for the services. The Oratory was finally approved after suffering through a period of accusations of being an assembly of heretics, where laypersons preached and sang vernacular hymns!
Philip’s advice was sought by many of the prominent figures of his day. He is one of the influential figures of the Counter-Reformation, mainly for converting to personal holiness many of the influential people within the Church itself.
His characteristic virtues were humility and gaiety.
After spending a day hearing confessions and receiving visitors, Philip Neri suffered a hemorrhage and died on the feast of Corpus Christi in 1595. He was beatified in 1615 and canonized in 1622. Three centuries later, Cardinal John Henry Newman founded the first English-speaking house of the Oratory in London.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will proclaim Your Praise!
Invitatory Psalm
Psalm 99 (100)
Christ is the bread of life:
come, let us adore him.
Rejoice in the Lord, all the earth,
and serve him with joy.
Exult as you enter his presence.
Christ is the bread of life:
come, let us adore him.
Know that the Lord is God.
He made us and we are his
– his people, the sheep of his flock.
Christ is the bread of life:
come, let us adore him.
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 forever,
his faithfulness through all the ages.
Christ is the bread of life:
come, let us adore him.
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.
Christ is the bread of life:
come, let us adore him.
Hymn
Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore
Masked by these bare shadows, faith and nothing more.
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? That shall be believed.
What God’s Son hath told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true.
On the Cross thy Godhead made no sign to men.;
Here thy very manhood steals from human ken;
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.
Psalm 22 (23)
The good shepherd
Say to those who are invited:
‘Behold, the supper is ready,
come to the marriage feast.’
Alleluia.
The Lord is my shepherd: I shall lack nothing.
He has taken me to green pastures,
he has led me to still waters;
he has healed my spirit.
He has led me along right paths
for his own name’s sake.
Even if I walk in the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil, for you are with me:
your rod and your staff give me comfort.
You have set a table before me
in the sight of my enemies.
You have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup overflows.
Truly goodness and kindness will follow me
all the days of my life.
For long years I shall live
in the house of the Lord.
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.
Say to those who are invited:
‘Behold, the supper is ready,
come to the marriage feast.’
Alleluia.
Psalm 41 (42)
Longing for the Lord and his temple
If anyone is thirsty,
let him come to me and drink from an inexhaustible spring.
Like a deer that longs for springs of water,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, the living God:
when shall I come and stand before the face of God?
My tears are my food, by day and by night,
and everyone asks, “where is your God?”.
I remember how I went up to your glorious dwelling-place
and into the house of God:
the memory melts my soul.
The sound of joy and thanksgiving,
the crowds at the festival.
Why are you so sad, my soul,
and anxious within me?
Put your hope in the Lord, I will praise him still,
my saviour and my God.
My soul is sad within me,
and so I will remember you
in the lands of Jordan and Hermon,
on the mountain of Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
in your rushing waters:
and all your torrents, all your waves
have flowed over me.
By day the Lord sends his kindness upon me;
by night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
I will say to God:
“You are my support, why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go in mourning, while the enemy persecutes me?.”
As my bones break,
my persecutors deride me,
all the time saying “where is your God?.”
Why are you so sad, my soul,
and anxious within me?
Put your hope in the Lord, I will praise him still,
my savior and my God.
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.
If anyone is thirsty,
let him come to me and drink from an inexhaustible spring.
Psalm 80 (81)
Solemn renewal of the covenant
The Lord fed us with finest wheat;
he filled us with honey from the rock.
Shout with joy to God our helper,
rejoice in the God of Jacob.
Take up the song, sound the timbrel,
play on the lyre and the harp.
At the start of the month, sound the trumpet,
at the full moon, at our festival.
For this is the law for Israel,
the decree of the God of Jacob.
He gave it to Joseph, for a witness,
when he went out of the land of Egypt;
with words that had never been heard:
“I freed his back from burdens;
his hands were freed from heavy loads.
In your tribulation you called on me and I freed you,
I heard you from the heart of the storm,
I tested you at the waters of Meribah.
Listen, my people, and I will put my case –
Israel, if you would only hear me!
You shall not have any strange god,
you shall not worship the gods of foreigners.
For I am the Lord, your God,
who led you out of the land of Egypt.
Open wide your mouth and I shall fill it.
But my people did not hear my voice:
Israel did not turn to me.
So I let them go on in the hardness of their hearts,
and follow their own counsels.
