| 21-4-2010 Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter - St. Anselm |
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21-4-2010 Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter Year II. SAINT ANSELM. Bishop and doctor of the Church. Archbishop of Canterbury. MEDITATION based on the readings for today’s Mass. These readings can be found in your bible our daily missal. FIRST READING: Acts of the Apostles chapter 8: verses 1-8 We continue the story of the early days of the church. “A bitter persecution started against the church in Jerusalem.” Saul “went from house to house arresting both men and women and sending them to prison.” But in other areas, the work went on. Philip was received with joy by a Samaritan town because he worked miracles before them. “unclean spirits came shrieking out of many who were possessed, and several paralytics and cripples were cured” Across this planet today there are places where the church is severely persecuted, people dying for their faith, scandals turning people away. But as in the early times, the Holy Spirit stays with the church, and always will, as Jesus promised. RESPONSE TO THE PSALM: Let all the earth cry out to God with joy. PSALM 65 (66): VERSES 1 – 7 O sing to the glory of his name. O render him glorious praise, Say to God: ‘How tremendous your deeds!’ GOSPEL. A reading from the holy gospel according to John chapter 6: verses 35-40 “All that the Father gives me will come to me And whoever comes to me I shall not turn him away.” So let us come in confidence to Jesus. We will not be rejected by Jesus, because “whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.” Wow! Jesus will raise us up, like him, our bodies will be raised up on that last day, and we will be glorified! For all eternity! This is the promise of Jesus, the God we know, who keeps all his promises. This is the promise of Easter. FEAST DAY OF ST. ANSELM Anselm was born at Aosta in Piedmont Italy about the year 1033. His father was a violent man, and by age 15, Anselm was forced to leave home. He entered the Benedictine Order in the monastery of Le Bec in France. “An original and independent thinker, endowed with profound learning, St. Anselm was the greatest theologian of his age and the ‘father of Scholasticism’ “(a system of thinking based on logic, philosophy and theology); “as a metaphysician he surpassed all Christian doctors since the days of St. Augustine.”* He was renowned for his writing, especially in the area of mystical theology. Anselm was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in England in 1092 where he stood up to two English kings who were seeking political control of the church. In exile from England he wrote Cur Deus Homo (The God Man) “the most famous treatise on the Incarnation ever written.”* He was one of the first to oppose the slave trade. Anselm and King Henry 1 made a pact defining freedom of the church from political appointments.
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