Weekday
2025-10-31
THE PATIENCE OF GOD
From a treatise by St Cyprian 6
◊◊◊
Dearly Beloved in the Lord, when we speak of patience and when we preach on its benefits and advantages, what better way to begin than to point out the fact that now, just for you to listen to me, patience is necessary. For you could not hear and learn without patience. Only then is the word of God and the way of salvation effectively learned, if one listens with patience to what is being said. For nothing is more to be preferred to it in all the ways of heavenly discipline, when it comes to seeking the God-given rewards of our hope and faith. Patience is the virtue we should maintain in a special way and with extreme care, whether we find it beneficial to our life or to the attainment of glory. Either way, it befits us who strive to follow the Lord’s precepts with fear and devotion.
How wonderful and how great is the patience of God! He endures most patiently the profane temples, the earthly images and idolatrous rites that our ancestors set up in insult to His majesty and honor. He makes the day to rise and the sun to shine equally over the good and the evil. When He waters the earth with showers no one is excluded from His benefits, but He bestows His rains without distinction on the just and the unjust alike. His Patience has an unbroken equality toward the guilty and the innocent, the religious and the impious, the grateful and the ungrateful. On one and all alike, the seasons obey and the elements serve, the winds blow, fountains flow, harvests increase in abundance, the fruits of the vines ripen, trees are heavy with fruit, the groves become green, and the meadows burst into flower.
And although God is provoked by frequent, yes even continual, offenses, He tempers His anger and patiently waits for the day of retribution which He once foreordained. And although vengeance is in His power, He prefers to be longsuffering in His patience, that is, waiting steadfastly and delaying in His mercy so that, if it is at all possible, the long career of malice at some time may change, and we, however deeply we are infected with the contagion of error and crime, may be converted to God even at a late hour, as He Himself warns and says: I have no pleasure in the death of anyone. And again: Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, patient, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.
6
De Bono Patientiae, CCL IIIa, cc 1,4; pp. 118-119.

All Saints
2025-11-01
UNDER GOD’S
MIGHTY HAND
From a sermon by St Aelred of Rievaulx 7
◊◊◊
My brothers, if we are not qualified to speak of one of God’s saints and proclaim her glory, how qualified are we to give a sermon of all of the saints? It is all the more necessary that we bear ourselves in a way enabling us to come to share their glory. What then must we do? How can we attain these heights? Accordingly…let us listen to some wholesome advice. For whom should we be more ready to believe than someone who has already attained that glory? He certainly knows the way by which he went up. Let us listen then to one of the great friends of Jesus telling us: Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand that he may raise you up.
You know how today throughout the entire world everyone is praising God’s saints – the angels and archangels, the apostles, the martyrs, confessors, virgins… Ponder, if you can, how exalted in heaven are those who can be exalted and honored in this way on earth. Surely…if we could behold all the glory of the world and all the praise of the world and all the joy of the world at the same time, in comparison with their joy it is nothing but absolute misery…
As for us…who do not see these things, let us ponder and delight in the true loveliness in which the saints live free of corruption; in those spiritual ornaments that the saints possess in righteousness and holiness: in the hymns and praises with which they praise God without weariness; and in that light which they see in the face of God. And let us keep our feasts in such a way that our mind is not turned back to those earthly and perishable delights but rather is roused to those that are spiritual and eternal. And so let us reflect on their glory and exaltation.
To enable us to reach this exaltation, let us listen to the advice of the Apostle: Humble yourselves beneath the mighty hand of God. The Apostle was very aware of the reason why we are cast down, why we have lost that exaltation in which we were created, why we were driven out into this unhappiness. What is this reason…if not pride? Therefore, to counteract this pride he taught humility. Humble yourselves, he says. But because he knew that not all those who humble themselves humble themselves wisely, he therefore added: under the mighty hand of God...
Therefore…let us humble ourselves beneath God’s mighty hand that he may lift us up at the time of his visitation. May he lift us up through good deeds and through holy desires, so that when he comes at that great visitation when he will demand from everyone an account of what they have done in this life, he may lift us up totally and we may hear that endearing voice saying: Come, you blessed of my Father. Receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.
7
Aelred of Rievaulx – The Liturgical Sermons – Cistercian Fathers Series – #58 – Cistercian Publications – Kalamazoo – 2001 – pg 346.

Skema: 31st Week in Ordinary Time
2025-11-02
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
31st Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
November 2 – 8, 2025

Sun
2
Mon
3
Tue
4
Wed
5
Thu
6
Fri
7
Sat
8

Office
All Souls
Weekday
St Charles Borromeo
Weekday
Weekday
Weekday
Memorial of the BVM

Vigils
Ezek 37:1-14
Daniel 3:46-70
Daniel 3:71-90
Daniel 3:91-100
Daniel 4:1-15
Daniel 4:16-34
Daniel 5:1-12

Lauds
Job 14:1-12
Zech 10:1-5
Zech 10:6-12
Zech 11:1-6
Zech 11:7-14
Zech 11:15-17
Zech 12:1-6

Mass
668
485
486
487
488
489
490

1st
Wis 3:1-9
Rom 11:29-36
Rom 12:5-16ab
Rom 13:8-10
Rom 14:7-12
Rom 15:14-21
Rom 16:3-9, 16, 22-27

2nd
2 Cor 5:1, 6-10

Gospel
John 11:17-27
Luke 14:12-14
Luke 14:15-24
Luke 14:25-33
Luke 15:1-10
Luke 16:1-8
Luke 16:9-15

Vespers
1 Thess 4:13-18
Jas 4:13-17
Jas 5:1-6
Jas 5:7-12
Jas 5:13-20
2 Pet 1:1-9
1 Pet 2:1-10

31st Sunday
2025-11-02
THE LOVE BETWEEN
GOD AND THE SOUL
From “Purgation and Purgatory” by St Catherine of Genoa 1
◊◊◊
The souls in purgatory cannot think, “I am here, and justly so because of my sins,” or “I wish I had never committed such sins for now I would be in paradise,” or “That person there is leaving before me,” or “I will leave before that one.” They cannot remember the good or evil in their past nor that of others.
Such is their joy in God’s will, in his pleasure, that they have no concern for themselves but dwell only in their joy in God’s ordinance. They see only the goodness of God, his mercy toward all. Should they be aware of other good or evil, theirs would not be perfect charity. Only once do they understand the reason for their purgatory: the moment in which they leave this life. After this moment, that knowledge disappears. Immersed in charity, incapable of deviating from it, they can only will or desire pure love. There is no joy save that in paradise to be compared with the joy of the souls in purgatory.
As the rust of sin is consumed the soul is more and more open to God’s love. Just as a covered object left out in the sun cannot be penetrated by the sun’s rays, in the same way, once the covering of the soul is removed, the soul opens itself fully to the rays of the sun. Having become one with God’s will, these souls, to the extent that he grants it to them, see into God…
All that I have said is nothing compared to what I feel within, the witnessed correspondence of love between God and the soul; for when God sees the soul pure as it was in its origins, he tugs at it with a glance, draws it and binds it to himself with a fiery love. God so transforms the soul into himself that it knows nothing other than God. He will not cease until he has brought the soul to its perfection.
That is why the soul seeks to cast off any and all impediments, so that it can be lifted up to God; and such impediments are the cause of the suffering of the souls in purgatory. Not that the souls dwell on their suffering; they dwell rather on the resistance they feel within themselves against the will of God, against his intense and pure love bent on nothing but drawing them up to him. And I see rays of lightning darting from that divine love to the creature, so intense and fiery… The soul becomes like gold that becomes purer as it is fired, all dross being cast out…
These flaws are burned away in the last stage of love. God shows the soul its weakness, so that the soul may see the workings of God. If we are to become perfect, the change must be brought about in us and without us; that is, the change is to be the work not of human beings but of God… The overwhelming love of God gives the soul a joy beyond words. In purgatory great joy and great suffering do not exclude one another.
1
A Word in Season – vol. IV – Sanctoral – Augustinian Press – 1991 – pg 215.

