Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
And Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and his Companions, Martyrs
Biographical Information about Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and his Companions[1]
Readings for Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time[2]
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
Commentary:
Reading 1 Gn 28:10-22a
The story of the first patriarchs of the Jewish people continues with the story of “Jacob’s Dream”. Jacob takes a stone from a shrine at the holy place he later calls Bethel and uses it for a pillow. He has a dream in which God gives him and his descendants the land. For the people of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, this reading has another interesting quality. The exclamation Jacob made in verse 17b “This is nothing else but an abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven” is inscribed in Latin in the dome of the sanctuary.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 91:1-2, 3-4, 14-15ab
R. In you, my God, I place my trust.
The hymn of thanksgiving that is Psalm 91 gives praise to God for the salvation of his people. He saves those who believe in Him from the distress and fear.
Gospel Mt 9:18-26
Jesus continues his journey in the passage from Matthew’s Gospel. Again he engages in healing those who have faith in him. First the woman with a hemorrhage, as she touches him in faith, she experiences the healing touch. In Luke the Lord feels this touch and seeks out the woman.
Next Jesus heals the “Official’s Daughter”. In Mark’s Gospel she was at the point of death, here she had already “fallen asleep” meaning she had died. Again Jesus seeing the faith of the requestor raises her from her death bed to new life.
Reflection:
We cannot help but wonder today about the verse inscribed in the dome of the sanctuary at St. Thomas the Apostle Church. The church was remodeled in about 1992 and according to my recollection it was taken back to the way it was before the reforms of Vatican II stimulated a change that had bricked over the stain glass windows in the sanctuary (there are four windows there, each about four feet high by two feet wide perhaps even bigger it’s hard to tell) and painted the dome in a gold and red theme. The 1992 remodeling was based upon old pictures of the sanctuary from before 1964 and was done, in part to celebrate the building's centennial celebration.
There have been many times in the past hundreds of years since the Reformation that our Protestant brethren have accused the Roman Catholic Church of now being Bible based. Yet here in the sanctuary is a rather obscure quote from the story of Jacob’s Dream. We think about that dream now – He dreamt that there was a stair; actually the translation in Hebrew paints the picture more like the earthen ramp like that used to build the tower of Babel. And upon this stair or ramp, messengers of God came and went.
This was the image that inspired the words “This is nothing else but an abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven!” The designer of the edifice that is St. Thomas the Apostle must have been very well schooled in Holy Scripture to have remembered that passage and proposed it as the inscription above the sanctuary. We wonder who he was?
We wonder if his vision was like the dream that stimulated its first utterance. Did he see angels moving from earth to heaven and back above the altar? It gives us new insight into the significance of places of worship and how they have been viewed from the earliest times. We too should stand in awe as the greatest sacrifice, the greatest holy offering is made upon that table under the words “This is nothing else but an abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven!”
Pax
And Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and his Companions, Martyrs
Biographical Information about Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and his Companions[1]
Readings for Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time[2]
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
Commentary:
Reading 1 Gn 28:10-22a
The story of the first patriarchs of the Jewish people continues with the story of “Jacob’s Dream”. Jacob takes a stone from a shrine at the holy place he later calls Bethel and uses it for a pillow. He has a dream in which God gives him and his descendants the land. For the people of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, this reading has another interesting quality. The exclamation Jacob made in verse 17b “This is nothing else but an abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven” is inscribed in Latin in the dome of the sanctuary.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 91:1-2, 3-4, 14-15ab
R. In you, my God, I place my trust.
The hymn of thanksgiving that is Psalm 91 gives praise to God for the salvation of his people. He saves those who believe in Him from the distress and fear.
Gospel Mt 9:18-26
Jesus continues his journey in the passage from Matthew’s Gospel. Again he engages in healing those who have faith in him. First the woman with a hemorrhage, as she touches him in faith, she experiences the healing touch. In Luke the Lord feels this touch and seeks out the woman.
Next Jesus heals the “Official’s Daughter”. In Mark’s Gospel she was at the point of death, here she had already “fallen asleep” meaning she had died. Again Jesus seeing the faith of the requestor raises her from her death bed to new life.
Reflection:
We cannot help but wonder today about the verse inscribed in the dome of the sanctuary at St. Thomas the Apostle Church. The church was remodeled in about 1992 and according to my recollection it was taken back to the way it was before the reforms of Vatican II stimulated a change that had bricked over the stain glass windows in the sanctuary (there are four windows there, each about four feet high by two feet wide perhaps even bigger it’s hard to tell) and painted the dome in a gold and red theme. The 1992 remodeling was based upon old pictures of the sanctuary from before 1964 and was done, in part to celebrate the building's centennial celebration.
There have been many times in the past hundreds of years since the Reformation that our Protestant brethren have accused the Roman Catholic Church of now being Bible based. Yet here in the sanctuary is a rather obscure quote from the story of Jacob’s Dream. We think about that dream now – He dreamt that there was a stair; actually the translation in Hebrew paints the picture more like the earthen ramp like that used to build the tower of Babel. And upon this stair or ramp, messengers of God came and went.
This was the image that inspired the words “This is nothing else but an abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven!” The designer of the edifice that is St. Thomas the Apostle must have been very well schooled in Holy Scripture to have remembered that passage and proposed it as the inscription above the sanctuary. We wonder who he was?
We wonder if his vision was like the dream that stimulated its first utterance. Did he see angels moving from earth to heaven and back above the altar? It gives us new insight into the significance of places of worship and how they have been viewed from the earliest times. We too should stand in awe as the greatest sacrifice, the greatest holy offering is made upon that table under the words “This is nothing else but an abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven!”
Pax
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