Lent: March 28th

MASS READINGS

March 28, 2020 (Readings on USCCB website)

COLLECT PRAYER

May the working of your mercy, O Lord, we pray, direct our hearts aright, for without your grace we cannot find favor in your sight. 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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Recipes (1)

• Fillet of Flounder in Tomato Sauce

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Activities (1)

• Motivating Children to Perform Good Deeds

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Prayers (2)

• Prayer for the Fourth Week of Lent
• Book of Blessings: Blessing Before and After Meals: Lent (2nd Plan)

Library (0)

Blog (0)

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Old Calendar: St. John of Capistrano, confessor; St. Gontran, king (Hist)

"There were many lepers in Israel at the time of Eliseus the prophet, and none of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian." Naaman's cure, an anticipatory figure of baptism, also declares in advance the universality of salvation. Naaman was the Syrian general who, in obedience to the commands of Eliseus, was cured of leprosy by bathing in the Jordan. At a later date Jesus Himself was to receive in the waters of the Jordan the baptism of John the Baptist. Let us always keep in mind that repentance and a humble confession of our guilt will draw upon us the mercy of God and infuse into our hearts the hope of pardon.

According to the 1962 Missal of St. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. John of Capistrano whose feast is celebrated in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite on October 23. Today is also the feast of St. Gontran, also known as Contran or Guntramnus, he was the son of King Clotaire and the grandson of Clovis I. He was raised pagan and became King of Orleans in 561.

Stational Church

St. Gontran
St. Gontran was the son of King Clotaire and grandson of Clovis I and Saint Clotildis. When Clotaire died in 561, his domains were divided among his four sons. While Gontran's brother Caribert reigned at Paris, Sigebert in Metz, and Chilperic in Soissons, he was crowned king of Orleans and Burgundy in 561. He then made Chalons-sur-Saone his capital.

When compelled to take up arms against his ambitious brothers and the Lombards, he made no other use of his victories, gained under the conduct of a brave general called Mommol, than to give peace to his dominions. The crimes in which the barbarous habits of his nation involved him, he effaced by tears of repentance. The prosperity of his reign, both in peace and war, condemns those who suppose that human policy cannot be determined by the maxims of the Gospel, whereas the truth is just the contrary: no others can render a government so efficacious and prosperous.

Saint Gontran always treated the pastors of the Church with respect and veneration. He was the protector of the oppressed, and the tender parent of his subjects. He gave the greatest attention to the care of the sick. He fasted, prayed, wept, and offered himself to God night and day as a victim ready to be sacrificed on the altar of His justice, to avert His indignation, which Saint Gontran believed he himself provoked and drew down upon his innocent people. He was a severe punisher of crimes in his officers and others, and by many wholesome regulations he restrained the barbarous licentiousness of his troops, but no man was ever more ready to forgive offenses against his own person. With royal magnificence, he built and endowed many churches and monasteries.

This good king died on the 23rd of March in 593, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, having reigned thirty-one years.

Excerpted from Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler's
Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).

Patron: Divorced people, guardians, and repentant murderers

Saturday in the 4th Week of Lent, Station with San Nicola in Carcere (St. Nicholas in Prison):
Today's Station is at St. Nicholas in Prison, dedicated to the popular St. Nicholas of Myra, whose feast is December 6. It was constructed in the ruins of two temples and the ancient Forum Olitorium, and you can see fragments from the ruins reused in the church. The most important of the temples was the Temple of Piety, built by Acilius Glabrius, consul in 191 B.C. The dedication to St. Nicholas was made by the Greek population in the area.