Thursday, August 31 : Saint Gaudentius of Brescia

These poor people will befriend you by assuring your salvation, for Christ, the giver of eternal rewards, will declare that he himself received the acts of kindness done to them. Not in their own name, then, will these poor folk welcome us, but in the name of him who is refreshed in their persons by the fruit of our faith and obedience. Those who exercised this ministry of love will be received into the eternal dwellings of the kingdom of heaven, for the King will say: “Come, blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world; for I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink” (Mt 25,34)… To this the Lord adds: “If you cannot be trusted with another’s property, who will give you your own?” Nothing in this world really belongs to us. We who hope for future reward are told to live in this world as strangers and pilgrims, so as to be able to say to the Lord without fear of contradiction: “I am a stranger, a pilgrim like all my ancestors” (Ps 39[38],13). What believers can regard as their own is that eternal and heavenly possession where “our heart and our treasure” are (Mt 6,21), and where intense longing makes us dwell already through faith, for as Saint Paul teaches: “Our homeland is in heaven” (Phil 3,20).

maronite readings – rosary,team