Lent: March 20th
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Other Commemorations: St. John Nepomucene, Priest and Martyr (RM)
MASS READINGS
March 20, 2024 (Readings on USCCB website)
PROPERS [Show]
COLLECT PRAYER
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Enlighten, O God of compassion, the hearts of your children, sanctified by penance, and in your kindness grant those you stir to a sense of devotion a gracious hearing when they cry out to you. 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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It is one week before the end of Lent, a week from Spy Wednesday. This Mass reminds us that the hatred against Christ was growing, and the plot to kill Him was developing. The three young men in the fiery furnace are a reminder of what Jesus will endure. —The Vatican II Weekday Missal
The Roman Martyrology commemorates today St. John Nepomucene (1340-1393), priest of Bohemia, martyred by King Wenceslaus IV because St. John refused to break the seal of confession. He was tortured and thrown into the Moldau River. It is said that a strange brightness is said to have appeared above the spot where he drowned, so his body was found and withdrawn from the water and interred.
Meditation on the Liturgy
The debate between Jesus and those participating in the Feast of Tabernacles continues in today’s gospel reading, with the focus now on God’s truth and the breadth of its reach. Jesus declares that those who hold fast to his word “will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” His listeners—some puzzled, some indignant—respond that, as they are the stock of Abraham, they “have never been in bondage to anyone.” How is it, they demand, “that you say, ‘You will be made free’?” The discussion deteriorates from there, with Jesus’s interlocutors mistakenly imagining that he is calling them bastard children. Yet, in their confusion and misapprehension, they bring us to the heart of the matter, proclaiming, “We have one Father, even God.” To which Jesus responds that, in that case, they ought to esteem him, for “I proceeded and came forth from the Father; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.”
The Son, the Light of the world, is teaching those in the Temple, and us, that salvation history has entered a new phase: while Israel remains in the truth that belongs by right to the descendants of Abraham (for God does not renege on his covenantal promises), the truth first revealed to Abraham is now being offered universally. And in the Kingdom that is breaking into history in Jesus’s person and mission, abiding in covenantal truth will no longer be a matter of lineage but of faith—an act of faith that, in principle, is open to everyone, thanks to the grace of God offered to all by the Son of God. The power of Trinitarian love and the truth about God’s relationship with his human creation cannot be confined, even if the distinctive role of Israel in witnessing to this truth will remain an essential part of salvation history. Now, however, there will no longer be “Jew or Gentile…slave or free” [Galatians 3:28]. All who adhere to the Son, who reveals the truth about the Father, will be one.
This truth that Jesus offers is not something his disciples possess—as, for example, Peter, Andrew, James, and John “possess” certain “truths” about fishing on the Sea of Galilee. On the contrary, the truth of God in Christ seizes and possesses the disciples, reshaping their lives, reordering their priorities, configuring those who embrace it in the imitation of the Son. This is truth with power, and its power is evangelical: this is a truth that must be offered to others and lavishly expended in mission. For the paradox of the truth that Jesus offers is that his presence within us conforms us more closely to him, and its grasp upon us increases the more we give his truth to those who have not yet received it. There are no zero-sum games in the economy of salvation, which is the expression in time of the ever-giving, ever-receiving truth, goodness and beauty of the Holy Trinity.
—George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches
St. John Nepomucene (Nepomuk)
Born at Nepomuk, Bohemia, 1340; died in Prague, March 20, 1393; canonized in 1729. Saint John used the name of his native town for his surname instead of his family name of Woelflein or Welflin. He studied at the University of Prague, was ordained, and became a canon. In time, he became vicar general of Archbishop John of Genzenstein at Prague and according to tradition incurred the enmity of dissolute King Wenceslaus IV when he refused to reveal what Queen Sophie, Wenceslaus’ second wife, had told him in confession. Of a retiring disposition, Father John repeatedly refused bishoprics which were offered to him.
In 1393 (or 1383 according to some), he became involved in a dispute between Wenceslaus and the archbishop when the king sought to convert a Benedictine abbey into a cathedral for a new diocese he proposed to create for a favorite when the aged abbot died. The archbishop and John thwarted him by approving the election of a new abbot immediately on the death of the old abbot. At a meeting with John and other clerics, Wenceslaus flew into a rage, tortured them so that John was seriously injured, and then had him murdered and thrown into the Moldau River at Prague (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney)
Saint John is portrayed in art as an Augustinian canon with a fur almuce and a bridge near him. He may hold his finger to his lips and have seven stars around his head, or wear a padlock on his lips (in Austria and Bohemia). John, patron of confessors and bridges, is venerated in Austria and Spain (Roeder).
—by Katherine Rabenstein, Saints of the Day
Patronage: against calumnies; against floods; against indiscretions; against slander; bridge builders; bridges; canons; confessors; for discretion; for good confession; mariners, sailors, boatmen, watermen; running water; silence; spiritual directors; Bohemia; Czech Republic; archdiocese of Prague, Czech Republic; Slovakia; Venice, Italy
Symbols and Representation: halo with five stars; cross; bridge; angel indicating silence by a finger over the lips; priest's biretta
Highlights and Things to Do:
- Read more about St. John Nepomucene:
- Read about the location of Saint John of Nepomuk's Martyrdom.
- The Statue of St. John of Nepomuk on Charles Bridge in Prague.
- See Christian Iconnography for depictions of St. John.
- Learn more about Prague and the Czech Republic and St. Vitus Cathedral, supposedly started by St. Wenceslas in the 10th century as a small chapel to house relics of St. Vitus and were in the 14th century St. John Nepomucene was buried after being executed for refusing to violate the seal of the confessional.
- Read about the Infant Jesus of Prague and pray the chaplet.
- Bake a loaf of bread for dinner and serve Pilsner beer in honor of St. Wenceslas. See also Catholic Cuisine for other ideas.
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Station with San Marcello al Corso (St. Marcellus at the Corso):
The Station today is at the church of St. Marcellus at the Corso. Legend claims that Pope St. Marcellus (308-309) was sentenced by Emperor Maxentius to look after the horses at the station of the Imperial mail on the Via Lata, where the Via del Corso now lies. He was freed by the people, and hidden in the house of the Roman lady Lucina (see also San Lorenzo in Lucina). He was rearrested, and imprisoned in the stables.
For more on San Marcello al Corso, see:
For further information on the Station Churches, see The Stational Church.
