One Minute Reflection – 19 July – Thursday of the Fifteenth week in Ordinary Time, Year C – Today’s Gospel: Matthew 11:28-30.
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest for yourselves…” … Matthew 11:29
REFLECTION – “You are to “take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” You are not learning from me how to refashion the fabric of the world, nor to create all things visible and invisible, nor to work miracles and raise the dead. Rather, you are simply learning of me: “that I am meek and lowly in heart.” If you wish to reach high, then begin at the lowest level. If you are trying to construct some mighty edifice in height, you will begin with the lowest foundation. This is humility. However great the mass of the building you may wish to design or erect, the taller the building is to be, the deeper you will dig the foundation. The building in the course of its erection, rises up high but he who digs its foundation, must first go down very low. So then, you see even a building is low before it is high and the tower is raised, only after humiliation.”… St Augustine (354-430) Fater & Doctor (Sermon 69)
PRAYER – “Holy God, our Father, we turn to You in confidence as children and pray, give us meekness of heart, make us “poor in spirit” that we may recognise that we are not self-sufficient, that we are unable to build our lives on our own but need You, we need to encounter You, to listen to You, to speak to You. Help us to understand that we need Your gift, Your wisdom, which is Jesus Himself, in order to do the Your will in our lives and thus to find rest in the hardships of our journey.” Hear the prayers we request of St Simon of Lipnica dear Lord and holy God, which we pray through Christ, our Light, in the Holy Spirit, one God for all eternity, amen. … Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, 7 December 2011
On his way to Tarsus contrary winds drove his ship to Rome. There no-one recognised him, in this pale and tattered mendicant, the heir of Rome’s noblest house, not even his sorrowing parents, who had vainly sent throughout the world in search of him. From his own father’s charity Saint Alexius begged a miserable shelter in his palace, under a staircase, with the leavings of his table as food. There, he spent another seventeen years, bearing patiently the mockery and ill usage of his own servants and witnessing daily, the still inconsolable grief of his spouse and parents.
But God had commanded Alexius himself to write down his life story and sign it, in this way He Himself confirmed His servant’s sanctity, when he was found lifeless in his retreat, holding that document in his hand. The Pope read aloud what was written on the parchment of the Saint and everywhere in Rome there was a single cry of admiration, impossible to describe. 
During the next decade she ran two day schools and an orphanage. In 1812 she founded the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny. Then the dam burst, with demand for her sisters’ services clamouring throughout France.
It wasn’t long before she had sisters serving black, brown and bronze people at remote places in Africa at Senegal, Sierra Leone and Gambia and in South America at French Guiana. With dogged faith the sisters battled extreme hardship everywhere.
AnaStpaul 
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