ORDINARY TIME SEPTEMBER 24

Thursday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

This is my prayer to you, my prayer for your favor. In your great love, answer me, O God, with your help that never fails: rescue me from sinking in the mud; save me from my foes.

The Blessed Virgin appeared in 1218 in separate visions to St. Peter Nolasco, St. Raymond of Penafort and James, king of Aragon, asking them to found a religious order dedicated to freeing Christian captives from the barbarous Saracens or Moors, who at the time held a great part of Spain. On August 10, 1218, King James established the royal, military and religious Order of our Lady of Ransom (first known as the Order of St. Eulalia, now known as the Mercedarian Order), with the members granted the privilege of wearing his own arms on their breast. Most of the members were knights, and while the clerics recited the divine office in the commanderies, they guarded the coasts and delivered prisoners. This pious work spread everywhere and produced heroes of charity who collected alms for the ransom of Christians, and often gave themselves up in exchange for Christian prisoners. This feast, kept only by the Order, was extended to the whole Church by Innocent XII in the 17th century.

Our Lady of Ransom
Would you risk your life to free someone from a concentration camp? Would you take the place of a prisoner? Would you sacrifice comforts and even necessities to save a slave? Would you pray and do penance for the freedom of Christian captives?

These things were done by the followers of Christ from the earliest days, but especially during the Middle ages. At that time the enemies of Christ’s Church had conquered a great part of Christian territory and had carried off into slavery many thousands of Christians. Hit and miss, though heroic, efforts to free these unfortunates had been made here and there.

The Church decided to organize the work of ransoming slaves. In 1198 St. John of Matha and St. Felix of Valois founded the Trinitarians. From then until 1787 they redeemed 900,000 captives. The Order of Our Lady of Ransom, called the Mercedarians, and founded by St. Peter Nolasco, ransomed 490,736 slaves between the years 1218 and 1632. St. Vincent de Paul, a slave himself, led his priests to save 1200 Christian captives in the short period between 1642 and 1660 at the staggering cost of 1,200,000 pounds of silver. An even greater achievement was the conversion of thousands in captivity, and steeling them against the sufferings of a cruel martyrdom for the faith.

All this has been admitted by a modern, competent Protestant historian, Bonet-Maury. He records that no expedition sent into the Barbary States by the powers of Europe or America equalled “the moral effect produced by the ministry of consolation, peace and abnegation, going even to the sacrifice of liberty and life, which was exercised by the humble sons of St. John of Matha, St. Peter Nolasco, and St. Vincent de Paul.”

Our Blessed Mother herself appeared in a vision to St. Peter Nolasco, and requested him to found a religious order devoted to the rescue of captives. This was in 1218. Previous to that, since 1192, certain noblemen of Barcelona, Spain, had organized to care for the sick in hospitals and to rescue Christians from the Moors. St. Peter Nolasco, St. Raymond of Pennafort, and King James formed the new Order of Our Lady of Mercy. The group included religious priests who prayed and gathered the means, while the lay monks or knights went into the very camps of the Moors to buy back Christians, and, if necessary, take their very places. We have mentioned the magnitude of their success, a success that was won through the heavenly assistance of the Mother of Mercy, Our Lady of Ransom.

Excerpted from the Feasts of Our Lady by Fr. Arthur Tonne

Patrons: Barcelona, Spain; people named Clemency, Mercedes, Mercedez, Merced or Mercy.

Things to Do:

• Learn more about the spirituality, saints and history of the Order of Mercedarians who take a vow to risk their lives to save Christians who find themselves in extreme danger of losing their faith in the new types of captivity.
• We cannot take the places of those enslaved in their own land. We cannot buy freedom for those doing slave labor in the world. But we can and must beseech Our Lady of Ransom to show her powerful concern toward these suffering millions. We can beg her to help them find their way home. We can pray for her powerful intercession that slavery of all kinds may disappear from the earth. There is also a slavery of sin, from which she is eager to deliver us and our loved ones and all the world. Put yourself in the position of these displaced unfortunates. Imagine yourself exiled to a strange land, with strange customs, a strange language, and a merciless master. Picture yourself without a home, without friends, and often without your family. Above all let your heavenly representative and advocate, Our Lady of Ransom, know that you are interested, you are concerned, you are begging her help for these unfortunates. Best of all, attend Mass and receive Holy Communion and pray with the Church on this ever-timely feast.

MASS READINGS

September 24, 2020 (Readings on USCCB website)

COLLECT PRAYER

O God, who founded all the commands of your sacred Law upon love of you and of our neighbor, grant that, by keeping your precepts, we may merit to attain eternal life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2020-09-24&

Daily Meditation: Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

All things are vanity! (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Today’s Old Testament reading comes from one of the great pieces of world literature. Like Wisdom and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes contains wise sayings assembled by an unknown author. But unlike those books, Ecclesiastes makes a dramatic declaration about the futility of human efforts: all is vanity (1:2)! Everything we attempt is placed on the scale and found wanting. In fact, it’s not until the end of the book that Qoheleth, the nickname the author gives himself, gives us a lesson to take from all this despair. “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,” he urges, lest we live for fleeting pleasures and face judgment for our disobedience (12:1, 13-14).

Let’s see what this puzzling book is about so that we can be ready to listen to what God might say to us as we pray through these passages the next few days.

Ecclesiastes offers wisdom gathered over many years. Qoheleth warns the young not to prize too highly the transient rewards that seem so important in life. Kingdoms rise and fall (and, we might say, corporations), and every one of us will die. So nothing that we gain will really remain ours in the end.

But in the midst of Qoheleth’s litany on the futility of all things, there is one constant that we can count on, one thing that gives true wisdom and a firm foundation: God. He is the “one shepherd,” the one source of true, lasting wisdom, who will reward every one of us for what we have done (Ecclesiastes 12:11, 14).

This wisdom certainly still holds today. Ecclesiastes warns us against trying to replace God with any other source of meaning. “If I get my PhD,” “if I get this promotion,” “if I find the right spouse,” then I will be happy and find purpose. Yet none of these things, no matter how good or satisfying or noble, can replace God. “All things are vanity!” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

Let’s open our hearts to the wise warnings of Ecclesiastes these next few days. Let’s allow the enduring wisdom of God contained in this book to wake us up. And let’s keep in mind the prayer of St. Teresa of Ávila:

“All things pass, God remains. He who has God lacks nothing. God alone is enough.”

Psalm 90:3-6, 12-14, 17
Luke 9:7-9

 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.’ “

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.    

*Click on this link for a free Miraculous Medal

Miraculous Medal Association – The Miraculous Medal | 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:

Free Brown Scapular | Order Page