Day XVI. Thursday, Week II.
"God of love, bring us back to you. Send your Spirit to make us strong in faith and active in good works. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen" (Collect for today).

Santa Maria in Trastevere. One of the oldest and most beautiful churches in the city, Santa Maria was built on the site of a miraculous font of oil, which flowed for one day in the year 36 BC. This was interpreted as a divine portent that an Anointed One would be born whose power would flow to the entire world. The Christians later understood this to be fulfilled in Christ. An oratory was built here by

Pope Callistus I (217-222) and later rebuilt twice, the last as a offering of thanksgiving for the end of the schism in 1124 when the anti-pope resigned. (The mosaics in this church are extraordinary. The photo is one of Jesus' birth.) Thursday’s churches are places where the poor are tended to in a special way. Today, the Community of Sant’Egidio tend to the needs of the poor from this church.