Vigils Weekday
2025-11-03
THE SPOUSE OF THE VIRGIN
By St Ambrose 2
◊◊◊
What is virginal chastity but purity free from stain? And whom can we judge to be its author but the immaculate Son of God, whose flesh saw no corruption, whose Godhead experienced no infection? Consider, then, how great are the merits of virginity. Christ was before the Virgin, Christ was of the Virgin. Begotten indeed of the Father before the ages, but born of the Virgin for the ages. The former was of His nature, the latter is for our benefit. The former always was, the latter He willed.
Consider, too, another merit of virginity. Christ is the spouse of the Virgin, and if one may so say “spouse” of virginal chastity, for virginity is of Christ, not Christ of virginity. He is, then, the Virgin who was espoused, the Virgin who bore us, who fed us with her milk, of whom we read: “What great things has the virgin of Jerusalem done! The breasts shall not fail from the rock, nor snow from Lebanon, nor the water which is borne by the strong wind.”
Who is this virgin that is watered with the streams of the Trinity, from whose rock waters flow, whose breasts fail not, and whose honey is poured forth? Now, according to the Apostle, the rock is Christ. Therefore, from Christ the breasts fail not, nor brightness from God, nor the river from the Spirit. This is the Trinity which waters their Church, the Father, Christ, and the Spirit.
But let us now come down from the mother to the daughters. “Concerning virgins,” says the Apostle, “I have no commandment of the Lord.” If the teacher of the Gentiles had none, who could have one? And in truth he had no commandment, but he had an example. For virginity cannot be commanded, but must be wished for, for things which are above us are matters for prayer rather than under mastery. “But I would have you,” he says, “be without care. For he who is without a wife is careful for the things which are the Lord’s, how he may please God… And the virgin takes thought for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit. For she that is married takes thought for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.”
I am not indeed discouraging marriage, but am enlarging upon the benefits of virginity.
2
The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol.X, Cp.V, p.366-7.

Vigils: St. Charles Borromeo
2025-11-04
THE LEGACY OF
ST CHARLES BORROMEO
From a homily by Fr Ronald Knox 3
◊◊◊
When our Lord’s apostles came to look back upon that terrible night in the Lake of Galilee, when they strained every nerve against the tempest while their Master lay sleeping in the boat, they found in it an allegory of their own situation, as they launched out the frail bark of his Church upon waves so troubled, with prospects so uncertain.
And in every age the Church has looked back to that picture and taken comfort from it in times of adversity. [With great confidence], the Church of God, which is Peter’s boat, has breasted the waves all through her troubled history. It is not upon the captain’s judgment or the pilot’s experience, not human wisdom or human prudence, that she depends for her safe voyage: she rests secure in the presence of her inviolable passenger.
Yet we should do ill if we grudged recognition and gratitude to those servants of his who at various times have steered our course for us through difficult waters, and especially to the saints of the Counter-Reformation — that remarkable group of saints whom God raised up at the time of Europe’s apostasy, by whose influence, humanly speaking, the faith survived that terrible ordeal. And not the least, nor the least prominent, of these is [St Charles Borromeo], who ruled the Church of Milan in the latter part of the sixteenth century…
Whatever be the rights and wrongs of all the controversies we hear about the medieval Church, this at least is clear, that in the days of the Council of Trent its organization needed reform. And reform needs more than mere legislation to decree it; it needs administration to execute it. That is St Charles’s characteristic legacy to the Church: it was the influence of his example, in great measure, that molded her organization on the new model which Trent had decreed. The bishop has got to be the center of everything in his diocese, and the clergy of the diocese are to be his clergy — a family of which he is to be the father, a guild of which he is to be the master.
See how fond St Charles was of synods: the whole of his comparatively short episcopate is a long record of the synods he gathered amongst his clergy. See how enthusiastic he is for the seminary idea; the bishop, henceforth, is not merely to ordain people, he is to know whom he is ordaining. And above all what was characteristic of St Charles was the institute which he left behind him — a body of secular priests, putting themselves at the disposal of the bishop as absolutely as the religious puts himself at the disposal of his superior.
Yes, there is much about St Charles’s life which is more exciting, and much which is more attractive, than all this; his boundless generosity to the poor, the relentless mortification that regulated his busy, competent life. But what makes him stand out among the saints more than either is his intense devotion even to the most uninspiring details of diocesan routine.
3
from Occasional Sermons of Ronald Knox, ed. by Philip Caraman, S.J., New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960, pp. 79-82.

Vigils: Weekday
2025-11-05
THE SAINT AND THE CHRISTIAN
From “The Faith and Modern Man” by Fr Romano Guardini 4
◊◊◊
We associate the word saints with the idea of exceptional persons. In the New Testament, however, it signifies Christians generally. Being a Christian at all was extraordinary. For the Christians stood out sharply from the environment; either one lived in the Old Testament world, or in the Hellenistic-pagan world, and by both they were regarded as something strange if not hostile. The experience of conversion lifted them out of the environment. A sense of the reality of God not learned from natural religious experience or from the teaching of the Old Testament had shaken and, at the same time, blessed them.
In the existence of Christ, God’s countenance had been unveiled. The life of Christ had made them aware of how God is minded toward us. These experiences had changed their whole lives. They had acquired new ideas of God, new standards of judging the world. The “renewal of mind” of which the Gospel speaks and which they had begun to fulfill, now consisted not only in a conversion to a good and pious life, but in a change of direction in their whole way of thinking. Thus for them, actually, “all things had become new” – and with all these “new things” they found themselves still in an old world, a world which regarded them with distrust and hostility. All this is, in itself, extraordinary – indeed the very essence of the extraordinary, and the “saint” was one who led this existence.
But the spread of Christianity and its increase in members tended to obscure its unique nature. Time went on, the Gospel grew familiar, and the sense of newness wore off. Christianity became the state religion and, as such, the official order of society. Thus the fact that being a Christian at all was in itself extraordinary faded out of people’s consciousness, and Christianity grew to be regarded as normal and usual.
4
The Faith and Modern Man, New York 1952, 128-133.

