[Salvation]

Catholic Culture

Daily Readings for: January 30, 2013
(Readings on USCCB website)

Collect: Almighty ever-living God, direct our actions according to your good pleasure, that in the name of your beloved Son we may abound in good works. 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.

ACTIVITIES

• Life of St. Martina

PRAYERS

• Hymn to St. Martina
• Novena for Purification

Ordinary Time: January 30th

Wednesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

Old Calendar: St. Martina, virgin and martyr

According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Martina who was a Roman virgin born of an illustrious family. Both of her parents died while she was very young. She distributed among the poor the immense wealth which she inherited and so laid up for herself unfailing treasures in heaven. With great constancy she refused to offer sacrifices to false gods. She was tortured in various inhuman ways, she was exposed to the attacks of beasts in the amphitheater, and was finally beheaded about the year 228.

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St. Martina
She was a noble Roman virgin, who glorified God, suffering many torments and a cruel death for her faith, in the capital city of the world, in the third century. There stood a chapel consecrated to her memory in Rome, which was frequented with great devotion in the time of St. Gregory the Great. Her relics were discovered in a vault, in the ruins of her old church and translated with great pomp in the year 1634, under the Pope Urban VIII, who built a new church in her honor, and composed himself the hymns used in her office in the Roman Breviary. The city of Rome ranks her among its particular patrons. The history of the discovery of her relics was published by Honoratus of Viterbo, an Oratorian.

— Taken from Vol. I of The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company.

Patron: Nursing mothers; Rome, Italy.

Symbols: Maiden with a lion; being beheaded by a sword; tortured by being hung on a two-pronged hook; receiving a lily and the palm of martyrdom from the Virgin and Child.

Things to Do:

• Read about the Roman Church dedicated to St Luke the Evangelist and St Martina.

• Pray to St. Martina for the courage to destroy those idols of our affections, to which we are so prone to offer the sacrifice of our hearts. Examine your conscience and try to identify what these idols might be.

[Salvation]

The Word Among Us

Meditation: Mark 4:1-20

3rd Week in Ordinary Time

A sower went out to sow. (Mark 4:3)

We all know that God’s ways are not our ways. But did you know that also means that his farming methods are not our farming methods?

Like any farmer, the sower in today’s parable aimed to plant at just the right time. He also wanted to sow with as little waste of seed as possible. Many farmers today use a seed drill, which meters seeds and drops them into spaced rows at a specific depth. In first-century Galilee, where plots were small, topsoil thin, and limestone near the surface, all a farmer could do was broadcast seed by hand and hope for the best. Though his scattering method may look careless to us, he was looking for the maximum yield with the minimum seed.

Our heavenly Father also plants for a bountiful harvest—up to a hundred times more than the amount of seed! But here’s the difference: he is sowing all the time. There’s no such thing as a fallow season in the kingdom of God. Growing season is lasts all year long! What’s more, this Sower isn’t sparing with his seed. Just as he makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, he flings out his seed in great, lavish sweeps on everyone, everywhere.

God is also a very optimistic farmer. St. John Chrysostom tells us that even when planting conditions are unpromising, “it is his way never to stop sowing the seed.” This doesn’t work for actual farming, Chrysostom admits. But when the terrain is human beings with free will and willingness to change, “there is such a thing as the rock becoming rich land, the trampled wayside becoming a fertile field, and the thorns being destroyed.”

And so whether you think you are good soil or bad, God is at work in your plot—in you. His kingdom is near! How is it coming to you? Through a conversation; a Scripture verse; a prodding to help a neighbor, to go to Confession, to pray with a friend, to mend a relationship, to kick a habit? Whatever word God is sending you today, welcome it, act on it, and let it change you. Because this Sower doesn’t only give the seed: he also gives the growth.

“Lord, your grace and mercy never run out. Great is your faithfulness!”

Hebrews 10:11-18; Psalm 110:1-4