Easter: May 11th
Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Other Commemorations: St. Francis di Girolamo, Priest (RM)
MASS READINGS
May 11, 2005 (Readings on USCCB website)
COLLECT PRAYER
God of mercy, unite your Church in the Holy Spirit that we may serve you with all our hearts and work together with unselfish love. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: "Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us. While I was with them I kept those you had given me true to your name. I have watched over them and not one is lost except the one who chose to be lost, and this was to fulfil the scriptures." (John 17:11-12)
The feast of Sts. Philip and James has been transferred to May 3.
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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