Saint of the Day and Daily Meditation
MARCH
The month of March is dedicated to St. Joseph. The first four days fall of March fall during the liturgical season known as Tempus per Annum or Ordinary Time (formerly known as Time after Epiphany) which is represented by the liturgical color green. Green, the symbol of hope, is the color of the sprouting seed and arouses in the faithful the hope of reaping the eternal harvest of heaven, especially the hope of a glorious resurrection. The remainder of the month of March is the liturgical season of Lent which is represented by the liturgical color violet or purple — a symbol of penance, mortification and the sorrow of a contrite heart. All saint days that are usually Memorials are shifted to Optional Memorials during the season of Lent.
The Holy Father’s Intentions for the Month of MARCH 2025
For families in crisis:
Let us pray that broken families might discover the cure for their wounds through forgiveness, rediscovering each other’s gifts, even in their differences. (See also https://popesprayerusa.net/popes-intentions/)
VIDEO: (Bless yourself with the St. Raphael oil and watch this perpetual video of
Fr. Whalen’s healing and miracle prayers for you) click video below:
Fr.Joseph Whalen, M.S.World Healing Prayer – YouTube
DAILY PRAYER
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Lord Jesus, May I feel Your presence near to me, So that I’ll not despair, Believing in Your promise to keep Me ever in Your care. Amen.
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LENT: March 13th
Thursday of the First Week of Lent
Other Commemorations: St. Roderick, Martyr (RM); St. Leander of Seville, Bishop (RM);
In certain ways the Lenten Christian is like the Jew in exile. He is still exposed to the attacks of the enemies. Lent, like the exile in Babylon, is a time of cleansing. It intends to create in us a greater desire and longing for deliverance which God has promised us through our savior Jesus Christ. All the chants and prayers in today’s Mass are urgent pleas for God’s mercy and help.
The Church has fittingly assumed the prayer of Esther as her own today. Like the Jews of old, she finds her people in many countries fighting against a well-organized plan of a persecution and extermination, more terrible than the one the Jews had to face. She is undergoing this trial to show her fidelity to Christ, and to plead for the salvation of all men. —St. Andrew Bible Missal
The Roman Martyrology commemorates St. Roderick of Cordoba (d. 857), a priest and martyr who lived in Moorish Spain and beheaded in the 9th century. He was beheaded in 857.
St. Leander of Seville (534-600) is also commemorated. He was bishop of Seville, preceding his brother St. Isidore of Seville. He fought against Arianism, presiding over the Council of Toledo and introduced the Nicene Creed to the Mass.
Meditation for Thursday of the First Week of Lent—Confidence and Union with God in Temptation
Nothing is more efficacious against temptation than the remembrance of the Cross of Jesus. What did Christ come to do here below if not to “destroy the works of the devil”? And how has He destroyed them, how has He “cast out” the devil, as He Himself says, if not by His death upon the Cross?
Let us then lean by faith upon the cross of Christ Jesus, as our baptism gives us the right to do. The virtue of the cross is not exhausted. In baptism we were marked with the seal of the cross, we became members of Christ, enlightened by His light, and partakers of His life and of the salvation He brings to us. Hence, united to Him, whom shall we fear? Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea; quern timebo? Let us say to ourselves: “He hath given His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.”
“Because he hoped in Me (says the Lord) I will deliver him; I am with him in tribulation, I will deliver him, and I will glorify him. I will fill him with length of days, and I will show him My salvation.”
—Excerpted from Christ the Life of the Soul, Dom Marmion
Thursday of the First Week of LentStation with San Lorenzo in Panisperna (St. Lawrence in Panisperna):
The church stands on the site of St. Lawrence’s martyrdom. The appellation refers to the name of the street, which in turn most likely refers to the tradition of the Poor Clares in the adjacent convent of distributing bread and ham (pane e perna) on August 10th, the feast day of St. Lawrence. This is done in remembrance of St. Lawrence distributing Church funds to the poor.
For more on San Lorenzo in Panisperna, see:
For further information on the Station Churches, see The Stational Church.
MASS READINGS
March 13, 2025 (Readings on USCCB website)
PROPERS [Show]
COLLECT PRAYER
Thursday of the First Week of Lent: Bestow on us, we pray, O Lord, a spirit of always pondering on what is right and of hastening to carry it out, and, since we cannot exist, may we be enabled to live according to your will. 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.
