Easter: May 11th
Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Other Commemorations: St. Francis di Girolamo, Priest (RM)
MASS READINGS
May 11, 2024 (Readings on USCCB website)
PROPERS [Show]
COLLECT PRAYER
Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter after Ascension: O God, whose Son, at his Ascension to the heavens, was pleased to promise the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, grant, we pray, that, just as they received manifold gifts of heavenly teaching, so on us, too, you may bestow spiritual gifts. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Saturday before Ascension Sunday: Constantly shape our minds, we pray, O Lord, by the practice of good works, that, trying always for what is better, we may strive to hold ever fast to the Paschal Mystery. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
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Today the Roman Martyrology commemorates St. Francis di Girolamo (1642-1716) (also known as Francis de Geronimo), a Jesuit priest from Italy who spent most of his life working as a rural missionary in the countryside near Naples. He died in 1716. His sermons were short but vigorous, and he touched many hearts.
The Saturday after Ascension Thursday is the Feast of Mary, Queen of Apostles, celebrated in some areas and by certain religious congregations.
>>>Today is Day 3 of the Pentecost Novena to the Holy Spirit.<<<
Meditation: Saturday of the Sixth Week of Easter:
"Behold, I am with you"
1. "After He had spoken to them, He was taken up into the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of God" (Gospel). The period of Christ's visible residence on earth has been completed. Nevertheless He remains among us through His word: "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of world" (Matt. 28:20).
2. "And they, adoring, went back into Jerusalem with great joy. And they were always in the Temple praising and blessing God" (Luke 24:52 f.). Although the Savior had departed, the disciples were not saddened, but were rather filled with joy. One of the greatest and most inspiring joys of the Church is the knowledge that now, even though the Master has withdrawn His visible presence, she is united to Him by a more intimate union. She is now joined to Him in the unity of the mystical body as the members are joined to the head. From this moment on, she realizes that the words of the Master apply to her: "I am the vine, you the branches" (John 15:5). Now He lives in us and among us. We in turn live by Him as His members, as the branches live by the vine. During the time of His visible presence on earth, Christ completed the work of redemption. But He still continues with this work and perfects it in each one of us, although He Himself is sitting at the right hand of His Father in heaven.
By Christ's death on the cross we were enabled to become members of His body; but we have been incorporated, not in the physical body which He possessed on earth, but in the glorified mystical body which became a reality with His ascension. He found it necessary to withdraw from us in order to get closer to us, in order to live in us, to be one with us, to share with us the fruit of His life on earth and of His death on the cross. Of what advantage for us would the death of Christ be, or His teachings, or the example He gave us, or the exertions He underwent for us, had He not risen and ascended into heaven? Of what profit would all these things be to us, if He had not been exalted, if He had not ascended on high that we might share His glorified life with Him? He is the head of the mystical body, and we are the members. Why, then, should we be grieved by His departure? "It is expedient to you that I go" (John 16:7). "And He hath subjected all things under His feet, and hath made Him head over all the Church, which is His body. and the fullness of Him who is filled all in all" (Eph. 1:22 f.). His body possesses the fullness of all gifts and graces, which He acquired at the time of His ascension. "He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things" (Eph. 4:10). Thus Christ's ascension is not a day of sadness for us, but rather a day of joy. So, like the infant Church, which was a witness of the ascension, we return from the memory of the ascension "with great joy,... praising and blessing God" (Luke 24:52 f.).
