The Church Year: May 31, 2012

Today is Thursday of the 8th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, the liturgical color for today is red.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Pentecost Thursday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On May 31, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a feast.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate Our Lady, virgin and Queen. It is a Class II day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St. Petronilla, virgin, who died in A.D. 60. This celebration is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about Our Lady, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Petronilla, 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 Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

14. In order to draw near to that mystery of union with God, which the Greek Fathers called the divinization of man, and to grasp accurately the manner in which this is realized, it is necessary in the first place to bear in mind that man is essentially a creature,16 and remains such for eternity, so that an absorbing of the human self into the divine self is never possible, not even in the highest states of grace. However, one must recognize that the human person is created in the “image and likeness” of God, and that the archetype of this image is the Son of God, in whom and through whom we have been created (cf. Col 1:16). This archetype reveals the greatest and most beautiful Christian mystery: from eternity the Son is “other” with respect to the Father and yet, in the Holy Spirit, he is “of the same substance.” Consequently this otherness, far from being an ill, is rather the greatest of goods. There is otherness in God himself, who is one single nature in three Persons, and there is also otherness between God and creatures, who are by nature different. Finally, in the Holy Eucharist, as in the rest of the sacraments?and analogically in his works and in his words?Christ gives himself to us and makes us participate in his divine nature,17 without nevertheless suppressing our created nature, in which he himself shares through his Incarnation.