Hello everyone! Heyo! Welcome back to Scattering Flowers with Elise and Miles, a podcast where you read the daily gospels and the saint of the day.
Let’s get started! Today is Friday, March 13th, and the gospel reading is Mark 12, 28-34, and the scripture to reflect on is Mark 12, 30.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Of course you know the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
Why is the alphabet important?
Letters serve as a foundation of our language.
You have to have letters to make sounds, and then when we put those letters and sounds together, we can make words, and when we put words together, we can create sentences and communicate to each other.
We can read whole books, and we can write things for one another, and most importantly, we can read the most important book of all, the Bible.
We have to have that as our foundation before we can do anything else with the language.
Today’s gospel, Jesus was once asked what the most important commandment is.
He gives us the foundation of our faith, which is to love God and love others.
Today’s saint of the day is Saint Matilda.
She was born 895 and died 968.
She is the patron saint of large families and misbehaving children.
Saint Matilda was raised by her grandmother, who encouraged her to pray and help others.
Matilda was married to King Henry the Fowler and ruled as Queen of Germany.
Her five kids were princes and princesses.
She loved them dearly.
She not only provided for their needs of food, clothing, and shelter, but she also provided for the spiritual needs and showed them how to be like Jesus.
She set an example of being humble, moral, and generous.
Matilda also showed her kids how important it is to take care of children in their country who didn’t have money or parents.
Even though Matilda was a queen, she gave away wealth to children so that they could have food, clothing, and shelter, just like her own kids had.
It might not always be easy.
Sometimes we might not want to put God first.
We might not have to love those around us, especially they aren’t our favorite people or aren’t very nice.
But God can help us do that.
God wants us to love him because he loves us.
He loves us before we were even born, and he will always love us no matter what we do.
He wants what is best for us and promises to always provide for us.
What more can we give him?
Love God and love one another.
Towards the end of her life, Matilda spent most of her time in the various monasteries.
She had help to found with her generous contributions.
Become seriously ill, Matilda traveled to a convent in Quedlinburg.
When she died, she was buried at her husband’s side.
Immediately after her death, she was honored as a saint by the local people.
Matilda lived a life of great privilege, but she used her riches selflessly, generously, lashing her abundance to the others in need.
Let’s pray.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Dear God, thank you for your love.
Help us to love others just like you do.
And help me to have a giving heart and to be generous with what I have.
Saint Matilda, 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 next week scattering more flowers.
See ya!