A daily study of the Network’s diverse faiths
St Moses, Prophet (Moshe Rabbenu, מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּנוּ, Moses our Teacher, Mūsā, موسى, Apostle to Pharaoh) (c1392-c1272 BCE). Eastern Orthodox, Catholic Church Feast Day and Lutheran Commemoration of the seer, lawgiver and reformer who was the most important prophet in Judaism. He is also an important prophet in Christianity, Islam, the Bahá’í Faith, Mormonism and other Abrahamic religions. Moses was born in Goshen, Lower Egypt after Joseph took his father Jacob and his brothers there during the c1630-1523 BCE 15th Dynasty to escape a famine in the land of Canaan. The descendants of Jacob had been enslaved by the Egyptians and the legend is that when Aaron was 3 they were ordered to kill all their new-born male children. When Moses, the brother of Aaron and Miriam, was born his mother put him in a basket and set it afloat on the River Nile and he was found by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised as her own son. When he was 40, Moses killed an Egyptian taskmaster and fled to the land of Midian where he worked as a shepherd for 40 years. Then, the Lord called him to go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh: “Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.” Eventually, Pharaoh agreed and, after the Israelites celebrated the first Passover, Moses led them out. At the Red Sea, the Egyptian army was destroyed after the Israelites passed to safety on dry land. On Mount Sinai, Moses was given the Tablets of the Law and the Tabernacle was erected, but because of disobedience the Israelites had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses himself was not permitted to enter the Promised Land, although God allowed him to view it before he died at Mount Nebo in Moab east of the Dead Sea. In the New Testament, Moses is referred to as lawgiver and prophet. The first five books of the Bible are attributed to him. Venerated in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baháʼí Faith. Image: russianicon.vom.
Prayer Lord God, heavenly Father, through the prophet Moses You began the prophetic pattern of teaching Your people the true faith and demonstrating through miracles Your presence in creation to heal its brokenness. Grant that we may see in Your Son the final end-time prophet. Amen
Bienheureuse Marie Dina Bélanger (Blessed Dina Bélanger RJM, Marie-Marguerite-Dina-Adélaïde, Marie of Saint Cecilia of Rome) (1897-1929). Feast Day commemorating the death of the Québécois Canadian professed religious and noted musician who grew up in the parish of Notre-Dame-de-Jacques-Cartier in the Saint-Roch ward of the city. Her mother took her to Mass as a child but also to novenas and sermons that she found boring so she took her stoneware doll with her, which annoyed her mother. Convent-educated from 6, in 1911 she made a private act of consecration to God but was sent to learn music in New York and performed in public concerts between 1918 and 1921, became a Third Order Dominican, entered the Religious of Jesus and Mary (Religieuses de Jésus-Marie) in 1921, and finally made her monastic vows in 1923. During a period of illness from 1924, she wrote an autobiographical account of her spiritual encounters with Jesus after He had said to her in a vision: “You will do good by your writings.” Marie died of tuberculosis in Sillery, Québec on 4 September 1929 and her remains were buried on 7 September in at the Couvent Jésus-Marie in Sillery, being exhumed in 1951 during her beatification cause. Exhumed again in May 1990, they were translated to her present tomb in the chapel of the provincial house of the Religious of Jesus and Mary in Sillery. Venerated in Roman Catholic Church. Patron of musicians. Image: dinabelanger.ca.
St Ultan of Ardbraccan (Ultan the scribe) (d657). Feast Day for Irish preacher and hymnist of the royal race of O’Connor who wrote extensively and illuminated works on his ancestor St Brigid and on St Patrick. He was appointed Abbot-Bishop of Ardbraccan 5 km from Navan and founded a school in his Celtic monastery to feed and educate poor students from all parts of Ireland. When a plague of yellow fever left many orphans helpless and starving, Ultan took 150 babies to his monastery. He founded the first Christian church in the Diocese of Kilmore, at Gallon 45 km north of his monastery. After a short time as Bishop of Meath, he retired to the Aran Islands, where he died and where his tomb slab has been discovered. Ultan’s Holy Well was originally within his monastery and later within the Anglo-Norman Bishop’s grounds. Ultan’s church at Gallon is now the 1829 St Ultan’s Catholic Church 1 km away at Upper Killinkere, although the original church’s ruins still stand in what was part of a monastic settlement dating from the Fourteenth to Sixteenth centuries. The monastery was destroyed and abandoned between the 1590 Inquisition, the 1606 Protestant Ulster Plantation colonisation and the 1652 Act of Settlement of Ireland. Killinkere had no Catholic Church during the 1695-1829 Penal Times that sought to uphold the establishment of the Church of England against Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics. In 1780, a thatched mud hut was erected near the entrance to the old church and the present church was completed by Christmas Day 1829 at a total cost of £330. The 1919 St Ultan’s women’s hospital for infants (Ospidéal Leanaí Naomh Ultan) was opened due to the high level of infant mortality in Dublin and the rise of infant syphilis in the wake of the First World War. It closed in 1984 and merged with the National Children’s Hospital. Venerated in Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic Churches, Ultan’s feast has always been celebrated. Patron of children, paediatricians. Image: meathchronicle.ie.