If my people had heard me,
if only they had walked in my ways –
I would swiftly have crushed their enemies,
stretched my hand over those who persecuted them.
The enemies of the Lord would be overcome with weakness,
Israel’s would be the good fortune, for ever:
I would feed them full of richest wheat
and give them honey from the rock,
to their heart’s content.
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.
The Lord fed us with finest wheat;
he filled us with honey from the rock.
Wisdom has built herself a house, alleluia.
– She has prepared the wine and laid the table, alleluia.
First Reading
Exodus 24:1-11
To Moses he had said, ‘Come up to the Lord, yourself and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel and bow down in worship at a distance. Moses alone must approach the Lord; the others must not, nor must the people go up with him.’
Moses went and told the people all the commands of the Lord and all the ordinances. In answer, all the people said with one voice, ‘We will observe all the commands that the Lord has decreed.’ Moses put all the commands of the Lord into writing, and early next morning he built an altar at the foot of the mountain, with twelve standing-stones for the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he directed certain young Israelites to offer holocausts and to immolate bullocks to the Lord as communion sacrifices. Half of the blood Moses took up and put into basins, the other half he cast on the altar. And taking the Book of the Covenant he read it to the listening people, and they said,
‘We will observe all that the Lord has decreed; we will obey.’
Then Moses took the blood and cast it towards the people.
'This' he said ‘is the blood of the Covenant that the Lord has made with you,
containing all these rules.’
Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel. They saw the God of Israel beneath whose feet there was, it seemed, a sapphire pavement pure as the heavens themselves. He laid no hand on these notables of the sons of Israel:
they gazed on God. They ate and they drank.
Responsory
℟. I am the bread of life.
Your forefathers ate manna in the desert, and they died.
* I am speaking of the bread that comes down from heaven,
which a man may eat, and never die.
℣. I am that living bread which has come down from heaven:
if anyone eats this bread, he shall live forever.
* I am speaking of the bread that comes down from heaven,
which a man may eat, and never die.
Second Reading
St Thomas Aquinas
O precious and wonderful banquet!
Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us forever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.
O precious and wonderful banquet, that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion.
It was to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper. As he was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he left it as a perpetual memorial of his passion. It was the fulfilment of ancient figures and the greatest of all his miracles, while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.
Responsory
℟. See in this bread the body of Christ which hung upon the cross,
and in this cup the blood which flowed from his side.
* Take his body, then, and eat it;
take his blood and drink it,
and you will become his members.
℣. The body of Christ is the bond which unites you to him:
eat it, or you will have no part in him.
The blood is the price he paid for your redemption:
drink it, lest you despair of your sinfulness.
* Take his body, then, and eat it;
take his blood and drink it,
and you will become his members.
Hymn
Te Deum
God, we praise you; Lord, we proclaim you!
You, the Father, the eternal –
all the earth venerates you.
All the angels, all the heavens, every power –
The cherubim, the seraphim –
unceasingly, they cry:
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts:
heaven and earth are full of the majesty of your glory!”
The glorious choir of Apostles –
The noble ranks of prophets –
The shining army of martyrs –
all praise you.
Throughout the world your holy Church proclaims you.
– Father of immeasurable majesty,
– True Son, only-begotten, worthy of worship,
– Holy Spirit, our Advocate.
You, Christ:
– You are the king of glory.
– You are the Father’s eternal Son.
– You, to free mankind, did not disdain a Virgin’s womb.
– You defeated the sharp spear of Death, and opened the kingdom of heaven to those who believe in you.
– You sit at God’s right hand, in the glory of the Father.
– You will come, so we believe, as our Judge.
And so we ask of you: give help to your servants,
whom you set free at the price of your precious blood.
Number them among your chosen ones in eternal glory.
Bring your people to safety, Lord,
and bless those who are your inheritance.
Rule them and lift them high for ever.
Day by day we bless you, Lord: we praise you for ever and forever.
Of your goodness, Lord, keep us without sin for today.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us.
Let your pity, Lord, be upon us, as much as we trust in you.
In you, Lord, I trust: let me never be put to shame.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ,
you gave your Church an admirable sacrament
as the abiding memorial of your passion.
Teach us so to worship the sacred mystery of your Body and Blood
that its redeeming power may sanctify us always.
You live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God forever and ever.
Amen.
Let us praise the Lord.
– Thanks be to God.