Vigils: Weekday
2025-11-06
CHRIST THE CORNERSTONE
By Dom Damasus Winzen 5
◊◊◊
Stone is firm and lasting. Builders test their stones, selecting the most solid for foundations on which to rear the whole building, for cornerstones to hold the wall together, or for headstones which will lock into a single mass the entire structure. Stone likewise offers firm resistance to the thrust of an enemy; it will crush him upon whom it falls; it will bruise those who fall against it.
God is the “Stone of Israel”, because he is a God of truth and his mercies endure forever. His faithfulness towards his people is the firm and precious cornerstone which is laid in Zion. In Christ Jesus, God’s loyalty becomes manifest. He is the stone that the leaders of Israel rejected when they crucified him… He became the cornerstone when he rose from the dead. When we try to penetrate into the meaning of the symbolism of the cornerstone, we discover that various ideas are fused in this picture. The idea of the foundation stone is clearly expressed in Isaiah: Thus says the Lord God: behold I laid in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: he that believes shall not make haste.
Christ is the foundation stone, for another foundation no one can lay but that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. He alone has wrought our redemption by dying for us and rising for us. We depend entirely on his work and on his strength. The Hebrew word used in Psalm 117, rosch pinnah — still surviving in our word “pinnacle” — has been translated in various ways as “head of the corner,” “cornerstone,” or “head stone.” The idea of the cornerstone implies that Christ is a part of the foundation, but its most important, visible part, the part which binds the walls. This is true of Christ, because in him the two walls of God and mankind, of the Jews and the Gentiles, and the Old and the New Testament meet…
In recent years, more and more scholars agree that rosch pinnah is rather the head stone, or capstone, which holds a vault or arch together. The Risen Savior is indeed the headstone of the spiritual Temple in which the whole building culminates, which holds it together and defines its design. This three-fold meaning of Christ as the cornerstone is well expressed by Cynewulf in his poem “Christ.”…
Thou art the wall stone
that the workers once threw out from the work,
well it becomes thee that thou be head
of a mighty hall and weld together
its wide walls in fast union,
Flint unbreakable, that throughout earth’s dwelling
all that have eyes may wonder ever more,
O Lord of glory.
5
Symbols of Christ, New York, 1955, pp. 56-58.

Vigils: Weekday
2025-11-07
THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH
From “The Spirit of Catholicism” by Fr Karl Adam 6
◊◊◊
Wherever we encounter the God of revelation, we do not find a characterless God of some feeble pastoral play, but a God of holiness and justice, a God who requires vigorous action and moral decision, the athlete’s struggle for the crown and perseverance in the race until the prize be won. The new order of grace does not displace the old order of moral responsibility before God. And that is true not only of the members of the Church, but also of the Church as such.
The Church too is subject to the great law that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence. It is true that as the supra-personal unity of redeemed mankind, a unity based upon the God-man, the Church has her own essential nature, her own law and her own life. And the Holy Spirit will abide always with her, so that she may remain true to her God-given nature. But on the other hand it is equally true that the nature of the Church must be expressed through the faithful, and not without them. The Body of Christ must maintain and perfect itself in its members and through them. Therefore the Church is not only a gift to the faithful, but also a task for them. They have to prepare and foster that good earthly kingdom in which the seed of the Kingdom of Heaven may take root and flourish.
In other words, the life of the Church, the development of her faith and her love, the progress of doctrine, morals, worship and law, stand in an immediate relation to the faithful and loving personal life of the members of the Body of Christ. God rewards the merit or punishes the demerit of the faithful by the rise and fall of the earthly Church. We may truly say, therefore, with St Paul that the Church founded by Christ is at the same time co-built by the faithful. St Augustine says profoundly: “The temple of God is still being built” and “The house (the Church) is now being constructed.”
God willed a Church which in her ripening and perfecting should be the fruit of the true grace-inspired life of the faithful, of their prayer and love, of their fidelity, penitence and devotion, and therefore God did not found her from the beginning as a thing complete and perfect, but as an incomplete thing, which leaves room for and calls for a continual activity of construction, and in whose inward history God’s Holiness and Justice continually triumph.
6
The Spirit of Catholicism, New York 1948, 261-262.

Vigils: Memorial of the BVM
2025-11-08
LET US PRAISE MARY
From a sermon by St Aelred of Rievaulx 7
◊◊◊
Let us…behold [Mary]; let us behold her excellence, her humility, her charity, and her purity; let us behold her and praise her not only in voice, but by our imitation of her. For if we truly wish to praise her, let us as much as we can imitate her most holy way of life and—what is of greatest use to us—her humility… If our soul still experiences some servitude to sin and suffers some contrariness from its servant, that is, from the flesh, and if we dare not praise, then let us not be slow to pray and implore her help…
We can be sure that as she is more excellent and blessed than any creature, so she is more favorable and merciful than every creature. Therefore let us confidently beseech her and place our trust in her. For we have many examples of her love. We know that many have been snatched away from the snares of the devil through her love; many, who were often in despair were reconciled through her favor; many who were in great torments after death were snatched from these very punishments, because they loved her and zealously commended themselves to her in their lifetime.
Therefore let her be our common joy, our common glory, our common hope, our common consolation, our common reconciliation, and our common refuge. If we are sad, let us fly to her so that she may gladden us. If we are disheartened, let us fly to her so that she may make us cheerful. If we are in despair, let us fly to her so that she may raise us up. If we are troubled, let us fly to her so that she may console us. If we are suffering persecutions, let us fly to her so that she may protect us. If we are at odds with her son, let us fly to her so that she may reconcile us. Let her be our guardian in this life and our protection at death. May she protect us from sin even now, and later may she present us to her beloved son…
Let us lift our hearts and the eyes of our heart to her, our Lady, our advocate, our helper. Think of how much confidence we can have in her who, having been wonderfully illuminated by the sun of justice, dispels by her own brilliant light the darkness that the first woman, Eve, brought into this world. Therefore let us confidently pray to her who is able to help us through her excellence and wishes to do so through her mercy. Let us pray that she may intercede for us as much as she can to her son, so that just as he deigned to be born from her for us, through her he may deign to have mercy [on us].
Therefore let us honor her as much as we can…and let us love her as much as we can, calling upon her most tender mercy, so that she may deign to pray for us to her most sweet son, that what we are unable to do by our own merits we may obtain by her patronage and the efficacy of the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.
7
(CSQ 32:124-125).

LCG Chicago Monthly Meeting 9:00 am CDT
2025-12-13 09:00 (America/New_York)
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Skema
2025-11-09
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
32nd Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
November 9 – 15, 2025

Sun
9
Mon
10
Tue
11
Wed
12
Thu
13
Fri
14
Sat
15

Office
Lateran Basilica
St Leo the Great
St Martin of Tours
Weekday
All Benedictine Saints
Weekday
Gethsemani Church

Vigils
Exodus 40:1-34
Daniel 5:13-6:1
Daniel 6:2-29
Daniel 7:1-15
Dan 7:1-3, 9-22, 27
Daniel 7:16-28
Rev 21:9-22:5

Lauds
Jerm 7:1-7
Zech 12:7-14
Isa 58:6-12
Zech 13:1-6
Wisdom 5:1-5, 14-16
Zech 13:7-9
Ezek 37:21-28

Mass
671
491
492
493
573, 677
495
701.2, 704.2, 706.4

1st
Ezek 47:1-2, 8-9, 12
Wis 1:1-7
Wis 2:23-3:9
Wis 6:1-11
Isa 61:9-11
Wis 13:1-9
2 Chron 5:6-10, 13-6:2

