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, September 4th, and the Gospel reading is Luke 5:33 through 39, and the scripture to reflect on is Luke 5:38.
But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.
Sometimes when you read the Bible and you hear Jesus telling all his stories, do you ever think, man, he’s so clever to think of all these things to compare to?
It makes it easy to visualize and remember things.
Take today’s Gospel reading, for instance.
It made me think about the wedding my mom and dad just went to this past weekend.
My mom told me all about it: the beautiful bride, the ceremony, what the food choices were, and how the cake tasted.
But she was telling me that they had to wait a bit to eat because the bride and groom were still taking pictures.
She said she was so hungry.
But it makes sense.
You have to wait for the bride and groom to get the party started.
Would you go and get in line for food or just cut yourself a piece of cake when it’s them that you are celebrating?
Jesus used the image of a wedding.
He called himself the bridegroom.
He explained the wedding guests do not mourn or fast while the groom is right there with them.
Celebration is the only appropriate response for his presence.
He noted at a time of fasting would come later, once he was taken away, pointed towards his future crucifixion.
Today’s Saint of the Day is Blessed Dina Belanger.
She was born 1897 and died 1929.
She is the patron saint of music students.
Born in Quebec, Canada, Dina would later be known as the Little Flower of Canada because her life was spiritually similar to that of Saint Therese as a child.
Dina showed remarkable skills as a pianist.
Music became her special way of bringing glory to God.
Dina’s intensified love for her prayer, natural goodness, and sympathetically of life.
Dina attended a conservatory in New York and became an accomplished concert pianist, but she always declared to have her life completely to God.
In 1921, Dina was received into the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, in which she took the name Sister Marie Saint-Cecile de Rome.
She taught music for a time, but contracted scarlet fever and then tuberculosis, which ultimately claimed her life at the age of 24.
Dina’s short life would have been known only to her sisters, loved ones, and God.
Her spiritual superiors not asked her to write an autobiography while she was ill, published after her death.
Her autobiography reveals a deep mystical interior life and a profound participation in the merciful love of Jesus and the life of the Trinity.
Let’s pray.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Dear Jesus, thank you for giving us parables to know more about you and what you teach, and help us to draw close to your merciful heart of you, just as Blessed Dina did.
Blessed Dina, belinger, 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.