05 Sept 2026 – Saturday of Week 22
05 Sept 2026 – Saturday of Week 22
Optional Memorial: St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa): the tiny woman recognized throughout the world for her work among the poorest of the poor, was beatified October 19, 2003. Among those present were hundreds of Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded in 1950, as a diocesan religious community. Today the congregation also includes contemplative sisters and brothers, and an order of priests. Born to Albanian parents in what is now Skopje, Macedonia, Gonxha (Agnes) Bojaxhiu was the youngest of the three children who survived. For a time, the family lived comfortably, and her father’s construction business thrived. But life changed overnight following his unexpected death.
During her years in public school, Agnes participated in a Catholic sodality and showed a strong interest in the foreign missions. At age 18, she entered the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. It was 1928 when she said goodbye to her mother for the final time and made her way to a new land and a new life. The following year she was sent to the Loreto novitiate in Darjeeling, India. There she chose the name Teresa and prepared for a life of service. She was assigned to a high school for girls in Calcutta, where she taught history and geography to the daughters of the wealthy. But she could not escape the realities around her—the poverty, the suffering, the overwhelming numbers of destitute people.
In 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling to make a retreat, Sister Teresa heard what she later explained as “a call within a call. The message was clear. I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.” She also heard a call to give up her life with the Sisters of Loreto and instead, to “follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of the poor.” After receiving permission to leave Loreto, establish a new religious community, and undertake her new work, Saint Teresa of Calcutta took a nursing course for several months. She returned to Calcutta, where she lived in the slums and opened a school for poor children. Dressed in a white sari and sandals–the ordinary dress of an Indian woman–she soon began getting to know her neighbors—especially the poor and sick—and getting to know their needs through visits.
The work was exhausting, but Saint Teresa of Calcutta was not alone for long. Volunteers who came to join her in the work, some of them former students, became the core of the Missionaries of Charity. Others helped by donating food, clothing, supplies, and the use of buildings. In 1952, the city of Calcutta gave Saint Teresa of Calcutta a former hostel, which became a home for the dying and the destitute. As the order expanded, services were also offered to orphans, abandoned children, alcoholics, the aging, and street people.
For the next four decades, Mother Teresa worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor. Her love knew no bounds. Nor did her energy, as she crisscrossed the globe pleading for support and inviting others to see the face of Jesus in the poorest of the poor. In 1979, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On September 5, 1997, God called her home. Blessed Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016.
1st Reading: 1 Corinthians 4:6-15
By his his lifestyle and manner, Paul seeks to win back the loyalty of the Corinthians
I have applied all this to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brethren, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favour of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift
Already you are filled! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the off-scouring of all things.
I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Responsorial: Psalm 53
R./: God himself is my help
O God, save me by your name;
by your power, uphold my cause.
O God, hear my prayer;
listen to the words of my mouth. (R./)
But I have God for my help.
The Lord upholds my life.
I will sacrifice to you with willing heart
and praise your name for it is good. (R./)
Gospel: Luke 6:1-5
Jesus defends his disciples for eating grain on the Sabbath
One sabbath while Jesus was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked some heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
Keeping the Sabbath
The sabbath greeting among Jews is Shabbath shalom! Literally this means “Sabbath Peace!” but it implies a prayer for fullness of life. Growing to this fullness cannot be achieved just by keeping a set of fixed rules. When accused that his disciples were breaking the sabbath, Jesus gave a common-sense answer, backed up by a Scriptural proof. His friends were plucking ears of grain and eating them, an action normally allowed on weekdays. But Jesus proves that it may also be done on the Sabbath by reminding them of when David and his men got special permission to eat the Temple bread, normally reserved for priests. Authentic keeping of the Law allowed for doing whatever was necessary.
Lord of the sabbath
For Jesus, it was perfectly right to satisfy one’s hunger on the Sabbath, especially for people like his disciples who were never sure where they would find their next meal. After defending his friends, Jesus declares that he himself is Lord of the Sabbath. Sunday is our Christian Sabbath, and one it, any work which serves the basic needs of others is allowed. The deeper meaning of Sabbath is as the day when we try to do God’s work, and that means responding to the needs of others as Jesus did.
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