At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom.
Sell what you possess and give alms. Make to yourselves bags which grow not old, a treasure in heaven which faileth not: where no thief approacheth, nor moth corrupteth.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
The glorious Virgin paid our ransom as a courageous woman who loved with the compassionate love of Christ. In Saint John it is said: “When a woman is in labor she is sad that her time has come.” (Jn 16:21) The Blessed Virgin did not feel the pain that precedes childbirth because she did not conceive following the sin of Eve, against whom the curse was spoken. She felt her pain later: she gave birth under the cross. Other women know bodily pain, she felt that of the heart. Others suffer from physical change; she from compassion and love. The Blessed Virgin paid our ransom as a courageous woman who loved the world and above all the christian people with merciful love. “Can a mother forget her infant or be without tenderness for the child of her womb?” (Isa 49:15) This can make us understand that the entire Christian people has come forth from the womb of the glorious Virgin. What a loving Mother we have! Let us take our Mother as our model and let us follow her in her love. She had compassion for souls to such an extent that she counted all material loss and every physical suffering as nothing. “(We) have been purchased … at a great price.” (1 Cor 6:20)
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen.
When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son.
After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
To the seeker after fine pearls may be applied the words: “Seek and you will find,” and, “Everyone who seeks will find” (Mt 7,7-8). If you ask what is to be sought, and what will be found by everyone who seeks for it, I say with all confidence: pearls – especially that pearl which will be acquired by those who give their all, who sacrifice everything for it, the pearl Paul meant when he said: “I have accepted the loss of everything in order to gain Christ,” (Phil 3,8). “Everything” means beautiful pearls; “to gain Christ” refers to the one pearl of great price. Admittedly, a lamp is precious to people in darkness, and they need it until sunrise. Precious too was the radiance on the face of Moses (2Cor 3,7) – and I believe on the faces of the other prophets also. It was a sight of beauty leading us to the point of being able to see the glory of Christ, to whom the Father bore witness in the words: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” (Mt 3,17). But “compared with this surpassing glory, what formerly was glorious now seems to have no glory at all,” (2Cor 3,10). We need at first a glory destined to be outshone by an “all-surpassing glory”, just as we need the partial knowledge which “will be superseded when that which is perfect has come,” (1Cor 13,9f.). Thus everyone beginning to live a spiritual life and “growing toward maturity,” (Heb 6,1) needs tutors, guardians, and trustees until the “fullness of time” (Gal 4,4) arrives for him, so that after all this, he… may on his emancipation receive his patrimony. This patrimony is the pearl of great price, and “the coming of what is perfect to supersede what is imperfect” (1Cor 13,10) when, after acquiring the forms of knowledge, if we may call them so, which are inferior to knowledge of Christ, one becomes able to understand “the supreme value of knowing Christ,” (Phil 3,8). Yet many do not understand the beauty of the many pearls of the Law and of “the partial knowledge” scattered through all the prophets; they wrongly think that, without having fully understood the Law and the prophets, they can find the one pearl of great price…: the full comprehension of the gospel and the complete understanding of the acts and words of Christ Jesus.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
Jesus said in parables: The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field. Which a man having found, hid it, and for joy thereof goeth, and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.
Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a merchant seeking good pearls.
Who when he had found one pearl of great price, went his way, and sold all that he had, and bought it.
Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kinds of fishes.
Which, when it was filled, they drew out, and sitting by the shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth.
So shall it be at the end of the world. The angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked from among the just.
And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Have ye understood all these things? They say to him: Yes.
