Saturday of 4th Week in Lent
Mass Readings
First Reading – Jer 11:18-20
I knew their plot because the LORD informed me; at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings. Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me: “Let us destroy the tree in its vigor; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more.” But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge, searcher of mind and heart, Let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause!
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 7:2-3, 9bc-10, 11-12 (R.2a)
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
O LORD, my God, in you I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and rescue me,
Lest I become like the lion’s prey,
to be torn to pieces, with no one to rescue me. R.
Do me justice, O LORD, because I am just,
and because of the innocence that is mine.
Let the malice of the wicked come to an end,
but sustain the just,
O searcher of heart and soul, O just God. R.
A shield before me is God,
who saves the upright of heart;
A just judge is God,
a God who punishes day by day. R.
Gospel – Jn 7:40-53
Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, “This is truly the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?” The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.” So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.” Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” They answered and said to him, “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” Then each went to his own house.
Featured Saints
St. Nicholas of Flüe, hermit (†1487). Married with ten children, he renounced important positions, abandoned the world at fifty years of age and, with the consent of his wife, became a hermit, withdrew to a mountain, and spent the rest of his life in prayer and contemplation. He is the patron of Switzerland.
St. Augustine Zhao Rong, priest and martyr (†1815). Due to his position as a guard of Christian prisoners, he converted and became a priest. He was imprisoned and killed in Sichuan, China.
St. James the Confessor, martyr (†circa 824). He was martyred for firmly defending the veneration of sacred images in Constantinople.
St. Lupicinus, abbot (†480). He founded the monastery of St. Claude in French Jura, together with his brother, St. Romanus, as well as building a convent for nuns, St. Romain de la Roche.
St. Enda of Aran, abbot (†c. 542). An Irish warrior who embraced monastic life. He obtained from King Aengus the Aran Islands, in Galway Bay, where he founded several churches and monasteries.
Holy Martyrs of Alexandria (†339). They received the palm of martyrdom on Good Friday, when Arians and pagans invaded the churches where they were praying.
St. Benedicta Cambiagio Frassinello, religious (†1858). In mutual agreement with her husband, she renounced conjugal life and founded the Institute of the Benedictine Sisters of Providence, for the formation of poor and abandoned girls, in Ronco Scrivia, near Genoa.
Blessed Thomas Pilchard, priest and martyr (†1591). A gifted and humble man, he was executed during the reign of Elizabeth I of England for being a Catholic priest.
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