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 27th, and the Gospel reading is John 10, 31-42, and the scripture to reflect on is John 10, 36.
Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said I am the Son of God?
In the movie Aladdin, he says a phrase so often that Jasmine catches on to it and realizes that him in disguise is truly Aladdin.
He says this thing when she first meets him and has to trust him to jump off a building, and he also says it again when she goes on a magical carpet ride with him.
He says, do you trust me, and reaches his hand out for her to grab.
She at one point realizes that Prince Ali and Aladdin were the same person.
The funny thing is that she does trust him easily because she has fallen in love with him.
We too can trust Jesus easily because we love him, and he is loving and trustworthy.
Jesus is perfect and in unity with God.
When we see Jesus, we can also see God’s love.
Even though some people didn’t really trust him and wanted to throw rocks at him, and such others, many others, believed in him because of his actions of kindness and words of love.
Jesus always told the truth about who he was, the Son of God.
Today’s Saint of the Day is Blessed Alberto Morvelli.
He was born 1918 and died 1946.
He is the patron saint of young people and politicians.
Alberto grew up in Rimini, Italy, the second of six children.
He graduated with an engineering degree in 1941 and started teaching, but soon the ties of war would disrupt life and as he knew it, Rimini was devastated by Allied bombing.
And Alberto’s parents fled to a nearby town.
After every bombing, Alberto would risk his life to bicycle to the wounded and dying.
He often returned late at night without coat or shoes or even his bicycle at all, which he had given away.
Alberto voluntarily joined the Nazi engineering organization that was used forced labor to build foundations against the Allies.
Knowing some German having an engineering degree, Alberto was able to have some level of authority.
He used inside information to warn the raids and his official stamp to help young men avoid deportation to Germany.
The Germans soon realized what he was doing and arrested him.
Alberto, under cover of hungering a friend goodbye, slipped him an official stamp, which the friend used to secure Alberto’s release.
After the war, Alberto took the lead in rebuilding Rimini and soon decided to go into politics.
One evening, however, he was bicycling to a meeting regarding an election.
He was accidentally hit by a truck and died.
He was only 28 years old.
God would do anything for us.
That is why he sent Jesus, his only son, into the world to give him life for us.
God sometimes might seem far away, but he will never leave our side because he loves us that much.
Alberto’s father died when he was a young teenager, and this experience drew him to spiritual life.
He also read the life of Pierre-Joseph Fattati, whom he admired and wanted to imitate.
Alberto was convinced that he could become holy in his everyday life.
Let’s pray.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Dear God, thank you that we have your love and that you do things for us through your love.
And tell me to influence others too, to love living for you.
Blessed Alberto Marvelli, 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!