2nd
1 Cor 3:9c-11, 16-17

Eph 2:19-22

Gospel
John 2:13-22
Luke 17:1-6
Luke 17:7-10
Luke 17:11-19
John 15:1-8
Luke 17:26-37
John 4:19-24

Vespers
Heb 10:19-25
2 Pet 1:10-15
Gal 6:1-5
2 Pet 1:16-19
Rev 7:9-17
2 Cor 6:14-7:1
Heb 3:1-6

Vigils Reading - 32nd Sunday
2025-11-09
DEDICATION OF
THE LATERAN BASILICA
◊◊◊
The blessed Pope Sylvester I instituted the rites which the Roman Church
observes in consecrating churches and altars. For although from the ages of the
apostles places had been dedicated to God where assemblies were held every
Sabbath, yet those places had not been consecrated by a solemn rite before this.
Up to the time of Sylvester an altar was not erected under title, which, anointed
with chrism, symbolizes our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Altar, our Victim, our
Priest.
But when the Emperor Constantine obtained health and salvation
through the sacrament of Baptism, then for the first time, by an edict published
by him, the Christians throughout the world were permitted to build churches;
he himself encouraged this holy building by his own example, as well as by this
edict. For in his own Lateran palace he dedicated a church to the Savior and
founded adjacent to it a Basilica, under the title of St John the Baptist, on the
very spot where he had been baptized by St Sylvester and cleansed from the
leprosy of unbelief. This basilica the same Pope consecrated on November 9,
and the memory of this consecration is celebrated today, when, for the first
time, a church was publicly consecrated at Rome, and there appeared to the
Roman people an image of the Savior depicted on the wall.
Although later on St Sylvester decreed that from that time forward all
altars should be built of stone, yet the altar of the Lateran Basilica was built of
wood. This is not surprising. For since, from St Peter down to Sylvester, because
of persecutions, the Pontiffs could not dwell in any fixed abode, they offered the
Holy Sacrifice [of the Mass] wherever necessity compelled them, whether in
crypts or in cemeteries, or in the homes of the faithful, upon a wooden altar
which was hollow like a chest.
When this altar had been placed in the first church, the Lateran, St
Sylvester decreed that from that time on, no one except the Roman Pontiff
should celebrate Mass upon it, in honor of the Prince of the Apostles and of the
rest of the Popes who had been accustomed to use it. This same church, having
been destroyed by fires, pillaging, and earthquakes, and repaired by the
laborious effort of the Supreme Pontiffs, was afterwards rebuilt anew. Pope
Benedict XIII, a Dominican, consecrated it on April 28, 1726, by a solemn rite.

Vigils Reading - St Leo the Great
2025-11-10
THE WORKS OF
GOD’S SERVANTS
By St Leo the Great
◊◊◊
It is a great and very precious thing, beloved, in the Lord’s sight, when
Christ’s whole people engage together in the same duties, and all ranks and
degrees of either sex co-operate with the same intent: when one purpose
animates all alike of declining from evil and doing good; when God is glorified in
the works of God’s servants, and the Author of all godliness is blessed in
unstinted giving of thanks.
The hungry are nourished, the naked are clothed, the sick are visited, and
people seek not their own but “that which is another’s”, so long as in relieving
the misery of others each one makes the most of one’s own means; and it is easy
to find “a cheerful giver,” where one’s performances are only limited by the
extent of one’s power.
By this grace of God, “which works all in all,” the benefits and the deserts
of the faithful are both enjoyed in common. For they, whose income is not like,
can yet think alike, and when one rejoices over another’s bounty, his feelings put
him on the same level with him whose powers of spending are on a different
level.
In such a community there is no disorder nor diversity, for all the
members of the whole body agree in one strong purpose of godliness, and one
who glories in the wealth of others is not put to shame by personal poverty. For
the excellence of each portion is the glory of the whole body, and when we are all
led by God’s Spirit, not only are the things we do ourselves our own but those of
others also over the doing of which we rejoice…
But because we possess this greatness of heart, and yet it is truly a pious
thing for each one not to forsake the care of one’s own, we, without prejudice to
the more perfect sort, lay down for you this general rule and exhort you to
perform God’s bidding according to the measure of your ability.
For cheerfulness becomes one who is benevolent, who should so manage
liberality that while the poor rejoice over the help supplied, home needs may not
suffer. “And he who ministers seed to the sower shall provide bread to be eaten
and multiply your seed and increase the fruits of your righteousness.”

Vigils Reading - St Martin of Tours
2025-11-11
ST MARTIN AND THE PAUPER
By St Sulpicius Severus
◊◊◊
One day, at the gate of the city of Amiens, Martin met a poor man who was
naked. Martin’s clothing was reduced to his armor and his simple military
cloak. It was the middle of a winter which had been more severe than usual,
and, indeed, many had perished from the extreme cold. Those who had passed
that way had been begged by the pitiable pauper to have compassion on him,
but all had gone by. Martin, however, filled with God’s grace, saw that it was for
him, when others had denied their mercy, that the suppliant was being reserved.
Yet, what should he do?
He had nothing except the cloak he was wearing; he had already devoted
the rest of his clothing to similar purposes. Then, drawing the sword which he
was wearing, he cut the cloak in two; one part he gave to the pauper; in the other
he again dressed himself. Meanwhile, some of the bystanders began to laugh,
for it was an inelegant figure Martin cut, dressed in half a garment. Yet, many,
of saner mind, sighed deeply. When they, who had more to give, might have
clothed the pauper with out making themselves naked, they had done nothing of
the sort.
When night had come and he was deep in sleep, Martin beheld Christ,
clothed in that part of his own cloak with which he had covered the pauper. He
was bidden to look attentively upon the Lord and to recognize the garment he
had given. And soon, to the throng of angels standing about, he heard Jesus
saying in a clear voice: Martin, still a catechumen, has covered me with this
cloak.
The Lord, in declaring that it was He who had been clothed in the person
of the pauper, was truly mindful of His own words uttered long ago: As long as
you did it to one of these my least, you did it to me. Further, to strengthen the
evidence of such a good deed, he deigned to show Himself in the very garment
the pauper had received.
The blessed man was not puffed up with human pride because of this
vision. Rather, recognizing God’s goodness in his own act, he was baptized
without delay. He was then eighteen.

