Today is Holy Thursday The liturgical color is white.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.
Saints & Celebrations:
On April 5, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Vincent Ferrer, OP, confessor, and priest who died in A.D. 1419. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Vincent Ferrer, you can click here.
For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.
Readings:
To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.
Or you can click play to listen to them:
Devotional Information:
According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:
Holy Thursday
Visiting the Altar of Repose
141. Popular piety is particularly sensitive to the adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament in the wake of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Because of a long historical process, whose origins are not entirely clear, the place of repose has traditionally been referred to as a “a holy sepulcher.” The faithful go there to venerate Jesus who was placed in a tomb following the crucifixion and in which he remained for some forty hours.
It is necessary to instruct the faithful on the meaning of the reposition: it is an austere solemn conservation of the Body of Christ for the community of the faithful which takes part in the liturgy of Good Friday and for the viaticum of the infirmed. It is an invitation to silent and prolonged adoration of the wondrous sacrament instituted by Jesus on this day.
In reference to the altar of repose, therefore, the term “sepulcher” should be avoided, and its decoration should not have any suggestion of a tomb. The tabernacle on this altar should not be in the form of a tomb or funerary urn. The Blessed Sacrament should be conserved in a closed tabernacle and should not be exposed in a monstrance.
After mid-night on Holy Thursday, the adoration should conclude without solemnity, since the day of the Lord’s Passion has already begun.
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