Tuesday in the 7th Week of Easter
Mass Readings
First Reading – Acts 20:17-27
From Miletus Paul had the presbyters of the Church at Ephesus summoned. When they came to him, he addressed them, “You know how I lived among you the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia. I served the Lord with all humility and with the tears and trials that came to me because of the plots of the Jews, and I did not at all shrink from telling you what was for your benefit, or from teaching you in public or in your homes. I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus. But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem. What will happen to me there I do not know, except that in one city after another the Holy Spirit has been warning me that imprisonment and hardships await me. Yet I consider life of no importance to me, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s grace. “But now I know that none of you to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels will ever see my face again. And so I solemnly declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God.”
Responsorial Psalm – Ps 68:10-11, 20-21 (R. 33a)
R.Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth.
or:
R. Alleluia.
A bountiful rain you showered down, O God, upon Your inheritance;
You restored the land when it languished;
Your flock settled in it;
in Your goodness, O God, You provided it for the needy. R.
Blessed day by day be the Lord,
who bears our burdens; God, who is our salvation.
God is a saving God for us;
the LORD, my Lord, controls the passageways of death. R.
Gospel – Jn 17:1-11a
Jesus raised His eyes to Heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began. “I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”
Featured Saints
St. Urban I, Pope (†230). Faithfully governed the Church for eight years, after the martyrdom of St. Callixtus.
St. Crispin of Viterbo, religious (†1750). Capuchin lay brother who taught peasants the Catholic Faith while visiting villages asking for alms.
St. Dunstan of Canterbury, bishop (†988). Benedictine abbot elected Bishop of Worcester and later Archbishop of Canterbury. He rekindled the flame of monastic life in Great Britain.
St. Ives, priest (†1303). He dedicated his life to the practice of the virtue of justice, as a lawyer and later as a priest and ecclesiastical judge. He died at fifty years of age in a castle close to Treguier, in French Brittany.
St.Teophilus of Corte, priest (†1740). A great propagator of the “Sacred Retreats” in the Franciscan Order, evangelizing throughout Corsica and Italy. An ardent devotee of the Lord’s Passion and to the Virgin Mary.
Blessed Mary Bernard Bütler, virgin (†1924). Religious from the Monastery of Mary, Help of Christians in Altstätten, Switzerland, she departed with six companions for Ecuador, where she founded the Congregation of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary, Help of Christians.
Blessed Agostino Novello, priest (†1310). Religious from the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, appointed papal confessor and apostolic penitentiary. After being elected Superior General, he organized the Augustinian provinces and sought to establish greater observance of the rule.
Blessed Juan of Cetina, priest, and Pedro of Dueñas, religious, martyrs (†1397). Both from the Franciscan Order, they undertook a mission to evangelize the Muslims of Granada (Spain), where they were killed by the sultan himself.
Blessed John Baptist Loir, priest and martyr (†1794). Capuchin priest who died while imprisoned during the French Revolution for refusing to take the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Blessed Raphael Louis Rafiringa, religious (†1919). Christian Brother and convert from paganism; he maintained the presence and vitality of the Church in Madagascar when all priests had been expelled.
Blessed Umiliana de’ Cerchi, widow (†1246). After the death of her husband, she became a Franciscan tertiary, leading an exemplary life of prayer, penance and charity.
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