Lent: April 7th
Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent; Opt. Mem. of St. John Baptist de la Salle
MASS READINGS
April 07, 2025 (Readings on USCCB website)
PROPERS [Show]
COLLECT PRAYER
Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent: O God, by whose wondrous grace we are enriched with every blessing, grant us so to pass from former ways to newness of life, that we may be made ready for the glory of the heavenly Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Optional Memorial of St. John Baptist de la Salle: O God, who chose Saint John Baptist de la Salle to educate young Christians, raise up, we pray, teachers in your Church, ready to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the human and Christian formation of the young. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
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We begin the fifth and final full week of Lent. In previous times the crosses and statues in church were veiled at this time to indicate Passion Time. Now the liturgical readings, day after day, tell of the lowering storm clouds that next week will break open. Today’s ancient Lenten readings taught the penitents (and teach us) that every sin is adultery to God—and is pardonable by Christ. —The Vatican II Weekday Missal
The Church celebrates the Optional Memorial of St. John Baptist de la Salle (1651-1719). From Rheims, France, St. John is known as the Father of Modern Pedagogy. He opened schools free of charge for underprivileged children and introduced new teaching methods, such as classroom teaching, using vernacular instead of Latin to teach, establishing trade schools, high schools and a first teacher's school. He founded the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He died in 1719, and is the patron of teachers of youth.
Meditation for Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent:
In early Christian biblical commentary, the innocent Susanna of today’s first Mass reading was presented as a type of the unjustly persecuted Church. Thus the assignment of the Susanna story to today’s liturgy is particularly appropriate given today’s statio at St. Chrysogonus, who, like Sebastian and George, was a soldier-martyr of the Diocletian persecution in the early fourth century. Veneration of St. Chrysogonus was so widespread in Rome that his name was inscribed in the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I). Chrysogonus conformed himself to the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary by offering his own life in witness to the grace of God that had transformed him. So did St. John Fisher, who provides the second selection in today’s Office of Readings. Fisher reminds Lenten pilgrims that the imitation of Christ, while perfected in martyrdom, also takes place in many other ways: “All who have embarked on true contrition and penance for the sins they have committed, and are firmly resolved not to commit sins again for the future but to persevere constantly in that pursuit of virtues which they have now begun, all these become sharers in [Christ’s] holy and eternal sacrifice.”
—George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches
Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Station with San Crisogono in Trastevere (St. Chrysogonus in Trastevere):
The Station, at Rome, is in the church of St. Chrysogonus, one of the most celebrated martyrs of the Church of Rome. His name is inserted in the Canon of the Mass. The church was probably built in the 4th century under Pope Sylvester I and one of the tituli, the first parish churches of Rome, known as the Titulus Chrysogoni.
For more on San Crisogono in Trastevere, see:
For further information on the Station Churches, see The Stational Church.
St. John Baptist de la Salle
Generations of schoolboys have been taught by the Christian Brothers, and their founder, St. John Baptist de la Salle, is familiar in their prayers and devotions. "Brothers Boys" are scattered all over the world and all of them have fond memories of their "De la Salle" days.
John Baptist de la Salle was born at Rheims in 1651, became a member of the cathedral chapter at Rheims when he was sixteen, and was ordained a priest in 1678. Soon after ordination he was put in charge of a girls' school, and in 1679 he met Adrian Nyel, a layman who wanted to open a school for boys. Two schools were started, and Canon de la Salle became interested in the work of education. He took an interest in the teachers, eventually invited them to live in his own house, and tried to train them in the educational system that was forming in his mind. This first group ultimately left, unable to grasp what the saint had in mind; others, however, joined him, and the beginnings of the Brothers of the Christian Schools were begun.
Seeing a unique opportunity for good, Canon de la Salle resigned his canonry, gave his inheritance to the poor, and began to organize his teachers into a religious congregation. Soon, boys from his schools began to ask for admission to the Brothers, and the founder set up a juniorate to prepare them for their life as religious teachers. At the request of many pastors, he also set up a training school for teachers, first at Rheims, then at Paris, and finally at St.-Denis. Realizing that he was breaking entirely new ground in the education of the young, John Baptist de la Salle wrote books on his system of education, opened schools for tradesmen, and even founded a school for the nobility, at the request of King James of England.
The congregation had a tumultuous history, and the setbacks that the founder had to face were many; but the work was begun, and he guided it with rare wisdom. In Lent of 1719, he grew weak, met with a serious accident, and died on Good Friday. He was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1900, and Pope Pius XII proclaimed him patron of schoolteachers.
—Excerpted from The One Year Book of Saints, Rev. Clifford Stevens
Patronage: abuse victims; educators; school principals; teachers (proclaimed on 15 May 1950 by Pope Pius XII); Brothers of the Christian Schools
Highlights and Things to Do:
- From the Catholic Culture library:
- Consecrated Persons And Their Mission In Schools by the Congregation for Catholic Education
- Spectata Fides (On Christian Education) by Pope Leo XIII
- Divini Illius Magistri (On Christian Education) by Pope Pius XI
- Read more about St. John:
- St. John's remains have moved several times. He was originally buried Saint-Yon, Rouen, France in 1719. In 1906 his remains were re-interred at Lembecq-lez-Hal, Belgium. Finally in 1937 he was re-interred in the chapel at the Christian Brothers Curia in Rome, Italy.
