Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Mass Readings
First Reading – Dt 30:15-20
Moses said to the people: “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving Him, and walking in His ways, and keeping His commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy. If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy. I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding His voice, and holding fast to Him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land that the LORD swore He would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Responsorial Psalm – Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 (R. 40:5a)
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on His law day and night. R.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers. R.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes. R.
Gospel – Lk 9:22-25
Jesus said to His disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Then He said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”
Featured Saints
St. Conrad Confalonieri (†1351). Worldly Italian nobleman who, during a hunt, started a fire in a forest which spread and caused extensive devastation and the near-execution of an innocent peasant. Deeply shaken, he exonerated the man and changed his life. His wife became a Poor Clare nun and he took the habit of a Franciscan tertiary, dying after forty years of penance and prayer.
Blessed Alvarez of Cordoba, priest (†circa 1430). Dominican priest, famed for his preaching and contemplation of Our Lord’s Passion. He spent most of his life in Cordoba, Spain.
St. Quodvultdeus, bishop (†439). Exiled from Carthage with all of his clergy by the Arian King Genseric, he died as a Confessor of the Faith in Naples.
St. Mansuetus, bishop (†circa 680). In his diocese in Milan, he fought tirelessly to extirpate the heresy of Monothelitism.
St. Lucy Yi Zhenmei, martyr (+1862). She consecrated herself to God while still young, and aided the missions as a catechist. He was beheaded for defending the Faith.
Blessed Boniface of Lausanne, bishop (†1260). He renounced the government of the Diocese of Lausanne, Switzerland to live as a Cistercian monk in the Monastery of La Chambre in Belgium.
Blessed Joseph Zaplata, religious and martyr (†1945). Member of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, deported from Poland to the concentration camp of Dachau, Germany, where deplorable conditions brought about his sickness and death.
Blessed Elizabeth Picenardi, virgin (†1468). Born in Cremona, Italy, she consecrated herself to God, taking the habit of the Order of the Servants of Mary. She was assiduous in study and meditation of Sacred Scripture.
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