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2025-03-13
Daily Meditation: Matthew 7:7-12
Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread? (Matthew 7:9)
Jesus assures us in today’s Gospel that God is a loving Father who always responds to his children’s pleas. When we ask or seek or knock, we can be confident that our Father will give us good gifts.
But sometimes it can be hard to recognize what God is offering as a gift. We come to him and ask for the bread we need and open our hands to receive it. But then, as we look down, we discover that what we’ve been given looks like a stone! How can this “gift” possibly fit into God’s greater plan?
When this happens, know that you’re not alone. Holy men and women through the ages have asked and knocked and sought God. Sometimes what they received didn’t look much like a gift. But they kept seeking. And in their seeking, their eyes were opened to see God’s blessing in their lives.
Think about Venerable Fr. Augustus Tolton, who had been born into slavery in Missouri in 1854. After the American Civil War, he felt called to the priesthood, but no American seminary would accept him because of his race. He kept asking, seeking, and knocking, and he was eventually admitted to a seminary in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1886 and sent back to the United States as a missionary to African-American Catholics. All the “stones” of that rejection ultimately served to strengthen Tolton’s resolve to persevere.
Or consider Servant of God Michelle Duppong (1984–2015), a joyful missionary who shared the gospel on college campuses and mentored young people. At age thirty, she was diagnosed with cancer and died a year later. She refused to see her suffering as a “stone.” Instead, she asked the Lord to help her continue to bring hope and joy to the people around her.
Our loving Father wants to share the “bread” of his blessings with each of us, but not everyone can recognize it. How can you imitate the holy men and women who have gone before us and find God’s goodness in your life?
“Father, open my eyes to see the bread you are offering me!”
Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25
Psalm 138:1-3, 7-8
13TH MARCH 2025
THURSDAY 1ST WEEK OF LENT
Matthew 7:7–12
Friends, today’s Gospel assures us of the power of prayer. When some people ask in a spirit of trust, really believing that what they are asking for will happen, it happens. Just as Jesus suggests in the Gospel, “Everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
The power of prayer is the confidence that we are being guided and cared for, even when that guidance and care are not immediately apparent. It is what allows someone to live in detachment from all the ups and downs of life. In the language of St. Ignatius of Loyola, “We should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life. . . . Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created . . . to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord.”
Someone that lives in that kind of detachment is free, and because they are free, they are powerful. They are beyond the threats that arise in the context of this world. This is the source of dynamis, real power. This is the power that Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and John Paul II wielded: world-changing power.
https://www.wordonfire.org/todays-reflection/
“St. Gertrude’s Prayer,” was dictated by Our Lord to St. Gertrude the Great, a Benedictine cloistered nun and a mystic. In the twelfth century, the Lord told the Saint that this prayer (approved and recommended by M. Cardinal Pahiarca of Lisbon, Portugal on March 4, 1936) releases 1,000 Souls from Purgatory each time it is offered.
“Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.”
MIRACULOUS MEDAL
In 1830, one of the apparitions sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church occurred in the chapel of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Rue de Bac, Paris. There were three visions given to Saint Catherine Laboure who, at the time of the first one, was a novice in the order. She was awakened at 11:30 PM on the eve of the Feast of St. Vincent de Paul, by a “shining child” who led her to the chapel where she saw Our Lady, who spoke to her for two hours about the difficult task that lay ahead. Four months later, on November 27 Catherine had the second vision wherein she saw a three-dimensional scene of the Blessed Virgin standing on a white globe with dazzling rays of light streaming from her fingers and she heard a voice say:
“These are the symbols of grace I shed upon those who ask for them.”
