The great supper, and the servant | Catholic Daily No. 133

Yesterday the Church prayed for the dead. Today she keeps, as an optional memorial, a lay brother who spent his life among the sick of Lima, and the Gospel is the story of a dinner nobody wanted to attend.

First reading, Philippians 2:5-11: "For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father."

The Latin of the center of it is Humiliavit semetipsum factus obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis.

Gospel, Luke 14:15-24: "When one of them that sat at table with him, had heard these things, he said to him: Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. But he said to him: A certain man made a great supper, and invited many. And he sent his servant at the hour of supper to say to them that were invited, that they should come, for now all things are ready. And they began all at once to make excuse. The first said to him: I have bought a farm, and I must needs go out and see it: I pray thee, hold me excused. And another said: I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to try them: I pray thee, hold me excused. And another said: I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And the servant returning, told these things to his lord. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant: Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the feeble, and the blind, and the lame. And the servant said: Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the Lord said to the servant: Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. But I say unto you, that none of those men that were invited, shall taste of my supper."

The Latin of the master's last order is Exi in vias, et saepes : et compelle intrare, ut impleatur domus mea.

In the Catena Aurea, Cyril reads the story against the first reading: "That servant who was sent is Christ Himself, who being by nature God and the true Son of God, emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant." Gregory notices how the guests refuse: "For when they say, I pray you, and then disdain to come, the word sounds of humility, but the action is pride." And Ambrose says why the master sends for the poor: "God then chooses those whom the world despises, because for the most part the very act of contempt recalls a man to himself."

Martin de Porres was born in Lima in 1579, the son of a Spanish gentleman and a freed slave from Panama. At fifteen he became a lay brother at the Dominican friary in Lima, and he spent his whole life in that house. He worked there as a barber, a farm laborer, an almoner and an infirmarian, among other things, and he was put in charge of the infirmary. He begged alms for the poor, and he founded a residence in Lima for orphans and abandoned children. He died there on November 3, 1639. Pope John XXIII canonized him on May 6, 1962.

Philippians describes someone who took the form of a servant. A lay brother's whole vocation is the form of a servant: the person who does the work of the house. The master in today's Gospel tells his servant to go out into the streets and lanes and bring in the poor, the feeble, the blind and the lame, and the servant comes back with the report that there is still room. A friary infirmary is a small version of that house.

The Catechism (2443) says what the Gospel's master does: "God blesses those who come to the aid of the poor and rebukes those who turn away from them." And 2448 says why the Church's love for them is called preferential: "those who are oppressed by poverty are the object of a preferential love on the part of the Church which, since her origin and in spite of the failings of many of her members, has not ceased to work for their relief, defense, and liberation through numerous works of charity which remain indispensable always and everywhere."

Monday's close: SPY $752.04, −0.5% · Nasdaq 100 −1.4% · Russell 2000 −0.1% · tape BULL, regime correction · new longs still paused by the two-loss warning

Monday opened higher and sold off. The S&P 500 fund opened at $759.49, up 0.5% from Friday's close of $755.72, rose to a high of $763.84, fell to a low of $751.61 and closed at $752.04, down 0.5%. That is 3.5% below the six-month closing high of $779.10 set October 6. The Nasdaq 100 fund opened at $695.41 and closed at $681.22, down 1.4%, within a dollar of its low of the day. The Russell 2000 fund fell 0.1% while the equal-weight S&P 500 fund rose 0.8%, so the average stock held up better than the index did. Eight of the eleven sector funds rose: consumer discretionary led at +2.4%, financials gained 1.8%, materials 1.7%, consumer staples 1.6% and industrials 1.4%, and real estate, utilities and communication services each rose by about 1% or less. Energy fell 3.9%, technology 2.9% and health care 0.1%.

The two-loss warning is still on: the system takes no new long until SPY closes above $779.37, and Monday's close was $27.33 short of it, 3.6% below. The tape turns, and the system sells every long, only on a SPY close below $629.29; Monday's close is 19.5% above that line. By our own count, 8 of the last 25 sessions are distribution days for the S&P 500 fund and 9 for the Nasdaq 100 fund; Monday was not one, because volume was lower than Friday's even though prices fell. The scanner's list holds twenty-six names at or near their 52-week pivots, down from thirty-six on Friday, and none triggered.

The two sleeve orders waiting since Friday filled at the open: the account bought 112 shares of the short-term Treasury fund SHY at $81.45 and sold 253 shares of the commodity fund DBC at $32.79. The house account closed at $987,648. Its largest holdings are SHY ($579,843) and DBC ($280,909), the idle-cash sleeve. Outside the sleeve it holds one stock position, the Invesco DB Agriculture Fund (DBA): 3,604 shares, 9.8% of the account. The seven puts cost $18,426 and were worth $30,483 on Alpaca's marks, up 65.4%, on a day the Nasdaq 100 fund fell 1.4% and technology fell 2.9%.

After the close. Palantir, whose put is one of the seven, reported third-quarter revenue of $2.313 billion, up 96% from a year ago, with U.S. commercial revenue up 148% to $984 million and U.S. government revenue up 96% to $953 million. It raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $8.530 to $8.534 billion and guided the fourth quarter to $2.649 to $2.653 billion. Apple reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $114.5 billion, up 12%, and earnings of $2.10 a share, and said revenue for the full fiscal year was a record $479 billion. Both reported after the market closed, so Tuesday's open is the first test of how the market takes them.

The economy. Election Day is today, Tuesday, November 3. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes Job Openings and Labor Turnover for September at 10:00 AM ET today and Productivity and Costs for the third quarter on Thursday at 8:30 AM ET. The Employment Situation for October follows on Friday, November 6, at 8:30 AM ET, and the October Consumer Price Index on Tuesday, November 10. The Federal Open Market Committee does not meet again until December 8-9.

Earnings. Dates and times are from Nasdaq's earnings calendar unless a company's own notice is named.

→ Tuesday, Nov 3: Pfizer, Eaton, Marathon Petroleum, Ferrari and Shopify before the open; AMD after the close (its own notice; call 5:00 PM ET), Amgen and Arista after the close

→ Wednesday, Nov 4: McDonald's, Uber, CVS, Novo Nordisk and Datadog before the open; Arm and Qualcomm after the close

→ Thursday, Nov 5: ConocoPhillips, Southern Company and Duke Energy before the open; Cloudflare and Airbnb after the close

St. Martin de Porres, pray for us.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

In Christ,

Jonathan Simmons

Enoch Capital LLC

Catholic Daily goes out Monday through Saturday.

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