Wednesday of the Twenty-first week in Ordinary Time
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 23,27-32.
Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous,
and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets' blood.'
Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets;
now fill up what your ancestors measured out!"
Take from me, O Lord, my heart of stone
It is for us to love Christ as he loved us. In this he left us an example so that we might follow in his steps (1Pt 2,21). This is why he says: “Set me as a seal upon your arm” (Sg 8,6). Is is as if he said: “Love me as I love you. Have me in your mind, your memory, your desire, your yearning, your sighing and your sobbing. Remember, mankind, how I made you, how I put you before all other creatures, how I ennobled you with such dignity, how I crowned you with glory and honor, how I made you only a little less than the angels, how I subjected all things under your feet (Ps 8). Remember, too, not only the many things I made for you, but what harsh and undeserved things I endured for you... If you love me, show me that you love me! Love me in deed and in truth, not with the word and the tongue... Set me as a seal upon your heart that you may love me with all your strength”... Take from me, O Lord, my heart of stone. Take away my hardened heart...; give me a new heart, a heart of flesh, a pure heart! (Ez 36,26). You who purify the heart, you who love the pure heart, possess my heart and dwell within it.
Baldwin of Ford (?-c.1190)
Cistercian abbot, then Bishop