We remember today Pope St. John XXIII. He was born into the Roncalli family and Baptized Angelo. Throughout his life, he cooperated with God’s grace, believing that the job at hand was always worthy of his best efforts. His sense of God’s providence and care made him the ideal person to promote a new dialogue with people of faith around the world. In an overtly courageous move, he called for the Second Vatican Council, presided over its beginning, and died before it was concluded.
Stories about Pope St. John XXIII: https://youtu.be/67omOrcsIsM
More stories about Pope St. John XXIII: https://youtu.be/tpeZm3DWlcU
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Did you know that the popular hymn “Now Thank We All Our God” was written in the early 1600’s? It was written by a Lutheran pastor, Martin Rinkart, in the town of Eilenburg in Saxony. What is truly remarkable is that it was also written during the time of the Thirty Years’ War and in the midst of an epidemic of plague and famine.
Eilenburg was a village surrounded by walls, which made it an ideal place of hiding for thousands of refugees – but also a perfect place for the plague to break out and spread. In one year, nearly 4,500 people died! All the other officials and pastors fled Eilenburg, leaving Rinkart alone to care for the dying and to bury the dead. Both the war and the plague dragged on; the suffering continued. Yet through it all, the pastor never lost courage or faith, even during the darkest days of Eilenburg’s agony. It was at precisely this time that “Now Thank We All Our God” was written – evidence that we can be thankful even during the most difficult of circumstances in life.
How inclined are we to keep our minds on God’s love when the world is filled with so much trouble, agony, and even hatred. How inclined are we to keep our minds on God’s promises of heaven? How inclined are we to sing these words? “Now thank we all our God, With heart, and hands, and voices, Who wondrous things hath done, In whom His world rejoices …[So] preserve us in His grace, And guide us in distress, And free us from all sin, Till heaven we possess.”
