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| The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few |
Saturday, December 03, 2011
St. Francis Xavier, Priest (Memorial)
FIRST READING
Isaiah 30: 19 - 21, 23 - 26
19 Yea, O people in Zion who dwell at Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you. 20 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. 21 And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
23 And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your cattle will graze in large pastures; 24 and the oxen and the asses that till the ground will eat salted provender, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. 25 And upon every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. 26 Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the hurt of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.
19 Yea, O people in Zion who dwell at Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you. 20 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. 21 And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
23 And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your cattle will graze in large pastures; 24 and the oxen and the asses that till the ground will eat salted provender, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. 25 And upon every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. 26 Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the hurt of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.
PSALM RESPONSE
Psalms 147: 1 – 6
1 Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is seemly. 2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. 4 He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. 5 Great is our LORD, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. 6 The LORD lifts up the downtrodden, he casts the wicked to the ground
GOSPEL
Matthew 9: 35 – 38
35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
Love God, serve God: everything is in that.
-- St Clare of Assisi
-- St Clare of Assisi
Read more: http://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/inspiration_12dec2011.htm#ixzz1eyOdcEuu
Let us pray for the increase of religious vocation, for our priest and religious sisters that the Lord grant them perseverance and to remain faithful to their vows.
丰收歌 - Harvest Song & Dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9M2ZHMg82Q&feature=related
TODAY IS THE FIRST SATURDAY OF THE MONTH
The Five First Saturdays are intended to honor and to make reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for all the blasphemes and ingratitude of men.
This devotion and the wonderful promises connected with it were revealed by the Blessed Virgin at Fatima, a small village in Portugal. Our lady appeared to three children there in 1917, and one of the little girls, Lucy, tells us that Our Lady said:
I promise to help at the hour of death, with the graces needed for salvation, whoever on the First Saturday of five consecutive months shall:
The Five First Saturdays are intended to honor and to make reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for all the blasphemes and ingratitude of men.
This devotion and the wonderful promises connected with it were revealed by the Blessed Virgin at Fatima, a small village in Portugal. Our lady appeared to three children there in 1917, and one of the little girls, Lucy, tells us that Our Lady said:
I promise to help at the hour of death, with the graces needed for salvation, whoever on the First Saturday of five consecutive months shall:
1. Confess and Receive Communion.
2. Recite five decades of the Rosary
3. Keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.
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| Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us! ----------------------------------------------------- |
THE ANGELUS
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St. Alphonsus Liguori
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"Let people say the rosary every day. Our Lady stated that repeatedly in all her apparitions, as if to fortify us against these times of diabolical disorientation, so that we would not allow ourselves to be deceived by false doctrines…" (Sr. Lucia)
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In that wonderful little book called The Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis De Montfort, we read in the "Sixth Rose — Mary's Psalter":
EVER SINCE Saint Dominic established the devotion to the Holy Rosary up until the time when Blessed Alan de la Roche re-established it in 1460, it has always been called the Psalter of Jesus and Mary. This is because it has the same number of angelic salutations as there are in the Psalms in the Book of the Psalms of David [emphasis added]. Since simple and uneducated people are not able to say the Psalms of David the Rosary is held to be just as fruitful for them as David's Psalter is for others.
But the Rosary can be considered to be even more valuable than the latter for three reasons:
1. Firstly, because the Angelic Psalter bears a nobler fruit, that of the Word Incarnate, whereas David's Psalter only prophesies His coming;
2. Secondly, just as the real thing is more important than its prefiguration and as the body is more than its shadow, in the same way the Psalter of Our Lady is greater than David's Psalter which did no more than prefigure it;
3. And thirdly, because Our Lady's Psalter (or the Rosary made up of the Our Father and Hail Mary) is the direct work of the Most Blessed Trinity and was not made through a human instrument.
Our Lady's Psalter or Rosary is divided up into three parts of five decades each, or the following special reasons [emphasis added]:
1. To honor the three Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity;
2. To honor the life, death and glory of Jesus Christ;
3. To imitate the Church Triumphant, to help the members of the Church Militant and to lessen the pains of the Church Suffering;
4. to imitate the three groups into which the Psalms are divided:
(a) the first being for the purgative life,
(b) the second for the illuminative life,
(c) and the third for the unitive life;
5. And finally, to give us graces in abundance during our lifetime, peace at death, and glory in eternity.
LET US PRAY THE HOLY ROSARY
(Joyful Mysteries)
(Joyful Mysteries)
Monday & Saturday
The Complete Rosary, Joyful Mysteries; a free professional presentation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AW5wueFe-w
