THE LITURGY OF THE WORD

Daily Mass Readings

Optional Memorial of Saint Katharine Drexel

Virgin

Antiphon

Cf. Ps 38 (37): 22-23

 

Forsake me not, O Lord! My God, be not far from me!

Make haste and come to my help, O Lord, my strong salvation!

Collect

God of love,

you called Saint Katharine Drexel

to teach the message of the Gospel

and to bring the life of the Eucharist

to the Native American and African American peoples;

by her prayers and example,

enable us to work for justice

among the poor and the oppressed,

and keep us undivided in love

in the eucharistic community of your Church.

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.

Reading 

1 Kgs 12:26-32; 13:33-34

Jeroboam thought to himself:

"The kingdom will return to David's house.

If now this people go up to offer sacrifices

in the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem,

the hearts of this people will return to their master,

Rehoboam, king of Judah,

and they will kill me."

After taking counsel, the king made two calves of gold

and said to the people:

"You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough.

Here is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt."

And he put one in Bethel, the other in Dan.

This led to sin, because the people frequented those calves

in Bethel and in Dan.

He also built temples on the high places

and made priests from among the people who were not Levites.

Jeroboam established a feast in the eighth month

on the fifteenth day of the month

to duplicate in Bethel the pilgrimage feast of Judah,

with sacrifices to the calves he had made;

and he stationed in Bethel priests of the high places he had built.

Jeroboam did not give up his evil ways after this,

but again made priests for the high places

from among the common people.

Whoever desired it was consecrated

and became a priest of the high places.

This was a sin on the part of the house of Jeroboam

for which it was to be cut off and destroyed from the earth.

Responsorial Psalm 

PS 106:6-7ab, 19-20, 21-22

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

We have sinned, we and our fathers;

we have committed crimes; we have done wrong.

Our fathers in Egypt

considered not your wonders.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

They made a calf in Horeb

and adored a molten image;

They exchanged their glory

for the image of a grass-eating bullock.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

They forgot the God who had saved them,

who had done great deeds in Egypt,

Wondrous deeds in the land of Ham,

terrible things at the Red Sea.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

Alleluia

Mt 4:4b

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

One does not live on bread alone,

but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel

Mk 8:1-10

In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat,

Jesus summoned the disciples and said,

“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd,

because they have been with me now for three days

and have nothing to eat.

If I send them away hungry to their homes,

they will collapse on the way,

and some of them have come a great distance.”

His disciples answered him, 

“Where can anyone get enough bread

to satisfy them here in this deserted place?”

Still he asked them, 

“How many loaves do you have?”

They replied, 

“Seven.”

He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground.

Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them,

and gave them to his disciples to distribute,

and they distributed them to the crowd.

They also had a few fish.

He said the blessing over them

and ordered them distributed also.

They ate and were satisfied.

They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets.

There were about four thousand people.

He dismissed the crowd and got into the boat with his disciples

and came to the region of Dalmanutha.

SAINT OF THE DAY

March 3

Saint Katharine Drexel

(1858 - 1955)

Born in Philadelphia in 1858, she had an excellent education and traveled widely. As a rich girl, Katharine also had a grand debut into society. But when she nursed her stepmother through a three-year terminal illness, she saw that all the Drexel money could not buy safety from pain or death, and her life took a profound turn.

Katharine had always been interested in the plight of the Indians, having been appalled by what she read in Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor. While on a European tour, she met Pope Leo XIII and asked him to send more missionaries to Wyoming for her friend Bishop James O’Connor. The pope replied, “Why don’t you become a missionary?” His answer shocked her into considering new possibilities.

Back home, Katharine visited the Dakotas, met the Sioux leader Red Cloud and began her systematic aid to Indian missions.

Katharine Drexel could easily have married. But after much discussion with Bishop O’Connor, she wrote in 1889, “The feast of Saint Joseph brought me the grace to give the remainder of my life to the Indians and the Colored.” Newspaper headlines screamed “Gives Up Seven Million!”

After three and a half years of training, Mother Drexel and her first band of nuns—Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored—opened a boarding school in Santa Fe. A string of foundations followed. By 1942, she had a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, plus 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools. Segregationists harassed her work, even burning a school in Pennsylvania. In all, she established 50 missions for Indians in 16 states.

Two saints met when Mother Drexel was advised by Mother Cabrini about the “politics” of getting her order’s Rule approved in Rome. Her crowning achievement was the founding of Xavier University in New Orleans, the first Catholic university in the United States for African Americans.

At 77, Mother Drexel suffered a heart attack and was forced to retire. 

Apparently her life was over.  But now came almost 20 years of quiet, intense prayer from a small room overlooking the sanctuary.  Small notebooks and slips of paper record her various prayers, ceaseless aspirations, and meditations. 

She died at 96 and was canonized in 2000.