“There now formed around the Blessed Virgin a frame rather oval in shape on which were written in letters of gold these words: ‘O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee’ Then the voice said: ‘ Have a medal struck upon this model. All those who wear it, when it is blessed, will receive great graces especially if they wear it round the neck. Those who repeat this prayer with devotion will be in a special manner under the protection of the Mother of God. Graces will be abundantly bestowed upon those who have confidence.’ “
“There now formed around the Blessed Virgin a frame rather oval in shape on which were written in letters of gold these words: ‘O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to Thee’ Then the voice said: ‘ Have a medal struck upon this model. All those who wear it, when it is blessed, will receive great graces especially if they wear it round the neck. Those who repeat this prayer with devotion will be in a special manner under the protection of the Mother of God. Graces will be abundantly bestowed upon those who have confidence.’ “
At the same instant, the oval frame seemed to turn around. Then I saw on the back of it the letter ‘M’, surmounted by a cross, with a crossbar beneath it, and under the monogram of the name of Mary, the Holy Hearts of Jesus and of His Mother; the first surrounded by a crown of thorns and the second transpierced by a sword. I was anxious to know what words must be placed on the reverse side of the medal and after many prayers, one day in meditation I seemed to hear a voice which said to me: ‘ The ‘M’ with the Cross and the two Hearts tell enough.’ ”
This sacramental from Heaven was at first called simply the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, but began to be known as the Miraculous Medal due to the unprecedented number of miracles, conversions, cures, and acts of protection attributed to Our Lady’s intercession for those who wore it.
Sister Catherine became Saint Catherine in 1947. The church instituted recognition of the apparition in which the Miraculous Medal first appeared for November 27, 1830. Millions of the Miraculous Medal have been distributed, and many graces and miracles have been received through this devotion to Our Lady.
This sacramental from Heaven was at first called simply the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, but began to be known as the Miraculous Medal due to the unprecedented number of miracles, conversions, cures, and acts of protection attributed to Our Lady’s intercession for those who wore it.
Sister Catherine became Saint Catherine in 1947. The church instituted recognition of the apparition in which the Miraculous Medal first appeared for November 27, 1830. Millions of the Miraculous Medal have been distributed, and many graces and miracles have been received through this devotion to Our Lady.
*Click on this link for a free Miraculous Medal
BROWN SCAPULAR OF MT. CARMEL
“Whosoever dies clothed in this
shall never suffer eternal fire.”
Virgin Mary’s promise to Saint Simon Stock
July 16, 1251″Wear it devoutly and perserveringly,” she says to each soul, “it is my garment. To be clothed in it means you are continually thinking of me, and I in turn, am always thinking of you and helping you to secure eternal life.”
The scapular is an external sign of the filial relationship established between the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of Mount Carmel, and the faithful who entrust themselves totally to her protection, who have recourse to her maternal intercession, who are mindful of the primacy of the spiritual life and the need for prayer.
THE SABBATINE PRIVELEGE
The blessed Virgin of Mt. Carmel has promised to save those who wear the scapular fromthe fires of Hell; She will also shorten their stay in Purgatory if they should passfrom this world still owing some temporal debt of punishment.
The Blessed Virgin appeared to him and speaking of those who wear the Brown Scapular said: “I, the Mother of grace, shall descend on the Saturday after their death and whomsoever I shall find in Purgatory, I shall free, so that I may lead them to the holy mountain of life everlasting.”
Pope Benedict XV proceeded to grant an indulgence of 500 days for each time the cloth Scapular is kissed”. On July 16th, the Scapular feast, while addressing the seminarians of Rome, Benedict XV said: “Let all of you have a common language and a common armor: the language, the sentences of the Gospel; the common armor, the Scapular of the Virgin of Carmel, which you all ought to wear and which enjoys the singular privilege of protection even after death.”
Pope Benedict XV, addressing seminarians in Rome:“Let all of you have a common language and a common armor: The language, the sentences of the Gospel – the common armor, the Brown Scapular of the Virgin of Carmel which you ought to wear and which enjoys the singular privilege and protection after death.”The Brown Scapular | A Sacramental“One of the most remarkable effects of sacramentals is the virtue to drive away evil spirits whose mysterious and baleful operations affect sometimes the physical activity of man. To combat this occult power the Church has recourse to exorcism, and sacramentals” (The Catholic Encyclopedia., 1913, VXIII, p. 293).The Brown Scapular | A True StoryYou will understand why the Devil works against those who promote the brown scapular when you hear the true story of Venerable Francis Yepes. One day his Scapular fell off. As he replaced it, the Devil howled, “Take off that habit which snatches so many souls from us! All those clothed in it die piously and escape us!” Then and there Francis made the Devil admit that there are three things which the demons are most afraid of: the Holy Name of Jesus; theHoly Name of Mary and the Holy Scapular of Carmel.“Modern Heretics make a mockery of wearing the Scapular. They decry it as so much trifling nonsense.” – St. Alphonsus LigouriMary, Mother of God and Our Mother“When Mary became the Mother of Jesus, true God and true Man, She also became our Mother. In His great mercy, Jesus wished to call us His brothers and sisters, and by this name He constituted us adopted children of Mary.” – St. John BoscoOver the years there have also been many miracles associated with wearing the brown scapular.
