Saturday, September 23 : Saint Gregory the Great

We can apply these hourly periods to each individual person’s life. Morning is the childhood of our understanding. The third hour can be taken as our youth, because the sun is advancing on high as the impetuosity of age increases. The sixth hour is that of young adulthood, because when we reach our full strength it is as if the sun is in the center of the heavens. The ninth hour we take to be old age, because like the sun descending from its zenith, this age lacks the warmth of youth. The eleventh hour is the age that is called infirm or old… Since then one person is brought to a good life in childhood, another in youth, another in young adulthood, another in old age, another at the age of infirmity, it is as if workmen are being called to the vineyard at different hours. Look at your conduct, my friends, and see if you are still God’s workmen. Let everyone reflect on what he is doing, and consider whether he is laboring in the Lord’s vineyard… One who has neglected to live for God up to the last period of his life has stood idle, as it were, up to the eleventh hour… “Why do you stand here all day idle?” meaning, “Even though you have not been willing to live for God in your childhood and young adulthood, at least come to your right mind in the final time of your life. Come to the ways of life”… Did not the thief come at the eleventh hour? (Lk 23,39f.) He possessed nothing by the length of his life, but he had something, coming late though it did, by his punishment. He confessed God on the cross, and he gave forth his last breath almost as he spoke. The householder began paying the denarius beginning with the last, because he called the thief to the repose of paradise before he called Peter.
maronite readings – rosary,team