THE LITURGY OF HOURS

The Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office or the Work of God (Opus Dei), is the daily prayer of the Church, marking the hours of each day and sanctifying the day with prayer.  The Hours are a meditative dialogue on the mystery of Christ, using scripture and prayer.  At times the dialogue is between the Church or individual soul and God; at times it is a dialogue among the members of the Church; and at times it is even between the Church and the world.  The Divine Office "is truly the voice of the Bride herself addressed to her Bridegroom. It is the very prayer which Christ himself together with his Body addresses to the Father." (SC 84)  The dialogue is always held, however, in the presence of God and using the words and wisdom of God.  Each of the five canonical Hours includes selections from the Psalms that culminate in a scriptural proclamation.  The two most important or hinge Hours are Morning and Evening Prayer. These each include a Gospel canticle:  the Canticle of Zechariah from Luke 1:68-79 for Morning Prayer (known as the Benedictus), and the Canticle of Mary from Luke 1:46-55 for Evening Prayer (known as the Magnificat). The Gospel canticle acts as a kind of meditative extension of the scriptural proclamation in light of the Christ event.  Morning and Evening Prayer also include intercessions that flow from the scriptural proclamation just as the Psalms prepare for it.

In the Hours, the royal priesthood of the baptized is exercised, and this sacrifice of praise is thus connected to the sacrifice of the Eucharist, both preparing for and flowing from the Mass.

"The hymns and litanies of the Liturgy of the Hours integrate the prayer of the psalms into the age of the Church, expressing the symbolism of the time of day, the liturgical season, or the feast being celebrated. Moreover, the reading from the Word of God at each Hour (with the subsequent responses or troparia) and readings from the Fathers and spiritual masters at certain Hours, reveal more deeply the meaning of the mystery being celebrated, assist in understanding the psalms, and prepare for silent prayer." (CCC 1177)

OFFICE OF READINGS

"The office of readings seeks to provide God's people, and in particular those consecrated to God in a special way, with a wider selection of passages from sacred Scripture for meditation, together with the finest excerpts from spiritual writers. Even though the cycle of scriptural readings at daily Mass is now richer, the treasures of revelation and tradition to be found in the office of readings will also contribute greatly to the spiritual life" (General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours [GILH], no. 55).

https://www.universalis.com/0/readings.htm

LAUDS - Morning Prayer

"As is clear from many of the elements that make it up, morning prayer is intended and arranged to sanctify the morning. St. Basil the Great gives an excellent description of this character in these words: "It is said in the morning in order that the first stirrings of our mind and will may be consecrated to God and that we may take nothing in hand until we have been gladdened by the thought of God, as it is written: 'I was mindful of God and was glad' (Ps 77:4 [Jerome's translation from Hebrew]), or set our bodies to any task before we do what has been said: 'I will pray to you, Lord, you will hear my voice in the morning; I will stand before you in the morning and gaze on you' 

(Ps 5:4-5)."

"Celebrated as it is as the light of a new day is dawning, this hour also recalls the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the true light enlightening all people (see Jn 1:9) and "the sun of justice" (Mal 4:2), "rising from on high" (Lk 1:78). Hence, we can well understand the advice of St. Cyprian: "There should be prayer in the morning so that the resurrection of the Lord may thus be celebrated" (GILH, no. 38).

https://www.universalis.com/0/lauds.htm

TERCE - Mid-Morning Prayer

"Following a very ancient tradition Christians have made a practice of praying out of private devotion at various times of the day, even in the course of their work, in imitation of the Church in apostolic times. In different ways with the passage of time this tradition has taken the form of a liturgical celebration.

"Liturgical custom in both East and West has retained midmorning, midday, and midafternoon prayer, mainly because these hours were linked to a commemoration of the events of the Lord's passion and of the first preaching of the Gospel" 

(GILH, no. 74-75).

https://www.universalis.com/0/terce.htm

SEXT - Mid-Day Prayer

 https://www.universalis.com/0/sext.htm

NONE - Afternoon Prayer

 https://www.universalis.com/0/none.htm

VESPERS - Evening Prayer

"When evening approaches and the day is already far spent, evening prayer is celebrated in order that 'we may give thanks for what has been given us, or what we have done well, during the day.' We also recall the redemption through the prayer we send up 'like incense in the Lord's sight,' and in which 'the raising up of our hands' becomes 'an evening sacrifice' (see Ps 141:2). This sacrifice 'may also be interpreted more spiritually as the true evening sacrifice that our Savior the Lord entrusted to the apostles at supper on the evening when he instituted the sacred mysteries of the Church or of the evening sacrifice of the next day, the sacrifice, that is, which, raising his hands, he offered to the Father at the end of the ages for the salvation of the whole world.' Again, in order to fix our hope on the light that knows no setting, 'we pray and make petition for the light to come down on us anew; we implore the coming of Christ who will bring the grace of eternal light.' Finally, at this hour we join with the Churches of the East in calling upon the 'joy-giving light of that holy glory, born of the immortal, heavenly Father, the holy and blessed Jesus Christ; now that we have come to the setting of the sun and have seen the evening star, we sing in praise of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…'" 

(GILH, no. 39).

https://www.universalis.com/0/vespers.htm

COMPLINE - Night Prayer

"Night prayer is the last prayer of the day, said before retiring, even if that is after midnight" (GILH, no. 84).The Psalms that are chosen for Night Prayer are full of confidence in the Lord.

https://www.universalis.com/0/compline.htm

ABOUT TODAY

https://www.universalis.com/0/today.htm