1st Week of Advent, Saturday, Dec 9: Saint Peter Fourier

1st Week of Advent, Saturday, Dec 9

Isaiah 30:19-21, 23-26 / Matthew 9:35 - 10:1, 6-8    

Isaiah foresees more things; When you cry out, he will answer you.

 We may compare prayer to plugging a floor lamp into an electric outlet. The power that lights the lamp doesn't come from our action of plugging the lamp into the outlet. It comes from the power that can now flow through the wire because of our action of plugging it in. It's the same with the power that flows into our lives when we pray. It comes not from the prayers we say but from God with whom prayer places us in contact. Just as an electric outlet doesn't reach out and plug a lamp into itself, neither does God force us to make contact with him. It's up to us to contact him when we need help. That's the way God decided to set up the world.

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How strongly do we believe God's Word in today's reading, when he says that he will answer us when we cry out to him? “The reality of prayer can be proved only by praying.” Sherwood Eddy

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 God is compassionate. He cannot let his people suffer. This compassion of God has become visible in the person of Christ.

The Old Testament text, perhaps an elaboration on Isaiah’s thoughts by a later author, promises restoration to God’s people after their conversion. God will take pity on his people. He promises freedom from evil, sickness, famine, violence, and injustice, provided that people will realize their own poverty and inability to live as they should by their own powers. God will work these things in people and with people.

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To believe in God is certainly a comfort and a consolation. To know that God loves us and cares for us and will protect us from dangers is certainly very comforting. To know that God is merciful and compassionate and that He will forgive us our sins is indeed very consoling. But we must also accept the lessons that God wants to teach us if we had gone wrong or gone astray. 

In the 1st reading, the prophet Isaiah knew that as much as God will forgive, yet God will also teach His people how to walk faithfully in His ways. The prophet says in the 1st reading: God will be gracious to you when He hears your cry, when He hears, He will answer. When the Lord has given you the bread of suffering and the water of distress, He who is your teacher will hide no longer. 

In the gospel, we see the effects of sin on the people - diseases and sicknesses, harassment and dejection, as well as poverty and injustice. Jesus came to proclaim the Good News of the kingdom by curing all kinds of diseases and sicknesses and to teaching the truth of life and love. Let us walk in the ways of the Lord and follow Jesus on the path of salvation. 

And if we experience suffering and hardships, let us believe that God is teaching us something and it will always be for our good. That is comforting and consoling enough for us to keep our faith in God. 

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In the New Testament, Jesus will go out to encounter us and to help us out. He sends out his Church, even today, to encounter people in their miseries and to alleviate all suffering.

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Prayer

God of mercy and compassion, in your Son, Jesus Christ, you have revealed yourself as a God of people. Turn our empty hearts to you, give us eyes to see the depth of our poverty and our inability to build a better world with our own resources, and then come and build it with us through your Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen

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Dec 09, Sat

Saint Peter Fourier - Confessor (1565-1640)

Born on 30 November 1565 at Lorraine, France and educated at the Jesuit University at Pont-à-Mousson, Peter Fourier became a Canon Regular of Saint Augustine in 1585; ordained priest in 1589, he obtained his doctorate in Patristic Theology in 1595.

Ministering with zeal in the little town of Mattaincourt, the most poor, corrupt and threatened by Calvinism, Peter by his personal example of mortification and austerity, loving instruction and fervent prayer brought about its complete spiritual reform. He organized the Guild of Saint Sebastian for men, the Rosary Society for women, the Immaculate Conception Society for young girls, a series of dialogues on Christian virtues, to be publicly recited by children on Sundays and, for the benefit of the poor of the parish, a mutual help bank and a voluntary court of arbitration for the friendly and just settlement of disputes.

In 1597, with the cooperation of Blessed Alix Le Clerc he founded a religious society for women specifically devoted to the education of poor girls, firmly convinced that an uneducated girl was more of a threat to society than an uneducated boy. With papal recognition in 1616 as Canonesses Regular of Saint Augustine of the Congregation of Notre Dame, their numbers grew so rapidly that at the outbreak of the French Revolution there were already 4,000 Sisters.

In 1621, at the request of the Bishop of Toul, Peter undertook the reform of the Augustinian Canons Regular, which eventually resulted in the reestablishment of the Canons Regular of Lorraine as the Congregation of Our Saviour (1629) whose Superior General he was elected in 1632. Remarkably, in the space of six months, he brought all the Protestants—“Poor Strangers” as he termed them—back into the Church.

He died on 9 December 1640, was beatified in 1730 and canonized in 1897.