Vigils Reading
2025-11-12
GLORIFY THE LORD
From the Catechetical Lectures of St Cyril of Jerusalem
◊◊◊
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”; for in the
thought of God, let the thought of Father be included, so that the glory we
ascribe to the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit may be perfectly free from
difference. For the Father has one glory and the Son another, but their glory is
one and the same; since the Son is the Father’s sole-begotten, and when the
Father is glorified the Son shares in enjoyment of His glory… And whenever the
Son is glorified the Father of so excellent a Son is greatly honored.
Now the mind thinks with great rapidity, but the tongue needs
expressions and a long outpouring of words before it reaches a conclusion. For
in one instant, the eye takes in a vast multitude of stars, but if anyone should
want to discourse on any particular stars…he will need to say a good deal. Again
in like manner the mind comprehends earth and sea and all the bounds of the
world in a flash, but it takes many words to express what it understands in an
instant…
What we say about God is not what should be said (for that is known only
to Him) but only what human nature takes in, and only what our infirmity can
bear. For what we expound is not what God is… We have no sure knowledge
about Him… Our chief theological knowledge is confessing that we have none.
Therefore, “magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His Name together”…
Now if the heavens and all they contain cannot worthily sing the praises of
God, how possibly can earth and ashes, the least and slightest of existing things,
raise a worthy hymn to God, “who holds in His hand the circle of the earth, and
considers the inhabitants of it as grasshoppers.” If anyone would attempt to
discourse on God, let them first expound what are the bounds of the earth. The
earth is your dwelling, and yet you do not know the extent of your dwellingplace,
earth! How then can you have any adequate thoughts of its Creator?
But someone will ask: If the divine Being is incomprehensible, what is the
good of the things you have been saying? Come now, am I not to take a
reasonable drink because I cannot drink the river dry? Or supposing I were to go
into a huge garden where I could not possibly eat all the fruit on the trees, would
you have me leave it still hungry? I praise and glorify our Maker, seeing that “Let
everything that breathes praise the Lord” is a divine command. I am now trying
to glorify the Master, not to expound His Nature, for I know quite well that I
shall fall far short even of glorifying Him as He deserves. Nevertheless I hold it
to be a religious duty at least to make the attempt. For the Lord Jesus comforts
me for my insufficiency by saying “No one has seen God at any time.”

Vigils Reading - All Benedictine Saints
2025-11-13
THE COMMUNION OF THE SAINTS
By Baldwin of Ford
◊◊◊
I believe, O Lord, in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the
communion of saints. Here is my hope, here is my trust, here is my confidence,
here is my security -however small it may be- which I have in the confession of
my faith, in the generosity of the Holy Spirit, in the unity of the catholic Church,
in the communion of the saints. If it be granted me from above to love you and to
love my neighbour, then even though my own merits are poor and meager, I
have a hope which is above and beyond all my merits: I am sure that through the
communion of charity the merits of the saints will profit me and that the
communion of the saints can make good my own imperfection and
insufficiency. The prophet comforts me when he says, “I have seen an end of all
perfection, but your commandment is exceeding broad.”
O charity, so broad and so extensive, how great is the house of God, how
vast is the place of his possession! We need not be distressed in our heart; we
need not be confined by the boundaries and limits of our insignificant
righteousness. Charity extends our hope to the communion of the saints, and we
can therefore share with them their merits and their rewards. But the sharing of
their rewards is [reserved] for the time to come, for it is the sharing of the glory
which shall be revealed in us.
Thus there are three sorts of sharing, [three forms of communion, three
ways in which we have things in common]: the sharing of nature, which is
associated with the sharing of sin and the sharing of wrath; then the sharing of
grace; and thirdly, the sharing of glory. By the sharing of grace, the sharing of
nature begins to be restored and the sharing of sin is removed, but by the
sharing of glory, the sharing of nature will be fully and perfectly restored and the
sharing of wrath wholly removed. It is then that God shall wipe away all the
tears from the eyes of the saints. It is then that all the saints will be as one heart
and one soul, and they will have all things in common when God will be all in all.
[Our hope is] that we, too, may come in common to this communion and
come together as one [and therefore we pray that] the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ and the charity of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit may be with
us all always.

Vigils Reading
2025-11-14
THE TRUE CHRISTIAN
From a treatise by St Augustine
◊◊◊
Let us not flatter ourselves in the mere fact that we are called Christians;
rather, let us believe that we deserve to be judged if we assume a name to which
we have no claim. Or, if there are any who are so unbelieving, so unfaithful, so
persistent, so obstinate, so bold, that they do not fear the imminent anger and
indignation of God the judge, let them at least feel abashed before human
judgments. Let them realize how dull, how foolish, and how senseless they are
considered even by other people, since their vanity and madness are so great
that they take upon themselves a name to which they are not entitled. For, who
is so conceited and so pitiable that he would dare to establish himself as a lawyer
if he is uneducated? Who is so mad and bereft of reason that he would proclaim
himself a soldier if he does not know how to use arms? One does not choose
such a name without reason.
To be called a cobbler, one must repair shoes; to be looked upon as an
artisan or workman, one must produce proof of one’s art; to be recognized as a
trader, one exhibits costly objects originally purchased at a smaller price. From
examples of this sort we realize that there is no name without the corresponding
act and, furthermore, that every name is derived from the antecedent act. Now,
then, are you called a Christian when you perform no distinctively Christian
acts?
The name Christian connotes justice, goodness, integrity, patience,
chastity, prudence, humility, kindliness, innocence and piety; how do you
defend your assumption of that name when your conduct manifests so few out
of so many virtues? One is truly a Christian who is one not in name only but also
in deed; who imitates and follows Christ in all respects; who is holy, innocent,
undefiled, chaste; in whose heart evil finds no room, since this heart is
dominated by piety and by a goodness which, knowing only how to bring help to
all, knows not how to harm or injure anybody.
We are Christians when, according to the example of Christ, we are
accustomed to do good to those who oppose us and to pray for our persecutors
and our enemies rather than to hate them. Whoever is quick to hurt or harm
another person lies when he calls himself a Christian; we are truly Christians
when we can say in all honesty: “I have harmed nobody; I have lived in justice
with all.”

Vigils Reading - Gethsemani Church
2025-11-15
THE DEDICATION OF OUR CHURCH
From a sermon by St Bernard of Clairvaux
◊◊◊
My brethren, we ought to observe today’s festivity all the more devoutly
for the reason that it is so peculiarly our own. All the other sacred solemnities
which we keep are common to us with the faithful in general. But this is so
proper to ourselves that if we do not keep it, it will not be kept at all. It is our own
feast, because it is the feast of the dedication of our own church. It is still more
our own because it is the feast of our own selves. For what of sanctity can belong
to these dead walls which cause them to be honored with a religious solemnity?
They are undoubtedly holy, but it is because of your bodies. Will anyone
question that your bodies are holy, since they are “the temples of the Holy
Spirit”?
Consequently your souls are sanctified because of the spirit of God “Who
is in you”, your bodies are sanctified because of your souls, and this house is
sanctified also because of your bodies. The Psalmist prayed “Preserve my soul
for I am holy”. Truly “God is wonderful in His saints”, not alone in His saints in
heaven, but also those on earth. For He has His saints in both places and shows
Himself wonderful in them all, beatifying those above, consummating the
sanctity of those below.
Accordingly it is your own festival, dearest brethren, your very own, that
you are celebrating today. You have been dedicated to the Lord and the Lord has
chosen and adopted you as His own peculiar people. Oh, how wisely you have
acted…in renouncing all that you might have possessed in this world, since by
doing so you have deserved to become the peculiar people of the world’s
Creator, and to have Him as your special possession, for He is undoubtedly “the
portion and inheritance” of His own!
See, therefore, if it is not right to observe as a festival the day on which the
Lord adopted us as His own and took formal possession of us through His
ministers, thus accomplishing in fact what He had promised long ago, saying, “I
in the midst of them shall be their God”, while we should be “the people of His
pasture and the sheep of His hand”. For when this house was consecrated to the
Lord by the ministry of the Bishop, it was manifestly for our sake it was done;
not only for the sake of those who were actually present then, but also for the
sake of all those who until the end of time shall serve God in this holy place.
Therefore, dearest brethren, it is necessary that what has already been
accomplished in the walls in a visible manner should be invisibly accomplished
in ourselves.