He said unto them: Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
Do you want to know how Jesus, far from abolishing the law and the prophets, comes rather to confirm and to complete them? Where the prophets are concerned, this happens first of all when he confirms through his works what they had announced. This is where the expression comes from, constantly repeated in St. Matthew: “That the word of the prophets might be fulfilled” (…) Where the law is concerned, Jesus fulfilled it in three ways. First of all, by not omitting any of its legal requirements. He told John the Baptist: “We must do this if we would fulfil all of God’s demands,” (Mt 3:15). To the Jews he said: “Can any of you convict me of sin?” (Jn 8:46) (…) In the second place, he fulfils it because he wanted to submit himself to it for our salvation. Oh marvel! By submitting to it, he communicated to us, too, the grace of fulfilling it! St. Paul teaches us this when he says: “Christ is the end of the law. Through him, justice comes to everyone who believes,” (Rom 10:4). He also says that the Savior condemned sin in the flesh “so that the just demands of the law might be fulfilled in us who live not according to the flesh,” (Rom 8:4.) He also says: “Are we then abolishing the law by means of faith? Not at all! On the contrary, we are confirming the law,” (Rom 3:31). For the law aimed at making a person righteous, but it didn’t have the strength do so so; then Christ came, he who is the end of the law, and he showed us the way which leads to righteousness, that is to say faith. Thus he fulfilled the law’s intention. The letter of the law could not justify the sinner; faith in Jesus Christ will justify him. That is why he can say: “I have not come to abolish the law.” Now, if we look more closely, we can perceive a third way of fulfilling the law. What is this? It consists in the very precepts, which Christ had to give; far from overturning those of Moses, they are their just consequence and their natural complement.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men.
You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house.
So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.
He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
It is now fitting we should consider the time of our Lord’s coming. He came, as you know, not in the beginning, nor in the midst of time, but in the end of it. This was no unsuitable choice but a truly wise dispensation of infinite Wisdom who, aware that the sons of Adam are inclined to ingratitude, ordained that she would not come to their help until they were in the greatest need. Truly, “it was evening and the day was far spent”, and the “Sun of justice” had almost set (Lk 24:29; Mal 3:20); only a faint ray of its light and heat remained on earth. The light of divine knowledge was very small, and as iniquity abounded so the fervor of charity grew cold (Mt 24:12). No angel appeared; no prophet spoke. The angelic vision and the prophetic spirit alike had passed away, both hopelessly baffled by the obduracy and obstinacy of humankind. Then it was that the Son of God said: “Behold, I come” (Ps 40[39}:8; Heb 10:7). And “while all things were in quiet silence and night was in the midst of her swift course, your almighty Word leaped down from heaven, from your royal throne” (Wis 18:14-15). As the apostle Paul says: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son” (Gal 4:4).
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
Jesus said to his disciples: Let your loins be girt and lamps burning in your hands.
And you yourselves like to men who wait for their lord, when he shall return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open to him immediately.
Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. Amen I say to you that he will gird himself and make them sit down to meat and passing will minister unto them.
And if he shall come in the second watch or come in the third watch and find them so, blessed are those servants.
But this know ye, that if the householder did know at what hour the thief would come, he would surely watch and would not suffer his house to be broken open.
Be you then also ready: for at what hour you think not the Son of man will come.
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
In our own day we see many people at prayer but, unfortunately, we see none of them turning back to give thanks to God… “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?” As I think you will remember, it was in these words that our Savior complained about the lack of gratitude of the other nine lepers. We read that they knew well how to make “supplications, prayers, petitions” since they lifted up their voices, crying out: “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” But they lacked the fourth thing required by the apostle Paul: “thanksgiving” (1Tm 2:1) for they did not turn back nor give thanks to God. We see still more in our own day people who implore God for what they lack but a mere handful who seem to be grateful for the blessings they have received. There is no harm in imploring him, but what causes God not to grant our prayers is his finding us lacking in gratitude. After all, perhaps it is even an act of mercy on his part to hold back from the ungrateful what they are asking for so that they may not be judged all the more rigorously on account of their ingratitude… For it is sometimes out of mercy that God holds back his mercy… So you see that not all those who are healed of the leprosy of this world, I mean their manifest complaints, profit by their healing. Indeed, many are secretly afflicted with an ulcer worse than leprosy, all the more dangerous in that it is more interior. That is why it was right that the Savior of the world should ask where the other nine lepers were, since sinners avoid healing. So, too, after his sin, God questioned the first man: “Where are you?” (Gn 3:9).
Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team
