Lent: March 13th
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Other Commemorations: St. Roderick, Martyr (RM); St. Leander of Seville, Bishop (RM);
MASS READINGS
March 13, 2024 (Readings on USCCB website)
PROPERS [Show]
COLLECT PRAYER
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent: O God, who reward the merits of the just and offer pardon to sinners who do penance, have mercy, we pray, on those who call upon you, that the admission of our guilt may serve to obtain your pardon for our sins. 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.
Recipes (1)
Activities (3)
Prayers (14)
Library (1)
Blog & Podcasts (0)
» Enjoy our Liturgical Seasons series of e-books!
The first reading from Isaiah represents one of the most striking passages of the Bible that affirms the love of God for his people. It was a message of consolation addressed to the Jewish captives in Babylon promising them the joys of Messianic times. We are also captives and exiles because of our sins and human failings. Our deliverance is also near. The Messiah will come to us at Easter to give us all the blessings promised by God in this reading. —St. Andrew Bible Missal
The Roman Martyrology commemorates St. Roderick of Cordoba (d. 857), a priest and martyr who lived in Moorish Spain and beheaded in the 9th century. He was beheaded in 857.
St. Leander of Seville (534-600) is also commemorated today. He was bishop of Seville, preceding his brother St. Isidore of Seville. He fought against Arianism, presiding over the Council of Toledo and introduced the Nicene Creed to the Mass.
Meditation on the Liturgy
As the pathways of Lent draw ever closer to Calvary, the liturgy multiplies its images of the Messianic Age—the Kingdom of God—that is being inaugurated in the person of Jesus: in his preaching, in his healings and other “signs,” and, ultimately, in his atoning death, vindicated in the Resurrection. Thus Isaiah in the Old Testament reading for today’s Mass speaks of the “time of favor,” the “day of salvation” that will extend God’s covenant with Israel to those who will “come from afar” to enjoy the mercy and bounty of the Lord. Jesus, in his ongoing confrontation with those who object to him calling God his “Father,” prophesies in today’s gospel reading that “the hour is coming” when anyone who hears his word and “believes him who sent me” will have “eternal life” —and not as something that happens after death, but here and now, in the world and in history.
The Messianic Age is erupting into history in the person of Jesus, who seeks not his “own will but the will of him who sent me.” Those who have entered into friendship with Jesus the Lord are thus empowered by their imitation of him to live, now, the eternal life he has shared with the Father from all ages. Disciples can live “in the Kingdom” now. They can, as St. Maximus the Confessor teaches in today’s Office of Readings, “imitate him by [their] kindness and genuine love for one another,” living “like our heavenly Father, holy, merciful and just.”
Kingdom-living is life lived through the virtues. Thus today’s liturgical readings, and the great statio at the tomb of the apostle who taught the Church the “more excellent way” by which love completes faith and hope [see 1 Corinthians 12:32b-13:13], afford Lenten pilgrims an opportunity to reflect on the theological and cardinal virtues as the spiritual and moral framework of the New Life promised by Jesus and won by his Cross and Resurrection.
—George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches
St. Roderick of Cordoba
Jesus warned his disciples that they should expect no better treatment than Himself. They would be haled before governors and kings on His account, and brothers would even hand brothers over for execution.
That prophecy was literally fulfilled in the case of St. Roderick, a Spanish martyr who died at the hands of the Muslim Moors in A.D. 857. His was a bitter case of the reverse of Christian love. We owe the account to eyewitness St. Elogius, who later on died for the faith himself.
It must be admitted that when the Mohammedans invaded Spain in A.D. 711, even they were sometimes shocked by the lack of religious principles among a large number of the Hispanic Christians. As the Moors swarmed in, the Catholics, far from presenting a strong front, became divided. Many, whether out of fear or lack of faith, voluntarily gave up their Christianity. Families thus split asunder and the members on either side railed at each other.
St. Roderick was to prove a sad victim of this sort of betrayal. He was a good priest of Cabra who had two irresponsible brothers. One of them was a bad Christian who had all but abandoned his faith. The other had gone still further and joined Islam. One night the two started to fight each other unmercifully. Roderick tried to break them up, but instead of yielding, they turned on him and beat him senseless. Then the Muslim brother had the priest put on a litter and carried half-conscious through the streets. The Muslim accompanied the bier, proclaiming that Father Roderick, too, had apostatized, and that he wanted it known publicly before he died. Eventually the victim did recover and went off to a safe place.
