The saint of the day is St Sebastian of Aparicio. He was born in the region of Galicia in northern Spain to a peasant family in 1502. He traveled to Mexico at the age of 31 to work in the fields as a laborer. Eventually he worked to build roads to facilitate agricultural trading and other commerce in Mexico, spending 10 years building a 466-mile road from Mexico City to Zacatecas. He became a wealthy farmer and rancher. At the age of 72, Sebastian distributed his goods among the poor and entered the Franciscans as a brother. Assigned to the large friary at Puebla de los Angeles south of Mexico City, he collected alms for the friars for the next 25 years. He often travel with oxen and a cart. He died at the age of 98. He was beatified in 1787 and is the patron of travelers and the transportation industry in Mexico.
Our psalm refrain today proclaims: “Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.” We can commit our lives to the Lord in different ways. The lives of the saints show us the different ways we can commit to the Lord. We do not have to be a consecrated religious or ordained clergy to commit our lives to the Lord. We need to hear the calling to which he calls us and to follow that calling with faithfulness.
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