Psalm 118 : 12, 16, 18, 27, 34, 35
Praise to You, o Lord; instruct me in Your statutes.
In Your laws I will rejoice and will not neglect Your words.
Open my eyes that I may see the marvelous truths in Your Law.
Explain to me all Your ordinances, and I will meditate on Your wondrous deeds.
Give me understanding, that I may observe Your Law with all my heart.
Guide me in obeying Your instructions, for my pleasure lies in them.
Sirach 6 : 5-17
A gentle word makes many friends, an agreeable tongue calls forth gracious replies. Let your friends be many; but your counselors, one in a thousand!
If you would gain a friend, begin by testing him and do not put your confidence in him too quickly. For there is the friend who is such when it suits him but he does not remain faithful in the time of your adversity.
There is the friend who becomes an enemy and, to your confusion, makes known why you quarrelled. There is the friend who shares your table but does not remain faithful when things go against you. In times of prosperity he will be like your shadow and he will speak freely to those of your household. But if you are humiliated, he will turn against you and will avoid meeting you.
Distance yourself from your enemies and be careful about your friends. The faithful friend is a secure refuge; whoever has found one has found a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond all price; hold him as priceless. A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, and those who fear the Lord will find one.
Whoever fears the Lord will make true friends for, as a man is, such will his friends be.
Coadjutor Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian of Shanghai, has passed away today, Saturday, 27 April 2013, at the age of 96 (born 20 June 1916). Let us pray for him and for the persecuted Church in China.
http://www.ucanews.com/news/bishop-jin-of-shanghai-dead-at-97/68064
The current legal bishop of Shanghai is Bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang, who is 94, and also the Apostolic Administrator of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Nanjing.
Two auxiliary bishops of Shanghai, Bishop Joseph Xing (ordained 2005) and Bishop Thaddeus Ma (ordained July 2012) had been under intense governmental pressures, and while the former disappeared from scene and apparently forced to resign in 2011, Bishop Ma has faced even greater persecution due to his courage to detach himself from the illegal CPCA, and for that he suffered greatly.
(Above : Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, Auxiliary Bishop of Shanghai, currently incarcerated in Shanghai seminary by the government, had been so for the past 10 months since his ordination last July)
Pray for the Church in China, and indeed that the motto which Bishop Ma and I had taken up, which Christ had said in His prayer for His people, will come true :
“Ut Omnes Unum Sint, ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam”
(That they all may be One, for the greater glory of God)
That the Church in China may be fully One again with the Universal Church, free from any kind of intervention and persecution by the Godless ones. God help China and the Church there!
Our Lady of Sheshan, pray for us, and pray for them too!
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 