Tuesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time
Optional Memorial of St. Rose of Lima, virgin (†1617 Lima – Peru). Originally named Isabel, she became known as Rose for her beauty and charm. She entered the Dominican Third Order and lived a life of extraordinary austerity and mysticism. First canonized saint born in the Americas.
Mass Readings
First Reading – 2 Thes 2:1-3A, 14-17
We ask you, brothers and sisters, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him, not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way. To this end he has also called you through our Gospel to possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.
Responsorial Psalm – PS 96:10, 11-12, 13 (R.13b)
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Say among the nations: The Lord is king.
He has made the world firm, not to be moved;
he governs the peoples with equity. R.
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult. R.
Before the Lord, for he comes;
for he comes to rule the earth.
He shall rule the world with justice
and the peoples with his constancy. R.
Gospel – MT 23:23-26
Jesus said:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin,
and have neglected the weightier things of the law:
judgment and mercy and fidelity.
But these you should have done, without neglecting the others.
Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
You cleanse the outside of cup and dish,
but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.
Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup,
so that the outside also may be clean.”
Featured Saints
St. Eugene, bishop (†sixth century). First Bishop of Ardstraw, Ireland.
Blessed Juan María de la Cruz, priest and martyr (†1936). Imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War, he was killed after a month of fruitful apostolate in prison.
Blesseds Rosary Quintana Argos and Seraphina Fernández Ibero, virgins and martyrs (†1936). Third Order Capuchins of the Holy Family Killed for refusing to renounce their Faith in Puzol, Valencia during the Spanish Civil War.
Blessed John Bourdon, priest and martyr (†1794). Capuchin priest detained in an over-crowded prison-galley Rochefort as part of the religious persecutions of the French Revolution, he died as a result of illness contracted there.
St. Zacchaeus, bishop (†second century). According to tradition, he was the fourth Bishop to head the Church of Jerusalem after the Apostle St. James.
Sts. Astericus, Claudius, and Neon, martyrs (†303). Brothers denounced by their stepmother for being Christian, they were beheaded in the time of the Emperor Diocletian.
Blessed Francis Dachtera, priest and martyr (†1944). Arrested in his parish of Inowroclaw, Poland, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he was submitted to the barbarity of medical experimentation which caused his death.
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