Saturday of the First week of Lent

Book of Deuteronomy

Moses spoke to the people, saying: "This day the LORD, your God, commands you to observe these statutes and decrees. Be careful, then, to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.
Today you are making this agreement with the LORD: he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways and observe his statutes, commandments and decrees, and to hearken to his voice.
And today the LORD is making this agreement with you: you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you; and provided you keep all his commandments,
he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations he has made, and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God, as he promised."

Psalms

Blessed are they whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD.
Blessed are they who observe his decrees,
Who seek him with all their heart.
You have commanded that your precepts
be diligently kept.
Oh, that I might be firm in the ways
of keeping your statutes!
I will give you thanks with an upright heart,
when I have learned your just ordinances.
I will keep your statutes;
do not utterly forsake me.

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew

Jesus said to his disciples: "You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."

St. Luigi Orione(Priest (1872-1940))

Saint Luigi Orione Priest (1872-1940) St. Luigi Orione was born in Pontecurone, diocese of Tortona, on 23 June 1872. At thirteen years of age, he entered the Franciscan Friary of Voghera (Pavia), but he left after one year owing to poor health. From 1886 to 1889, he was a pupil of Saint John Bosco at the Valdocco Oratory (Youth Centre) in Turin. On October 16, 1889, he joined the diocesan seminary of Tortona. As a young seminarian, he devoted himself to the care of others by becoming a member of both the San Marziano Society for Mutual Help and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. On July 3, 1892, he opened the first Oratory in Tortona for the Christian formation of boys. The following year, on October 15, 1893, Luigi Orione, then a seminarian of twenty-one, started a boarding school for poor boys in the Saint Bernardine estate. On April 13, 1895, Luigi Orione was ordained, and on that occasion, the Bishop gave the clerical habit to six pupils of the boarding school. Within a brief span of time, Don Orione opened new houses at Mornico Losana (Pavia), Noto in Sicily, Sanremo and Rome. Around the young Founder, there grew up seminarians and priests who made up the first core group of the Little Work of Divine Providence. In 1899, he founded the branch of the Hermits of Divine Providence. The Bishop of Tortona, Mgr. Igino Bandi, by a Decree of March 21, 1903, issued the canonical approval of the Sons of Divine Providence (priests, lay brothers and hermits) - the male congregation of the Little Work of Divine Providence. It aims to "co-operate to bring the little ones, the poor and the people, to the Church and to the Pope, by means of the works of charity," and professes a fourth vow of special "faithfulness to the Pope." In the first Constitutions of 1904, among the aims of the new Congregation, there appears that of working to "achieve the union of the separated Churches." Inspired by a profound love for the Church and for the salvation of Souls, he was actively interested in the new problems of his time, such as the freedom and unity of the Church, the Roman question, modernism, socialism and the Christian evangelization of industrial workers. He rushed to assist the victims of the earthquakes of Reggio and Messina (1908) and the Marsica region (1915). By appointment of Saint Pius X, he was made Vicar General of the diocese of Messina for three years. On June 29, 1915, twenty years after the foundation of the Sons of Divine Providence, he added to the "single tree of many branches" the Congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity who are inspired by the same founding charism. Alongside them, he placed the Blind Sisters, Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament. Later, the Contemplative Sisters of Jesus Crucified were also founded. For lay people, he set up the associations of the "Ladies of Divine Providence," the "Former Pupils," and the "Friends". More recently, the Don Orione Secular Institute and the Don Orione Lay People's Movement have come into being. Following the First World War (1914-1918), the number of schools, boarding houses, agricultural schools, charitable and welfare works increased. Among his most enterprising and original works, he set up the "Little Cottolengos" for the care of the suffering and abandoned, which were usually built on the outskirts of large cities to act as "new pulpits" from which to speak of Christ and of the Church - "true beacons of faith and of civilization." Don Orione's missionary zeal, which had already manifested itself in 1913 when he sent his first religious to Brazil, expanded subsequently to Argentina and Uruguay (1921), Palestine (1921), Poland (1923), Rhodes (1925), the USA (1934), England (1935), Albania (1936). From 1921-1922 and from 1934-1937, he made two missionary journeys to Latin America: to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, going as far as Chile. He enjoyed the personal respect of the Popes and the Holy See's Authorities, who entrusted him with confidential tasks of sorting out problems and healing wounds, both inside the Church in society. He was a preacher, a confessor and a tireless organiser of pilgrimages, missions, processions, live cribs and other popular manifestations and celebrations of the faith. He loved Our Lady deeply and fostered devotion to her by every means possible and, through the manual labour of his seminarians, built the shrines of Our Lady of Safe Keeping in Tortona and Our Lady of Caravaggio at Fumo. In the winter of 1940, with the intention of easing the heart and lung complaints that were troubling him, he went to the Sanremo house, even though, as he said, "it is not among the palm trees that I would like to die, but among the poor who are Jesus Christ." Only three days later, on March 12, 1940, surrounded by his confreres, Don Orione passed away while sighing, "Jesus, Jesus! I am going." St. Luigi's body was found uncorrupted at its first exhumation in 1965. It has been exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the shrine of Our Lady of Safe Keeping in Tortona ever since October 26, 1980 - the day in which Pope John Paul II inscribed Don Luigi Orione in the Book of the Blessed. He was canonized on May 16, 2004.

St. Maximilian()

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