Wednesday of the First week of Lent

Book of Jonah

The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:
"Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you."
So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh, according to the LORD'S bidding. Now Nineveh was an enormously large city; it took three days to go through it.
Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day's walk announcing, "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,"
when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.
Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh, by decree of the king and his nobles: "Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.
Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; every man shall turn from his evil way and from the violence he has in hand.
Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold his blazing wrath, so that we shall not perish."
When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.

Psalms

Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness;
in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense.
Thoroughly wash me from my guilt
and of my sin cleanse me.
A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
For you are not pleased with sacrifices;
should I offer a burnt offering, you would not accept it.
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke

While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them, "This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here.
At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here."

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

Saint Luigi Orione Priest (1872-1940) St. Luigi Orione was born in Pontecurone, the diocese of Tortona, on June 23, 1872. At the age of 13, he entered the Franciscan Friary of Voghera (Pavia), but left after one year because of poor health. From 1886 to 1889, he was a pupil of St. John Bosco at the Valdocco Oratory (Youth Center) in Turin. On October 16, 1889, Luigi joined the diocesan seminary of Tortona. As a young seminarian, he devoted himself to serving others through membership in 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. On October 15, 1893, he started a boarding school for poor boys in the Saint Bernardine estate. On April 13, 1895, Luigi Orione was ordained a priest. At the event, the bishop gave the clerical habit to six pupils of the boarding school. Soon after, Fr. Luigi opened new houses in 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, Fr. Luigi founded the branch of the Hermits of Divine Providence. The bishop of Tortona, Mgr. Igino Bandi, by a decree on 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. The congregation's aim is 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, Fr. Luigi 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). Saint Pius X afterward appointed him as 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, Fr. Luigi added to the "single tree of many branches" the Congregation of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity who are inspired by the same 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) and Albania (1936). From 1921 to 1922, and from 1934 to 1937, he made two missionary journeys to Latin America: to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. Fr. Luigi was respected by the popes, who entrusted him with confidential tasks of sorting out problems and healing wounds, both inside the Church and 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. Through the manual labor of his seminarians, the shrines of Our Lady of Safe Keeping in Tortona and Our Lady of Caravaggio in Fumo were built. 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, Fr. Luigi 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 St. Luigi Orione in the Book of the Blessed. He was canonized on May 16, 2004.

St. Maximilian()

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