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Day XVI. Thursday, Week II.
"God of love, bring us back to you. Send your Spirit to make us strong in faith and active in good works. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen" (Collect for today).

Santa Maria in Trastevere. One of the oldest and most beautiful churches in the city, Santa Maria was built on the site of a miraculous font of oil, which flowed for one day in the year 36 BC. This was interpreted as a divine portent that an Anointed One would be born whose power would flow to the entire world. The Christians later understood this to be fulfilled in Christ. An oratory was built here by

Pope Callistus I (217-222) and later rebuilt twice, the last as a offering of thanksgiving for the end of the schism in 1124 when the anti-pope resigned. (The mosaics in this church are extraordinary. The photo is one of Jesus' birth.) Thursday’s churches are places where the poor are tended to in a special way. Today, the Community of Sant’Egidio tend to the needs of the poor from this church.

from St. Cantius

THURSDAY IN THE SECOND WEEK OF LENT
Station—St. Mary Trastevere

In the heart of Transtiber, in a beautiful Romanesque square stands the church of St. Mary. On the spot of this church, shortly before the birth of Christ, oil gushed out of the ground. Mary carried Christ "the Anointed One" (reference to the oil) in her arms.
The Mother of God is today's stational leader to Christ, the Light of the world. We fly to your patronage, Holy Mother of God. Do present our humble prayers to Him, whom you did bring forth, the King that rules heaven and earth. Help us, good Mother, that He may keep us away from the broad road, which leads to darkness and perdition and take us on the narrow but sure way to eternal light and life.
It is Thursday, four weeks from the great Eucharistic Thursday. May today's Eucharistic action give us light to see the right way and strength to follow it. And Christ is the "Way," and Mary, our leader to this "Way"—Per Mariam ad Jesum!
If us pray: Grant us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the help of Thy grace, that being duly intent on fasts and prayers, we may be delivered from enemies of soul and body. Through Christ, Our Lord.
Amen.