The Church Year: June 7, 2012

Today is Thursday of the 9th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In some parts of the world (but not the United States), this is a holyday of obligation (Body and Blood of Christ). If it is a holyday of obligation in your area, be sure to go to Mass if you didn’t go yesterday evening. (In the U.S. we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ this Sunday.)

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Corpus Christi.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 7, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

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:

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

160. The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is observed on the Thursday following on the solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. This feast is both a doctrinal and [ritual] response to heretical teaching on the mystery of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the apogee of an ardent devotional movement concentrated on the Sacrament of the Altar. It was extended to the entire Latin Church by Urban IV in 1264.

Popular piety encouraged the process that led to the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi, which reciprocally inspired the development of new forms of Eucharistic piety among the people of God.

For centuries, the celebration of Corpus Christi remained the principal point of popular piety’s concentration on the Eucharist. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, faith, in reaction to various forms of Protestantism, and culture (art, folklore and literature) coalesced in developing lively and significant expressions Eucharistic devotion in popular piety.