"Behold, I am with you all days." He looks after us and cares for us, and even returns to us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Had He not been glorified, had He not ascended into heaven, had He not been given a place at the right hand of the Father, we should now have no Sacrifice of the Mass, no Holy Communion, no sacrament of baptism, no sacrament of penance, no priesthood, and no Church. But now that He sits at the right hand of the Father, He finds a way to be present among us in body and soul, to return to us as God and man, to truly give Himself to us under the appearance of bread and wine, to be at once the priest and the victim of our sacrifice. The whole community gathered about the altar is united with Him and offers itself also in the sacrifice, thus becoming with Him a holocaust to the Father. Love, devotion, and the spirit of sacrifice stream from that altar and envelop the sacrificing, praying community. Here at the altar men gain the courage and the strength to suffer their daily cares and difficulties. Here, through the reception of Holy Communion, during those moments of silent adoration at the steps of the altar, they gain the courage and the strength to endure the burdens of their state of life and the hardships imposed on them by the obligations of family life and fraternal charity. Here they feel the enlivening, consoling presence of the glorified Lord. "Behold, I am with you all days."
3. "Sing ye to the Lord who mounteth above the heaven of heavens to the east, alleluia." Thus the Church today bursts forth in joy at the time of Holy Communion. He who ascended in glory and sat at the right hand of the Father, now descends again to earth and comes to us in Holy Communion, and nourishes us with His glorified flesh and blood. In this manner He plants in us the seed of the resurrection of the body, and prepares us for the resurrection which we confidently expect.
Christ the risen Lord reposes now with His human nature in the bosom of the Father. And in a sense we also repose there with Him, for, "ascending on high, He hath led captivity captive" (Alleluia verse). Thus He freed us from the captivity of sin and the devil. Where the head is, there the members must also be. And although our Head is in heaven, He is simultaneously on earth at all times. He lives, prays, works and suffers in the baptized, in us who are His members. "And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). He lives among us in the Blessed Sacrament, loving us, coming close to us, nourishing our souls with His life. "Come to me all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you" (Matt. 11:28).
—Benedict Bauer, O.S.B, from The Light of the World, Vol II
Mary, Queen of the Apostles
The feast of the Queen of Apostles was established on the first Saturday after Ascension Thursday by the Sacred Congregation of Rites at the request of the Pallottine Fathers. Mary initiated her mission as Queen of Apostles in the Cenacle. She gathered the apostles together, comforted them, and assisted them in prayer. Together with them she hoped, desired and prayed; with them her petitions were heeded and she received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
Because the Blessed Mother occupies a most important position in God's plan of salvation, all humanity should pay homage to her. Whoever spreads devotion to the Queen of Apostles is an apostolic benefactor of the human race, because devotion to Mary is a treasure. Blessed is the person who possesses this treasure! Mary's devotees will never be without grace; in any danger, in every circumstance they will always have the means to obtain every grace from God.
Several religious congregations practice devotion to Mary under the title of Queen of Apostles, including the Pallotines, the Marianists, and the congregations founded by Bl. James Alberione (the Society of St. Paul, the Daughters of St. Paul, and several others). In the twentieth century, Bl. Alberione promoted this devotion.
—Excerpted from Favorite Prayers and Novenas, copyright 1997 Pauline Books & Media
St. Francis di Girolamo (also Francis de Geronimo)
St. Francis di Girolamo was the famous Jesuit pulpit orator of Naples: a volume would hardly suffice to record the wonderful effect of his eloquence. "His voice" says Butler "was loud and sonorous, . . . and the style of his preaching simple and impressive. . . . His descriptions forcible and graphic and his pathetic appeals were sure to draw tears while his energy astounded and terrified," yet there must have been much of the magnetism of the popular orator in his manner for whenever he spoke whether in the streets of Naples — a constant habit of his — or in the church great crowds followed him and not a few of the sudden conversion made by him of hardened sinners sound like the records of some modern "Revivalist" preachers.
He was an earnest untiring faithful worker to the very last. Born in 1642, at a very early age he became a prefect in the "College of Nobles of the Society of Jesus" and soon after his novitiate was completed took high rank in the society. It was as a preacher and evangelist that he excelled. He died May 11th, 1716 and was beatified by Pius VII, on the feast of St. Joseph in 1806, and canonized by Gregory XVI, on Trinity Sunday 1839.
—Excerpted from Saints and Festivals of the Christian Church, by H. Pomeroy Brewster
Patronage: Grottaglie, Italy; Naples
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