Friday, January 15
Center illustration: St. Anthony Abbot burying St Paul the Hermit.
ST. PAUL THE HERMIT (Paul of Thebes)(Egypt, 228-345)
Considered to be the first Christian hermit, Paul was in his 20s when he escaped the Christian
persecution under Emperor Dacian by fleeing to a cave in the desert outside Thebes. He found
the solitude and opportunity for prayer so right for him that he stayed for the next 90 years.
He subsisted on a nearby spring and palm tree, though it was said that when he was 43, a raven
started bringing him half a loaf of bread every day. When he was 112, he received a visit from
St. Anthony Abbot (Anthony the Great), already renowned as a pioneer of ascetic monasticism
and who had himself lived as a desert anchorite. It is said they spent a day and a night talking
to each other. Paul lived another year and died at age 113. St. Jerome wrote a biography which
has become the standard source about him.
[GReadings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011610.shtml
OR today.
The newspaper leads off with a wrap-up on the unprecedented earthquake disaster in Haiti and international assistance,
with separate articles on the losses to the Church (at least a hundred priests and religious confirmed dead); the
mobilization of Cor Unum, Caritas International and other Catholic organizations, and a backgrounder on that chronically
troubled country, the poorest in the Western hemisphere.
The papal story is the Pope's address to the city, provincial and regional administrators of Rome and Lazio, reminding
them that the human being and the common good must be the center of all political actions, Other Page 1 stories:
US special envoy in Pakistan seeks dialog with Taliban moderates; and the director of the International Monetary
Fund says he sees no danger that the world will revert to economic crisis.
THE POPE'S DAY
The Holy Father met today with
- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna
- Mons. Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, Archbishop of Avignon (France)
- Mons. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Bishop of Regensburg
- Dom Philippe Dupont, O.S.B., Abbbot of St. Pierre Abbey, Solesmes (France)
- Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Address in Italian.
The Office of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations has released the calendar of liturgical events presided
over by the Holy Father in Frbruary to April 2010.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/01/2010 07:25]