Springfield Missouri Traditional Latin Mass

SUNDAY AFTER THE ASCENSION

Let us, like the Apostles gathered together, prepare in prayer for the holy Day of Pentecost; let us pray, as the Church prescribes, for the return of heretics to unity.
Epistle
From the First Letter of Blessed Peter the Apostle,
4.7-11.
[Let us watch and pray in faith and charity, awaiting the descent of the Holy Ghost.]

DEARLY beloved, be prudent and watch in prayers. But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins. Using hospitality one towards another, without murmuring: as every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak, as the words of God: if any minister, let him do it, as of the power which God administereth: that in all things God may be honoured through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Alleluia, alleluia. (Ps. 46. 9). The Lord hath reigned over all the nations; God sitteth on His holy throne. Alleluia. (John 14. 18). I will not leave you orphans: I go away, and I come unto you, and your heart shall rejoice. Alleluia.

Gospel

Continuation of the holy Gospel according to YO St John, 15. 26, 27; 16. 1-4.

[Our Lord Jesus Christ promised that He would send the Holy Ghost.]

AT that time, Jesus said to His disciples, when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, He shall give testimony of Me: and you shall give testimony because you are with Me from the beginning. These things I have spoken to you, that you may not be scandalised. They will put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth a service to God. And these things will they do to you, because they have not known the Father, nor Me. But these things I have told you, that, when the hour shall come, you may remember that I told you of them. Creed.

03

May 6-ST. JOHN BEFORE THE LATIN GATE

IN THE year 95, St. John, who was the only surviving Apostle, and governed all the churches of Asia, was apprehended at Ephesus, and sent prisoner to Rome. The Emperor Domitian did not relent at the sight of the venerable old man, but condemned him to be cast into a caldron of boiling oil. The martyr doubtless heard, with great joy, this barbarous sentence; the most cruel torments seemed to him light and most agreeable, because they would, he hoped, unite him forever to his divine Master and Saviour. But God accepted his will and crowned his desire; He conferred on him the honor and merit of martyrdom, but suspended the operation of the fire, as He had formerly preserved the three children from hurt in the Babylonian furnace. The seething oil was changed in his regard into an invigorating bath, and the Saint came out more refreshed than when he had entered the caldron. Domitian saw this miracle without drawing from it the least advantage, but remained hardened in his iniquity. However, he contented himself after this with banishing the holy Apostle into the little island of Patmos. St. John returned to Ephesus, in the reign of Nerva, who by mildness, during his short reign of one year and four months, labored to restore the faded lustre of the Roman Empire. This glorious triumph of St. John happened without the gate of Rome called Latina. A church which since has always borne this title was consecrated in the same place in memory of this miracle, under the first Christian emperors.

Reflection-
St. John suffered above the other Saints a martyrdom of love, being a martyr, and more than a martyr, at the foot of the Cross of his divine Master. All His sufferings were by love and compassion imprinted in his soul, and thus shared by him. O singular happiness, to have stood under the Cross of Christ! O extraordinary privilege, to have suffered martyrdom in the person of Jesus, and been eyewitness of all He did or endured! If nature revolt within us against suffering, let us call to mind those words of the divine Master: "Thou knowest not now wherefore; but thou shalt know hereafter."