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Homily #111116k ( 05min) Play – Being the bride of Christ includes being one in mind with Christ.
Ave Maria!
Mass: St. Agnes of Assisi – 3rd Cl – Form: EF,
Readings:

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Homily #110121 ( 09min) Play – Christ establishes the twelve Apostles as the foundation of the Church. Today we celebrate the feast of St. Agnes an early Roman martyr.
Ave Maria!
Mass: St. Agnes – Memorial – Form:
Readings: Friday 2nd Week of Ordinary Time
1st: heb 8:6-13
Resp: psa 85:8, 10, 11-12, 13-14
Gsp: mar 3:13-19

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An Ave Maria Meditation Encore

  On January 21st the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr. She came from a noble Roman family and was about thirteen years old when she suffered martyrdom. She was tortured and beheaded. Her name is included in the Roman Canon.

St.  Ambrose wrote the following concerning St. Agnes in a work called ‘De Virginibus’:

She is said to have suffered martyrdom when twelve years old. The more hateful was the cruelty, which spared not so tender an age, the greater in truth was the power of faith which found evidence even in that age. Was there room for a wound in that small body? And she who had no room for the blow of the steel had that wherewith to conquer the steel. But maidens of that age are unable to bear even the angry looks of parents, and are wont to cry at the pricks of a needle as though they were wounds. She was fearless under the cruel hands of the executioners, she was unmoved by the heavy weight of the creaking chains, offering her whole body to the sword of the raging soldier, as yet ignorant of death, but ready for it. Or if she were unwillingly hurried to the altars, she was ready to stretch forth her hands to Christ at the sacrificial fires, and at the sacrilegous altars themselves, to make the sign of the Lord the Conqueror, or again to place her neck and both her hands in the iron bands, but no band could enclose such slender limbs.

A new kind of martyrdom!  Not yet of fit age for punishment but already ripe for victory, difficult to contend with but easy to be crowned, she filled the office of teaching valour while having the disadvantage of youth. She would not as a bride so hasten to the couch, as being a virgin she joyfully went to the place of punishment with hurrying step, her head not adorned with plaited hair, but with Christ. All wept, she alone was without a tear. (more…)

Homily #101119 ( 06min) Play – Fr. Dominic preaches on the life of St Agnes of Assisi who had to renounce her family to follow her vocation, as in today’s Gospel, and even resist, with the help of God, their attempts to drag her back home so that she could stay in the convent with her sister St Clare following the footsteps of St Francis. He then contrasts this marvelous zeal with today’s lack of vocations.
Ave Maria! St. Agnes of Assisi -Franciscan Memorial – Mass: OF – Readings:
1st: phi 3:8-14
Resp: psa 24:1-2, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11
Gsp: luk 14:25-33

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Homily #091116 ( 06min) Play – St Agnes of Assisi followed her sister St Clare who had already followed the example of St Francis to embrace the Seraphic Spirit of love of God, humility, and detachment from things.
Ave Maria! Readings EF – 1st: 2co 10:17-2 – Gsp: mat 25:1-13

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Ave Maria Meditations

On January 21st the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr. She came from a noble Roman family and was about thirteen years old when she suffered martyrdom. She was tortured and beheaded. Her name is included in the Roman Canon. (more…)