Hello everyone! Heyo! Welcome back to Scattering Flowers with Elise and Miles, a podcast where we read the Daily Gospels and the Saint of the Day.
Let’s get started! Today is Wednesday, April 16th, and we’ll be reading Matthew 26, 14-25.
Follow along in your Bible if you have one.
Now let’s read Matthew 26, 14-25.
Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, What will you give me if I deliver him to you?
And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.
And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.
Now on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Where will you have us prepare for you to go eat the Passover?
He said, Go into the city, to such a one, and say to him, The teacher says, My time is at hand.
I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.
And the disciples did, as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared Passover.
When it was evening, he sat down at table with the disciples.
And as they were eating, he said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me.
And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him, one after another, Is it I, Lord?
He answered, He who has dipped his hand in this dish with me will betray me.
The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.
It would have been greater for that man if he had not been born.
Judas, who betrayed him, said, Is it I, Master?
He said to him, You have said so.
In today’s reading, unlike Judas, Peter and the other disciples didn’t betray Jesus on purpose.
You might probably be thinking, not me, I would never do that.
But actually, we betray Jesus all the time.
We don’t mean to or plan to do it.
Yet, we betray Jesus when we say we are devoted to him, but we don’t live like it.
Heyo! Today’s saint is Saint Benedict Joseph Labre.
Now, let’s read his story.
Born in northern France and the eldest of 15 children, Benedict had good educational opportunities.
But from a young age, he showed himself to only be interested in learning about God.
When Benedict was 16, he began attempts to enter the monastery.
Although he had to first overcome his parents' opposition, fearing the desire for a strict monastic life and convinced that he had a vocation.
He tried to enter several different monasteries.
However, every time he tried to live a monastic life, his health would break down, possibly from anxiety.
Eventually, Benedict realized that God was calling him to a different kind of life.
So he became a wandering pilgrim.
Living poverty and self-denial to an extreme degree, Benedict baked his way from shrine to shrine throughout Europe.
Once, he stopped at a farmhouse near Lyons, France.
He stayed in the room where John Vianney would be born, only three years after Benedict’s death.
The last six years of Benedict’s life was in Rome.
He prayed in churches and gave away any money that was given to him and lived on the streets poorly, clawed and eating very little until he died.
St.
Benedict did everything in life to serve God.
Even though he would get sick, he would do anything to make him closer to God.
When we talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk, when we gossip and tell little lies, we don’t stand up for Jesus.
Like St.
Benedict, he knew how to walk with God through thick and thin.
Let’s pray.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Dear God, help us to walk with you through thick and thin always.
And to stand up for what’s right, even though it’s hard.
St.
Benedict Joseph Labre, pray for us.
Amen.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Thank you so much for listening.
We’ll be back tomorrow with Scatterer in our Flowers.
See ya!