Catholic Missal of the day: Thursday, March 12 2026

Thursday of the Third week of Lent

Book of Jeremiah

Thus says the LORD: This is what I commanded my people: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper.
But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed. They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me.
From the day that your fathers left the land of Egypt even to this day, I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets.
Yet they have not obeyed me nor paid heed; they have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers.
When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either; when you call to them, they will not answer you.
Say to them: This is the nation which does not listen to the voice of the LORD, its God, or take correction. Faithfulness has disappeared; the word itself is banished from their speech.

Psalms

Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us joyfully sing psalms to him.
Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”  

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke

Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute, and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.
Some of them said, "By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons."
Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven.
But he knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house.
And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons.
If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges.
But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe.
But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils.
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."

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 13 years old, 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 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. 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. The shelters 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 first sent his religious to Brazil in 1913. They subsequently expanded 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 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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Category: Mass by Year / Catholic Missal 2026 / Catholic Missal of march 2026