Skema
2025-11-16
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
33rd Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
November 16 – 22, 2025

Sun
16
Mon
17
Tue
18
Wed
19
Thu
20
Fri
21
Sat
22

Office
33rd Sunday
Weekday
Office for Vocations
St Mechtild
Weekday
Presentation of the BVM
St Cecilia

Vigils
Daniel 8:1-14
Daniel 8:15-27
Daniel 9:1-19
Daniel 9:20-27
Daniel 10:1-11:1
Daniel 11:2-20
Daniel 11:21-45

Lauds
Zech 14:1-5
Zech 14:6-11
Zech 14:12-15
Zech 14:16-21
Malachi 1:1-5
Mal 1:6-10
Mal 1:11-14

Mass
159
497
498
499
500
501
502

1st
Mal 3:19-20a
1 Macc 1:10-15, 41-43, 54-57, 62-63
2 Macc 6:18-31
2 Macc 7:1, 20-31
1 Macc 2:15-29
1 Macc 4:36-37, 52-59
1 Macc 6:1-13

2nd
2 Thess 3:7-12

Gospel
Luke 21:5-19
Luke 18:35-43
Luke 19:1-10
Luke 19:11-28
Luke 19:41-44
Luke 19:45-48
Luke 20:27-40

Vespers
2 Pet 1:20-2:3
2 Pet 2:4-10a
2 Pet 2:10b-16
2 Pet 2:17-22
2 Pet 3:1-7
2 Pet 3:8-13
1 Cor 15:20-28

Vigils Reading - 33rd Sunday
2025-11-16
BY PATIENT ENDURANCE
From a commentary by Nilus of Ancyra
◊◊◊
In time of trial it is of great profit to us patiently to endure for God’s sake,
for the Lord says: By patient endurance you will win life for yourselves. He did
not say by your fasting, or your solitude or silence, or your singing of psalms,
although all these are helpful in saving your soul. But he said: By patient
endurance in every trial that overtakes you, and in every affliction, whether this
be insolent and contemptuous treatment, or any kind of disgrace, either small
or great; whether it be bodily weakness, or the belligerent attacks of Satan, or
any trial whatsoever caused either by other people or by evil spirits.
By patient endurance you will win life for yourselves, although to this
must be added wholehearted thanksgiving and prayer, and humility. For you
must be ready to bless and praise your benefactor, God the Savior of the world,
who disposes all things, good or otherwise, for your benefit.
The apostle writes: With patient endurance we run the race of faith set
before us. For what has more power than virtue? What more firmness or
strength than patient endurance? Endurance, that is, for God’s sake. This is the
queen of virtues, the foundation of virtue, a haven of tranquility. It is peace in
time of war, calm in rough waters, safety amidst treachery and danger. It makes
those who practice it stronger than steel. No weapons or brandished bows, no
turbulent troops or advancing seige engines, no flying spears or arrows can
shake it. Not even the host of evil spirits, nor the dark array of hostile powers,
nor the devil himself standing by with all his armies and devices will have power
to injure the man or woman who has acquired this virtue through Christ.

Vigils Reading
2025-11-17
THE INNER SELF
From the writing of Thomas Merton
◊◊◊
The inner self is not a part of our being, like a motor in a car. It is our
entire substantial reality itself, on its highest and most personal and most
existential level. It is like life, and it is life: it is our spiritual life when it is most
alive. It is the life by which everything else in us lives and moves.. If it is
awakened, it communicates a new life to the intelligence in which it lives, so that
it becomes a living awareness of itself: and this awareness is not so much
something that we ourselves have as something that we are…
The inner self is as secret as God, and like Him, it evades every concept
that tries to seize hold of it with full possession. It is a life that cannot be held
and studied as an object, because it is not a “thing.” It is not reached and coaxed
forth from hiding by any process under the sun, including meditation. All we
can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the
silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart, and the indifference
which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable
manifestation of his presence.
At the same time, however, every deeply spiritual experience, whether
religious or moral, or even artistic, tends to have in it something of the presence
of the interior self. Only from the inner self does any spiritual experience gain
depth, reality, and a certain in communicability. But the depth of ordinary
experience only gives us a derivative sense of the inner self. It reminds us of the
forgotten levels of interiority in our spiritual nature, and of our helplessness to
explore them.
From THE INNER EXPERIENCE quoted by William Shannon in his book: Thomas Merton’s Dark Path, Farrar-
Straus-Giroux N.Y., 1987, pp. 116-117.

Vigils Reading - Office for Vocations
2025-11-18
FOR THE GOOD OF ALL
By Henri Le Saux
◊◊◊
Vocations are as diverse as temperaments are diverse. More simply, we
could say that certain temperaments are more predisposed to the solitary life
and others to life in the world. Among the great vocations there are the Sages
and there are the Prophets. There are those whom the Holy Spirit compels them
to withdraw within themselves and to meditate night and day on the Law of the
Lord, like the inspired scribes of Israel and those first hermits of Mount Carmel.
And there are those who are called to proclaim the Word of God to others.
In the world we must have people who testify that God is beyond all
symbol, people who witness to the absolute. We must have people who, in the
name of the world, place the world at the center and who live in this center
where God dwells. We needed some of them even in the Church to ward off
pragmatism which constantly threatens it, even under the finest outward
appearances of pastoral and missionary zeal. We need people who take literally
the call of Christ to poverty, to freedom from concern about the morrow, to
indifference to all but the one essential thing. We are so made that it is only in
fellowship, in collaboration and in one person complementing the qualities of
another, that we are completely capable of putting the Gospel into effect.
Indeed, alongside the people who witness to the immutability of God,
there must be people who witness to his activity. Alongside the people who
witness to his transcendence, there must be those who witness to his
immanence. There must be people who enter with all their abilities into the
Divine plan for the development of the universe and for the growth of the
mystical body of the Lord. God did not intend everything in universe to be made
all at once. He chose to have his creation – and above all, humanity – working
with him. It is through secondary causes that God leads the world to find its
consummation.
At the human level, this collaboration becomes freedom. At the same
time it becomes understanding. This means that we are called to use our
intelligence to discover how best to improve the conditions of human life. We
are responsible and intelligent collaborators in the work of creating and of
ruling the world. We cannot refuse to take part in it without refusing God
himself. That is inscribed in our human birth and in the condition of
communion (or koinonia), which is the condition of our existence, human as
well as Christian.
However, not everyone is called to collaborate in the same way. There are
kings and there are farmers; there are doctors and there are merchants. The
important point is that each one, wherever God has placed them, should always
work for the good of all. Selfishness is not only the act of someone who may
withdraw to the desert out of laziness or cowardice. It is no less present in the
one who has chosen to live in the world, but who uses the world for their own
exclusive gain. Every vocation is a service, both in the church and in the world.
Each of us is at the service of each other.