But Father Roderick had not yet seen the last of his renegade brother. The Muslim met the priest soon afterwards in the streets of Cordova. He had Roderick taken at once before the Mohammedan kadi (judge), where he accused him of the crime of having returned to Christianity after public profession of his Muslimism.
Although Father Roderick protested that he had never denied his Christian faith, the kadi clapped him into the city's worst dungeon.
In that fetid jail, the priest at least had the comfort of finding one Solomon, another Christian prisoner who had been accused of the same "unforgiveable" crime. Both of them were given a long term of imprisonment, in the hope that they would convert. But each man encouraged the other, and they remained firm in their Christian convictions. Even when separated, they would not change their belief.
Eventually, the kadi ordered the Catholic priest and the layman beheaded. St. Eulogius saw their headless bodies lying on the riverside. He noticed that the guards were careful to throw into the stream any stones stained with the men's blood, for fear the faithful might pick them up as relics.
The soldiers sought in vain to ward off veneration of SS. Roderick and Solomon. Spanish Christians would always honor them thereafter as martyrs. And they would also gradually learn from this heroism that the Faith is something really worth dying for.
—Father Robert F. McNamara, Excerpted from St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish
Symbols and Representation: priest in Mass vestments holding a palm of martyrdom as an angel brings him a wreath of roses
Highlights and Things to Do:
- Read more about St. Roderick:
- Read this Essay, The Islamic Warriors' Destruction of a Nascent Civilization: the Catholic Kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain (A.D. 589–711) which appeared in the Winter-Spring 2011 issue of Modern Age to gain an understanding of the times in which St. Roderick lived.
St. Leander of Seville
St. Leander was born of an illustrious family at Carthagena in Spain. He was the eldest of five brothers, several of whom are numbered among the Saints. He entered into a monastery very young, where he lived many years and attained to an eminent degree of virtue and sacred learning.
These qualities occasioned his being promoted to the see of Seville; but his change of condition made little or no alteration in his method of life, though it brought on him a great increase of care and solicitude.
Spain at that time was in possession of the Visigoths. These Goths, being infected with Arianism, established this heresy wherever they came; so that when St. Leander was made bishop it had reigned in Spain a hundred years. This was his great affliction; however, by his prayers to God, and by his most zealous and unwearied endeavors, he became the happy instrument of the conversion of that nation to the Catholic faith. Having converted, among others, Hermenegild, the king's eldest son and heir apparent, Leander was banished by King Leovigild. This pious prince was put to death by his unnatural father, the year following, for refusing to receive Communion from the hands of an Arian bishop. But, touched with remorse not long after, the king recalled our Saint; and falling sick and finding himself past hopes of recovery, he sent for St. Leander, and recommended to him his son Recared. This son, by listening to St. Leander, soon became a Catholic, and finally converted the whole nation of the Visigoths. He was no less successful with respect to the Suevi, a people of Spain, whom his father Leovigild had perverted.
St. Leander was no less zealous in the reformation of manners than in restoring the purity of faith; and he planted the seeds of that zeal and fervor which afterwards produced so many martyrs and Saints.
This holy doctor of Spain died about the year 596, on the 27th of February, as Mabillon proves from his epitaph.
The Church of Seville has been a metropolitan see ever since the third century. The cathedral is the most magnificent, both as to structure and ornament, of any in all Spain.
—Excerpted from Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]
Patronage: Seville, Spain
Highlights and Things to Do:
- Read more about St. Leander:
- St. Leander was one of several saints in his family. He was the elder brother of Saint Isidore of Seville, Saint Fulgentius of Ecija, and Saint Florentina of Cartagena.
- The Cathedral of Murcia has a silver urn that contains the remains of the four sibling saints.
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Station with San Paolo fuori le mura (St. Paul Outside the Walls):
After St. Paul's execution, his body was buried outside the walls of Rome on the road to Ostia. The first church built on this site was begun around 324. Because the original structure was so small and unable to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims, the church was rebuilt in 390. Despite much damage and restoration over the centuries, the current church looks similar as it was built in 390.
For more on San Paolo fuori le mura, see:
For further information on the Station Churches, see The Stational Church.
