Friday of the Second week of Advent

Book of Isaiah

Thus says the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I, the LORD, your God, teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you should go.
If you would hearken to my commandments, your prosperity would be like a river, and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand, and those born of your stock like its grains, Their name never cut off or blotted out from my presence.

Psalms

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.
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.
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.

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew

Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another,
'We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.'
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, 'He is possessed by a demon.'
The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, 'Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' But wisdom is vindicated by her works."

St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474-1548)()

Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474-1548) Little is known about Juan Diego before his conversion, but tradition, archaelogical and iconographical sources, along with the most important and oldest indigenous document on the event of Guadalupe, "El Nican Mopohua" (written in Náhuatl with Latin characters in 1556 by the Indigenous writer Antonio Valeriano), give some information on the life of the saint and the apparitions. Juan Diego was born in 1474 with the name "Cuauhtlatoatzin" ("the talking eagle"). He was born at Cuautlitlán, today part of Mexico City, Mexico. He was a gifted member of the Chichimeca people, one of the most culturally advanced groups living in the Anáhuac Valley. When he was 50, Juan Diego was baptized by a Franciscan priest, Fr Peter da Gand, one of the first Franciscan missionaries. On December 9, 1531, when Juan Diego was on his way to morning Mass, the Blessed Mother appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill, on the outskirts of what is now Mexico City. She asked him to go to the Bishop and to request in her name that a shrine be built at Tepeyac, where she promised to pour out her grace upon those who invoked her. The Bishop, who did not believe Juan Diego, asked for a sign to prove that the apparition was true. On December 12, Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac. Here, the Blessed Mother told him to climb the hill and to pick the flowers that he would find in bloom. He obeyed, and although it was winter time, he found roses flowering. He gathered the flowers and took them to Our Lady who carefully placed them in his mantle and told him to take them to the Bishop as proof. When he opened his mantle, the flowers fell on the ground, and there remained impressed an image of the Blessed Mother, the apparition at Tepeyac. With the Bishop's permission, Juan Diego lived the rest of his life as a hermit in a small hut near the chapel where the miraculous image was placed for veneration. Here he cared for the church and the first pilgrims who came to pray to the Mother of God. Much deeper than the exterior grace of having been chosen as Our Lady's messenger, Juan Diego received the grace of interior enlightenment; and from that moment, he began a life dedicated to prayer and the practice of virtue and love of God and neighbor. He passed away in 1548 and was buried in the first chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He was beatified on May 6, 1990 by Pope John Paul II in the Basilica of Santa Maria di Guadalupe, Mexico City, and canonized on July 31, 2002. The miraculous image, which is preserved in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, shows a woman of mixed native and European heritage. She is supported by an angel whose wings are reminiscent of one of the major gods of the traditional religion of that area. The moon is beneath her feet and her blue mantle is covered with gold stars. The black girdle about her waist signifies that she is pregnant. Thus, the image depicts that Christ is to be born again among the people of the New World. Laser scanning and scientific instruments determined that the Virgin's eyes had rested upon those present at the Cloak's first unveiling; and the absolute perfection of every symbolism, and the images preservation from accidental destruction, confirms that the Blessed Virgin is alive and is the Mediatrix of the human race.

St. Leocadia(Virgin and Martyr († c. 304))

SAINT LEOCADIAVirgin and Martyr( c. 304) St. Leocadia was a native of Toledo. She was arrested in 304 by order of Governor Dacian. Hearing about St. Eulalia's martyrdom, Leocadia prayed for the courage to die for Jesus. Soon after, she was martyred in prison. Three famous churches in Toledo bear her name, and she is honored as a principal patroness of that city. In one of those churches, most of the councils of Toledo were held. St. Leocadia's relics were kept in the Toledo church until the incursions of the Moors. To preserve them, they were conveyed to Oviedo, and some years afterward to the abbey of St. Guislain, near Mons at Hainault. They were finally carried back to Toledo with great celebration and placed in the great church on April 26, 1589.

St. Peter Fourier()

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Category: Mass by Year / Catholic Missal 2022 / Catholic Missal of december 2022