The Church Year: Jan. 22, 2012

Today is the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Epiphany.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On January 22, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Vincent, martyr, and St. Anastasius, martyr, who died in A.D. 304 and 628. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Vincent and St. Anastasius, 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:

32. Throughout the middle ages many forms of populuar piety gradually emerged or developed. Many of these have been handed down to our times:

  • the organization of sacred performances depicting the mysteries celebrated during the liturgical year, especially those surrounding the salvific events of Christ’s birth, his passion, death and resurrection;

  • the participation of the faithful was encouraged by the emergence of poetry in the vernacular which was widely used in popular piety;

  • as a parallel, or even an alternative to many liturgical expressions, several devotional forms appeared; for example, various forms of Eucharistic adoration served to compensate for the rarity with which Holy Communion was received; in the late middle ages, the rosary tended to substitute for the psalter; among the faithful, the pious exercises of Good Friday became a substitute for the Liturgy proper to that day;

  • the growth in popular forms of devotion to Our Lady and the Saints: pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and to the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs, veneration of relics, litanies, and suffrage for the dead;

  • the considerable developmnt of the rites of blessing which, together with Christian elements, also reflected a certain response to a naturalistic sensibility as well to popular pre-Christian beliefs and practices;

  • nucleuses of “sacred times” based on popular practices were constituted. These were often marginal to the rhythm of the liturgical year: sacred or profane fair days, tridua, octaves, novenas, months devoted to particular popular devotions.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."