Vigils Reading - St Mechtild
2025-11-19
OUR SERVICE OF GOD
An excerpt from “The Book of Special Grace” by St Mechthild of Hackeborn
◊◊◊
If any obstacle arises in our service of God, whether from the attitude of
others, from external circumstances, from our own desires, memories, or from
any other cause – whatever the impediment, we should take it as a messenger
from God, sending it back to Him, so to speak, with praise and thanksgiving.
Three things very pleasing to God are: first, never to abandon one’s
neighbors in their needs, and to excuse their shortcomings and sins as much as
possible; second, in tribulation to seek refuge only in God, abandoning to Him
alone all that disquiets the heart; third, to walk with Him in truth.
When it is time to eat or to sleep, say in your heart: “Lord, in union with
the love with which you created this useful thing for me, and yourself made us of
it when you were on earth, I take it for your eternal praise and for my bodily
need.” The Blessed Virgin tells us: “if you wish to be truly holy, stay close to my
Son; he is holiness itself, making all things holy.”
We should be lovingly grateful not only for the spiritual blessings God
gives us, but for all bodily necessities, such as food and clothing, receiving them
with a sincerely thankful heart and considering ourselves unworthy of them.
We should also thank God for everything that he has given to his Mother and to
the angels.
Works which give no human satisfaction may nevertheless be very
pleasing to God. What best pleases God in members of religious orders is purity
of heart, holy desires, gentle kindness in conversation, and works of charity.
When you are alone, raise your heart constantly to God, speak with him and
direct all your desire to him with great intensity. You can never be in so large a
crowd that you are not alone with him.
When those who receive from the Lord the gift of a fine orchard, they
cannot taste the fruit until it is ripe. Likewise, when one receives a special grace,
any interior joy is not experienced until by the practice of mortification one has
broken the hard rind of earthly pleasure.

Vigils Reading
2025-11-20
THE ONE BODY OF CHRIST
From a commentary by Origen
◊◊◊
The temple and the body of Jesus, seem to me…to be a type of the church
signifying that it is built of living stones, a spiritual house for a holy priesthood…
The temple will be rebuilt and the body will rise again on the third day, after the
day of evil which threatens it and the day of consummation which comes after.
For the third day will rise on the new heaven and the new earth when these
bones – the whole house of Israel – will rise again on the great day of the Lord,
victorious over death.
Thus it is that the already completed resurrection of Christ, including his
sufferings on the cross, contains the mystery of the resurrection of the whole
body of Christ. But as that physical body of Jesus was crucified and buried and
then raised up, so the whole body of Christ’s saints is crucified with Christ and
now lives no longer…For Scripture says: All my bones are scattered.
But when the actual resurrection of the true and more perfect body of
Christ takes place, then those who are now the members of Christ, (for they will
then be dry bones) will be brought together, bone to bone, and fitting to fitting,
to the measure of the stature of the fullness of the body of Christ. Then the many
members will be the one body, all the members of the body, though they are
many, becoming one body. But the distinction between foot and hand and eye
and ear and nose, which in one sense fills out the head and in another sense
represents the feet and the rest of the members, the weaker and the humbler,
the less honorable and the more honorable – this distinction is for God alone to
make who will put together the body and, more than he does now, will give the
greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body,
but that the members may have the same care for one another, and if one
member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice
together.

Vigils Reading - Presentation of the BVM
2025-11-21
THE VIRGIN AND THE TEMPLE
From the writing of Fr Yves Congar6
◊◊◊
The only occasion on which the Gospels expressly mention the Virgin
Mary in connection with the Temple are in the account of her Purification and of
the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the finding of the child Jesus in the
Temple after four days’ absence on his part and three anxious searching by his
parents. To these very brief indications, the piety of Christians very soon added
the idea of the presentation of Mary in the Temple at the age of three to be
consecrated to the service of God. We are dealing here with a symbolical
representation of a profound spiritual reality about which the tradition and the
doctrine of the Church provide us with valid information.
Mary, predestined to be the Mother of Jesus, true God and true man, and
to be worthy of her vocation, was prepared by the gift of exceptional graces and
lived with unfailing fidelity a most pure life of inner consecration to the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As the type of all faithful souls and of the Church
herself, Mary expressed spiritually and supremely in her life the “presentation”
which, for each one of us, is to begin by the service of faith and to be
consummated in heaven.
It is obvious that the tradition and doctrine of the Church may, without
falling prey to the imaginary productions of the apocrypha, propound
statements concerning the status of the Mother of God in relation either to the
Jewish messianic temple going far beyond what we are explicitly told in the
three short passages from the Gospel which narrate the incidents mentioned
above.
If Mary is the Mother of God, she has a special relation to the body of
Christ which is the true temple – to his physical body and doubtless also, in a
certain sense, to his body the Church. She is herself a temple of God in a quite
specific and sublime way, both because Christ was within her from the moment
of his conception until that of his birth, and because of the exceptional spiritual
gifts she received in preparation for her divine motherhood and as a reward for
her free acceptance of this vocation, not only after the Annunciation but during
the whole of her life. Hence the liturgy – the Oriental liturgy in particular –
shows a profound understanding of the mystery of Mary when it constantly uses
the texts concerning the Temple and the tabernacle in order to express it.
6 The Mystery of the Temple, Westminster(Maryland) 1962, p.254-255.11

Vigils Reading - St Cecilia
2025-11-22
THE VIRGINITY OF
ST CECILIA
From a homily by Fr Ronald Knox
◊◊◊
The legends of the early Roman saints, among whom St Cecilia is
numbered, do not always command great attention from the critically minded
historian. But whether the story of St Cecilia as it is told in her acts is all true or
only partly true, there is a simplicity about the whole story and a simplicity
about St Cecilia’s character in the story which demands a retelling.
Let me remind you in the most general way of her story: how she was
married to a young pagan called Valerian, but persuaded him to respect her vow
of virginity, because her guardian angel would make him sorry for it if he did
otherwise; how Valerian wanted to see this guardian angel, but Cecilia, with her
innocent craft, said he could not do that unless he was baptized first; how he was
baptized, and saw the angel at her side as she prayed; how he made a convert of
his brother Tiburtius, and how first the two brothers, and then Cecilia herself
were punished with death for professing the Christian religion. It is an old story,
and a familiar one: and while we do all homage to other great saints for their
public witness to Christ, we shall always need St Cecilia as well, quietly working
at home for the conversion of her own husband and his family.
Not that St Cecilia herself was in the position of a modern wife. Like so
many Christian ladies of her time, she had taken, in imitation of our blessed
Lady, a vow of perpetual virginity. These virgin martyrs were martyrs because
they were virgins: it was because they insisted on keeping their vow when their
parents wished them to marry that the secret of their attachment to the
Christian faith was discovered; and it was their persistency in maintaining it
that led to their martyrdom.
It would be hard to estimate…how much the unpopularity in Roman
society of the Christian faith owed to its tradition of virginity. Virginity is an
ideal which the pagan had no right to misunderstand. For, in theory, they, too,
honored it; and it should have commended itself to their heathen instinct for
sacrifice. For the point of a sacrifice is that the victim should be spotless, the
best of its kind. You must offer not what you can well afford to spare, but what
will cost you something. That is the pagan idea of sacrifice; and the Christian
idea of sacrifice is based on the same principle. In order to give up something to
God, we forgo, not the sinful pleasures which we have no right to in any case, but
the lawful pleasures which he has given us to enjoy if we will.
So, let St Cecilia’s feast remind us to take our Christian vocation seriously,
to follow out in our lives the words we profess with our lips. And may this
Roman maiden pray for us who worship here and for those who minister to us,
that when Christ, the Master she served, comes again in judgment, we may be
found blameless before almighty God.