*If you would like a brown scapular click here:
New Catholic Radio Station serving Chittenden County
Donna McSoley stands in St. Francis Xavier Church in Winooski. She is the driving force behind a new Catholic radio station. Photo by Gail Callahan
WINOOSKI – In a state identified in a national study two years ago as one of the least religious in the country, a new Catholic radio station is being hailed by the market and people of faith.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help Radio, which can be found at 105.5 FM, transmits 24-hour daily programming of the Eternal Word Television Network from the St. Francis Xavier Church property in Winooski. The station can be heard in the greater Burlington area and started broadcasting earlier this fall.
Donna McSoley, the driving force behind WRXJ 105.5 FM, said she is eager to begin producing some local programming after she learns more about audio editing software. McSoley said one of her ambitions is to air homilies from priests who serve the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.
“I wanted to bring Catholic radio to Vermont because many people here have rejected Christianity without even knowing much about church history, the early church fathers, or never having read the Bible in its entirety,” said McSoley. “Our state is in crisis over heroin and other drugs, and many people are lost and are desperately searching for freedom from addictions and a greater meaning in life.”
In 2015, the Pew Research Center conducted the Religious Landscape study, and Vermont tied as the 48th most religious state. The study found 34 percent of the Green Mountain State’s adults said they are “highly religious.”
A state’s spiritual devotion was measured by factors including “absolute belief in God and daily prayer.”
The Rev. Lance Harlow, rector of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and St. Joseph’s Co-Cathedral in Burlington, records in WRXJ radio’s Winooski station. Courtesy photo
McSoley, a parishioner at St. Francis Xavier Church, began the quest to secure a broadcast license more than five years ago when the Federal Communications Commission opened a small window to own a channel on the FM spectrum for a low-power station. It took about 18 months to secure the FCC’s approval.
McSoley accesses the station’s computers remotely from her Essex Junction home.
She said a radio station can reach people in ways other media outlets can’t. “Radio can be a great way to reach people in the privacy of their own car and where people are apt to ponder life’s great questions,” she said. “I think for that reason, radio can be a great way to explain the Catholic faith, which is largely misunderstood by the general public. … My hope is that the programs on the station can clear this up and we can foster greater unity within the Christian community here in Vermont.”
Ted Quigley, a practicing Catholic, embraces the organization. “105.5 FM is a wonderful change in my life,” he said. “I turn it on when I’m driving or when I’m home cleaning.”
The Most Rev. Christopher Coyne, bishop of Vermont’s Catholics, recorded some station identifications that play through the hour.
Coyne, who was named by Pope Francis to shepherd Vermont’s Catholics nearly two years ago, said he welcomes the station, praising McSoley’s efforts. “The Catholic community in Vermont has been very supportive of the launch of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Radio,” said Coyne. “Right now, this is the only Catholic radio station in Vermont. I hope to see many more begin to broadcast soon.”
Coyne’s remarks regarding the dearth of religious broadcasting in Vermont underscore what many perceive as an absence of God from the public dialogue. The FCC said it doesn’t keep track of content when license applications come in.
The program director for a Christian radio network serving Vermont said religious-oriented radio outlets are filling a much-needed niche. Bob Pierce, of The Light Radio Network, said his Christian station reaches about 15,000 listeners in Chittenden County.
In a competitive market, McSoley said she is anxious for WRXJ’s message to spread. “Although Vermont is one of the least religious states in the country, I have great faith that people will always be able to recognize truth when they hear it, so my hope is that many people will turn on the radio and start the journey toward discovering God,” she said.
https://vtdigger.org/2017/11/05/new-catholic-radio-station-serving-chittenden-county/#.WgItH9QrK6Y
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