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The Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time • Saint Bartholomew, Apostle • Saint Monica • Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church • The Passion of Saint John the Baptist • Liturgical Colours: Red/Green/White
This week the course is set for a spiritual journey from unfaithfulness to conversion, from estrangement to communion. As Jeremiah’s prophecy unfolds, the long distance between God and his people becomes painfully clear. The prophet will say what happens when the human heart turns away from God, while the Fathers of the Church and the saints will show the way home to Christ.
Thus we’ll see a First Reading crying out and a Second Reading answering: judgment opens toward hope, weakness becomes the place of God’s power, repentance answers God’s call, and the people who have abandoned the “source of living waters” are called back to Christ, the fountain of life.
Together, the readings and the feast days of the week will lead us from wandering to return, from thirst to the fountain, and finally from communion with Christ to witness.
We start on Monday with the Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle. Saint Paul describes the apostles as weak, persecuted, and “fools on Christ’s account,” while Saint John Chrysostom sees in that very weakness the evidence of Christ’s power. The Morning Prayer gathers the mystery into one promise, a concise commentary on this week’s theme:
- “You are strangers and aliens no longer. No, you are fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God.”— Short Reading: Ephesians 2:19-22, Morning Prayer, Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle
Tuesday begins a series of First Readings with Jeremiah’s prophetic mission: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” Saint John Chrysostom’s meditation turns toward our response, offering five paths of repentance: confession of sin, forgiveness, prayer, almsgiving, and humility. The God who calls opens doors for the wandering heart to return.
Wednesday makes the dialogue between Scripture and tradition especially clear. The prophet Jeremiah names Israel’s estrangement and sin:
- “Two evils have my people done: they have forsaken me, the source of living waters; They have dug themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that hold no water.”—First Reading, From the book of the prophet Jeremiah (The infidelity of God’s people)
Saint Columban takes up Jeremiah’s image and reflects on it in the light of Christ:
- “The Lord himself, our God Jesus Christ, is the fountain of life.”— Second Reading, From an instruction by Saint Columban, Abbot, (“Whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink his fill”)
We thirst because we have left the fountain, we return by coming to Christ, the prophetic image becomes Christian contemplation.
Thursday‘s Memorial of Saint Monica shows the patient love of a mother who never stopped praying for her son’s return. To her delight, Saint Monica lived to see Saint Augustine baptized and turned toward God. Near the end of her life, mother and son contemplated eternity together:
- “We desired with all our hearts to drink from the streams of your heavenly fountain, the fountain of life.”— Second Reading, Memorial of Saint Monica, From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop (Let us gain eternal wisdom)
That fountain that Israel abandoned is now the fountain Saint Monica and her son long to drink from together.
Friday, the Memorial of Saint Augustine follows, bringing this journey inward. We hear the prophet crying out, “Cleanse your heart of evil, O Jerusalem,” while Saint Augustine answers with one of the Church’s great confessions of conversion:
- “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside.”—Second Reading, From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop, (O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity)
His estrangement, “You were within me, but I was outside”, transformed into longing and communion:
- “I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”— Second Reading, From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop (O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity)
We can catch a glimpse of his conversion into the restlessness of every human heart seeking God:
- “You made us for yourself; our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” — Canticle of Zechariah Antiphon, Morning Prayer, Memorial of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
We close the week on Saturday, with the Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist. While the prophet Jeremiah warns against the empty confidence of worship without conversion, Saint Bede gives us John, whose witness to the Truth was so complete that he would not silence it even to save his life:
- “Does Christ not say: I am the truth? Therefore, because John shed his blood for the truth, he surely died for Christ.”— Second Reading, From a homily by Saint Bede the Venerable, priest (Precursor of Christ in birth and death)
This week moves from estrangement to communion, and from communion to witness. Saint Bartholomew belongs to the household of God and is sent as an apostle; Saint Monica prays for a wandering son to arrive home; Saint Augustine discovers the Beauty who was within him all along, while Saint John remains with the Truth even unto death.
The “broken cisterns” cannot quench the fire of a restless heart. Only the “fountain of life” will.
The Hours accompany this journey, calling us back from distraction and estrangement into communion with God and with the praying Church. If this prayer has helped lead you again to the fountain, please consider supporting our work, including our ongoing Spanish Liturgy of the Hours project. divineoffice.org/contribute
With gratitude,
The Divine Office Team
Note: In composing this text we were guided by the relationship between the two readings of the Office as we find it explained in the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours. The biblical readings unfold God’s revelation through the history of salvation, while “the purpose of the Second Reading is principally to provide a meditation on the word of God as received by the Church in its tradition.”[1] The writings of the Fathers bear witness to the Church’s centuries-long contemplation of the Word of God and, by constant use, we are “led to a deeper reflection on Sacred Scripture, and a relish and love for it.”[2] Therefore, the Second Reading can be heard in dialogue with the First— the biblical readings and the Church’s meditation upon Scripture illumining one another when heard together in the Office. In that spirit we followed the threads running through this week’s readings.
Source of Note quotes:
[1][2] General instructions of the Liturgy of the Hours, Chapter III-VII. The Readings From the Fathers and Church Writers, no. 163 and no. 164 https://divineoffice.org/general-instructions/#Ch%20III-VII