Skema
2025-11-23
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
34th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
November 23 – 29, 2025

Sun
23
Mon
24
Tue
25
Wed
26
Thu
27
Fri
28
Sat
29

Office
Christ the King
St Andrew Dung-Lac & Companions
St Catherine of Alexandria
Weekday
Weekday
Thanksgiving
Weekday
Memorial of the BVM

Vigils
Isa 33:2-22
Daniel 12:1-13
Daniel 13:1-33
Daniel 13:34-64
Deut 26:1-19
Daniel 14:1-22
Daniel 14:23-42

Lauds
Jerm 23:1-6
Mal 2:1-9
Mal 2:10-16
Mal 2:17-3:4
Joel 2:21-27
Mal 3:6-12
Mal 3:13-21

Mass
162
503
504
505
943.3, 944.3, 947.6
507
508

1st
2 Sam 5:1-3
Dan 1:1-6, 8-20
Dan 2:31-45
Dan 5:1-6, 13-14, 16-17, 23-28
Isa 63:7-9
Dan 7:2-14
Dan 7:15-27

2nd
Col 1:12-20

Col 3:12-17

Gospel
Luke 23:35-43
Luke 21:1-4
Luke 21:5-11
Luke 21:12-19
Luke 17:11-19
Luke 21:29-33
Luke 21:34-36

Vespers
Rev 19:11-16
2 John 1-6
2 John 7-13
3 John 1-8

3 John 9-15
Rev 1:1-8

Vigils Reading - Christ the King
2025-11-23
IN THE STEPS
OF THE MARTYRS
From a homily by St Augustine
◊◊◊
Let us not imagine that in keeping the feast of the Martyrs with great
solemnity, we are benefiting them. They who are in the joy of heaven with the
angels have no need of our honors and if they rejoice with us, it is at being
imitated, not at being honored. However, though this veneration does not
benefit them, it is useful for us: but to honor them without imitating them,
would be lying flattery. If then these solemnities have been instituted in the
Church of Christ, it is only to unite all the members of Christ and to enlist them
as followers in the steps of the martyrs of Christ. Such is the fruit of today’s
festival; there is no question of any other.
When, in fact, we propose God himself as our example, human weakness
readily answers that it is above its power to imitate him to whom it cannot be
compared. In that case Jesus Christ our Lord will be proposed to it as model
who, being God, clothed himself in mortal flesh in order the better to persuade
us also clothed in this same flesh, adding word to example; Christ, it is written,
“suffered for our sake, and left you his own example; you were to follow in his
footsteps”.
Yet will not frail humanity reply again: “What comparison is there
between me and Christ? He was one of us, but he was God. He took flesh, but
without ceasing to be the Word, assuming a new nature without losing that
which was proper to him. For, as St Paul says, “God was in Christ, reconciling
the world to himself”. Once again, how can I compare myself with Christ?
Therefore, to remove all pretext from the faithlessness of the weak, the
Martyrs have made a broad way for us. It was necessary that the foundation
should be solid as stone, in order that our footsteps should be steady: they have
cemented it with their blood and their testimony, and finally, reckoning nothing
of their bodies, they have thrown them under the feet of Christ as he advances to
the conquest of the heathen, as, On Palm Sunday, the people threw their
garments under the feet of the ass on which he rode. Who would be ashamed to
say: “I am inferior to God”? I grant you are very much so. “I am inferior to
Christ”? Yes, certainly, and even to his humanity.
But Peter was what you are; so was Paul, and the Apostles and Prophets
were all what you are yourself. If the example of our Lord alarms you, at least
imitate those who are like you his servant. They go before you in dense crowds:
no more excuse for your lukewarmness. Will you say to me again: “I am very far
from Peter and Paul”? Are you then also far from truth? There where the
illiterate receive the crown, there is no excuse for vanity. Are you less than
children?
Watch then…that in celebrating the sufferings of the Martyrs you fill
yourself with the desire to imitate them. They knew that they must choose a
good cause if their work was to be made fruitful. They remembered that not
only had our Lord said: “Blessed are the persecuted”, but: “blessed are those
who suffer persecution in the cause of right”. Choose yourselves the good cause,
and do not be disturbed by what you suffer in so doing.

Vigils Reading - St Andrew Dung-Lac & Companions
2025-11-24
IN THE STEPS
OF THE MARTYRS
From a homily by St Augustine
◊◊◊
Let us not imagine that in keeping the feast of the Martyrs with great
solemnity, we are benefiting them. They who are in the joy of heaven with the
angels have no need of our honors and if they rejoice with us, it is at being
imitated, not at being honored. However, though this veneration does not
benefit them, it is useful for us: but to honor them without imitating them,
would be lying flattery. If then these solemnities have been instituted in the
Church of Christ, it is only to unite all the members of Christ and to enlist them
as followers in the steps of the martyrs of Christ. Such is the fruit of today’s
festival; there is no question of any other.
When, in fact, we propose God himself as our example, human weakness
readily answers that it is above its power to imitate him to whom it cannot be
compared. In that case Jesus Christ our Lord will be proposed to it as model
who, being God, clothed himself in mortal flesh in order the better to persuade
us also clothed in this same flesh, adding word to example; Christ, it is written,
“suffered for our sake, and left you his own example; you were to follow in his
footsteps”.
Yet will not frail humanity reply again: “What comparison is there
between me and Christ? He was one of us, but he was God. He took flesh, but
without ceasing to be the Word, assuming a new nature without losing that
which was proper to him. For, as St Paul says, “God was in Christ, reconciling
the world to himself”. Once again, how can I compare myself with Christ?
2 Sermon 325. Trans., Lectionary and Martyrology, ed. Encalcat Abbey, 1956, 509-510.5
Therefore, to remove all pretext from the faithlessness of the weak, the
Martyrs have made a broad way for us. It was necessary that the foundation
should be solid as stone, in order that our footsteps should be steady: they have
cemented it with their blood and their testimony, and finally, reckoning nothing
of their bodies, they have thrown them under the feet of Christ as he advances to
the conquest of the heathen, as, On Palm Sunday, the people threw their
garments under the feet of the ass on which he rode. Who would be ashamed to
say: “I am inferior to God”? I grant you are very much so. “I am inferior to
Christ”? Yes, certainly, and even to his humanity.
But Peter was what you are; so was Paul, and the Apostles and Prophets
were all what you are yourself. If the example of our Lord alarms you, at least
imitate those who are like you his servant. They go before you in dense crowds:
no more excuse for your lukewarmness. Will you say to me again: “I am very far
from Peter and Paul”? Are you then also far from truth? There where the
illiterate receive the crown, there is no excuse for vanity. Are you less than
children?
Watch then…that in celebrating the sufferings of the Martyrs you fill
yourself with the desire to imitate them. They knew that they must choose a
good cause if their work was to be made fruitful. They remembered that not
only had our Lord said: “Blessed are the persecuted”, but: “blessed are those
who suffer persecution in the cause of right”. Choose yourselves the good cause,
and do not be disturbed by what you suffer in so doing.
