Easter: May 9th
Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Other Commemorations: St. Pachomius, Abbot (RM)
MASS READINGS
May 09, 2025 (Readings on USCCB website)
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COLLECT PRAYER
Friday of the Third of the Week of Easter: Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who have come to know the grace of the Lord's Resurrection, may, through the love of the Spirit, ourselves rise to newness of life. 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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The Roman Martyrology commemorates St. Pachomius of Tabenna (290-346), founder of the cenobitical life, born near Esneh, Egypt; died at Phebôou around the year 346. After spending some time with the hermit Palemon, he withdrew to Tabennisi where he introduced community life among the hermits who gathered around him. Before he died he had established nine monasteries for men and two for women. His order continued until the 11th century. Represented in hermit's garb, or crossing the Nile on the back of a crocodile.
Meditation for Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Resignation
”Be ye subject therefore to every human creature for God’s sake.” While the liturgy emphasizes the thought that we have no permanent abode in this world, it reminds us that we must adjust our lives to the plan which God made for us while we remain in this world. "Be ye subject therefore to every human creature for God's sake."
2. When St. Paul tells us that we are to be subject to every human creature for the love of God, he does not imply that we should close our eyes to injustice, selfishness, and evil. The emphasis placed on a return to social justice by recent popes makes the mind of the Church clear on this point. We do indeed live in a vale of tears, and we know that we can never expect perfection in this world, but we can and must work toward an improvement of conditions in the world about us. While it is not easy, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out in his encyclical on the condition of labor, to define the relative rights of the rich and the poor, there are nevertheless certain definite principles which truth and justice dictate in controlling our relationships with our fellow men. The solutions proposed by the various forms of socialism are not and cannot be accepted by the Church, because under the specious garb of humanitarianism, they are, as St. Paul tells us in the Epistle, "making liberty a cloak for malice," and are not based on the principles of liberty and justice. Many of those who propose plans for the betterment of living conditions, look upon man as merely a part of animal creation, forgetting that he has not only a right to a reasonable amount of comfort and happiness in this world, but also a duty to bear the cross so that he may earn an eternal reward for his labor. Speaking of these false socialistic theories, Pope Leo XIII says:
"What is of still greater importance, however is that the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. For every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation. For the brute has no power of self direction, but is governed by two chief instincts which keep his powers alert, move him to use his strength, and determine him to action without the power of choice" (Leo XIII, On the Condition of Labor).
Any plan for the improvement of the life of man on earth must learn to look upon men "as servants of God." The reformer and the social worker must first learn to "honor all men; love the brotherhood, and fear God." While St. Paul has great respect for authority and commands us to "honor the king as excelling, and the governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil doers," he does not deify the state. It is a pernicious mistake to suppose that the civil government has the right, at its own discretion, to penetrate and pervade the family and the home. While the civil government does have the responsibility for caring for the welfare of its citizens, it does not have the right to control and dictate how they should live, as is being done in so many of the welfare states of today.
The Church is not content with pointing out the errors of socialism; she points to the true remedy for social injustice and applies it to actual conditions. It is her right to teach men and to train them through the instructions of her bishops and priests. Through her teaching office she diffuses her salutary teachings far and wide. She strives to influence the minds and the hearts of men, so that they may willingly yield themselves to be formed and guided by the commandments of God. It is precisely in this fundamental matter that the Church has a power peculiar to herself. The agencies she employs for the improvement of human life in this world, are given her for the very purpose of reaching the hearts of men, by Jesus Christ Himself, and they derive their efficacy from God.
3. "Shout with joy to God all the earth." The earth ought to be a place of joy and happiness, especially now that our redemption has been accomplished. Man has been redeemed but he must allow himself to be regenerated through the grace of God. As long as men refuse to listen to the Church and refuse to apply the principles taught by Christ, there will continue to be social injustice, pain, and suffering in this world. It is futile to plan and establish world wide organizations for peace if we continue to ignore the will of the God of peace. Christ once stood on a mountain outside the City of Jerusalem and wept over it. In spite of all that He had done to turn it from its evil ways, it had been deaf to His pleading. He could foresee that the day would come when not a stone would be left upon a stone in that beautiful city, and that it would be destroyed for its wickedness. "If thou hadst known and that in this thy day, the things that are for thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes" (Luke 19:42). So too, Christ must look down upon the world today, and upon that great temple we have built for the United Nations in our frantic search for peace and must say, "If thou hadst known the things that are for thy peace." All this elaborate equipment, all these detailed plans and negotiations are commendable, but it would be so much simpler if you would only learn to obey the Ten Commandments.
—Benedict Baur, OSB, The Light of the World, Vol. 2
St. Pachomius
St. Pachomius can justifiably be called the founder of cenobitic monasticism (monks who live in community). Even though St. Antony the Great was the first to go into the desert to live a life of seclusion pursuing evangelical perfection, he lived an eremitic life, that is, a primarily solitary life.
Pachomius first started out as a hermit in the desert like many of the other men and women / in the third and fourth centuries who sought the most radical expression of Christian life and he developed a very strong bond of friendship with the hermit Palemon. One day he had a vision during prayer in which he was called to build a monastery, and was told in the vision that many people who are eager to live an ascetic life in the desert, but are not inclined to the solitude of the hermit, will come and join him. His hermit friend Palemon helped him to build the monastery and Pachomius insisted that his cenobites were to aspire to the austerity of the hermits.
However, he knew that his idea was a radical one, in that most of the men who came to live in his monastery had only ever conceived of the eremitic lifestyle; his great accomplishment was to reconcile this desire for austere perfection with an openness to fulfilling the mundane requirements of community life as an expression of Christian love and service. He spent most of his first years as a cenobitic doing all the menial work on his own, knowing that his brother monks needed to be gently inducted into serving their brothers in the same manner. He therefore allowed them to devote all their time to spiritual exercises in those first years. At his death, there were eleven Pachomian monasteries, nine for men and two for women.
The rule that Pachomius drew up was said to have been dictated to him by an angel, and it is this rule that both St. Benedict in the west and St. Basil in the east drew upon to develop their better known rules of cenobitic life.
— Catholic News Agency
Highlights and Things to Do:
- Read more about St. Pachomius:
- St. Pachomius is considered to be the father of cenobitic monasticism. What does cenobitic even mean? The first type monastic living was the life of a hermit, living solitarily, called eremitic. Cenobitic monasticism emphasizes community life. In Western monasticism the cenobitic monks join in a community of a religious order, regulated by a religious rule, a collection of precepts. St. Augustine and St. Benedict followed the example set by Pachomius for their religious orders.
