Month: March 2012

Today is Monday of the 3rd week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 12, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Gregory the Great (Gregory I), OSB, pope, confessor, and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 604. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Gregory, 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:

68. Pope John Paul II has shown how the family can be a subject of popular piety. The exhortation Familiaris Consortio, having praised the family as the domestic sanctuary of the Church, emphasizes that “as preparation for worship celebrated in church, and as its prolongation in the home, the Christian family makes use of prayer, which presents a variety of forms. While this variety testifies to the extraordinary riches with which the Spirit vivifies Christian prayer, it serves also the various needs and life situations of those who turn to the Lord in prayer.” It also observes that “apart from morning and evening prayers, certain prayers are to be expressly encouraged,[…] such as reading and meditating on the word of God, preparation for the reception of the sacraments, devotion and consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the various forms of the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, grace before and after meals, and observance of popular devotions.”

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Today is the 3rd Sunday of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 11, 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:

The Subject of Popular Piety

67. The Church’s Magisterium, mindful that “the spiritual life…is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy” and that “the Christian…must enter into his bedroom to pray to his Father in secret”, indeed, “according to the teaching of the apostle, he must pray without ceasing”, holds that the subject of the various forms of prayer is every Christian – clerics, religious and laity – both privately when moved by the Spirit of Christ, and when praying with the community in groups of different origins and types.

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Today is Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 10, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, martyrs, who died in A.D. 320. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, 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:

65. In its attempts to remedy such defects in popular piety, the contemporary Magisterium has insistently stressed the need to “evangelize” popular piety, and sees it in relation to the Gospel which “will progressively free it from its defects; purify it, consolidate it and clarify that which is ambiguous by referring it of the contents of faith, hope and charity.”

Pastoral sensibility recommends that the work of “evangelizing” popular piety should proceed patiently, tolerantly, and with great prudence, following the methodology adopted by the Church throughout the centuries in matters relating to inculturation of the Christian faith, the Sacred Liturgy and those inherent in popular piety.

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Today is Friday of the 2nd week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 9, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Frances of Rome, religious, widow, who died in A.D. 1440. 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. Frances, 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:

Deviations in Popular Piety

64. While the Magisterium highlights the undeniable qualities of popular piety, it does not hesitate to point out dangers which can affect it: lack of a sufficient number of Christian elements such as the salvific significance of the Resurrection of Christ, an awareness of belonging to the Church, the person and action of the Holy Spirit; a disproportionate interest between the Saints and the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ and his mysteries; lack of direct contact with Sacred Scripture; isolation from the Church’s sacramental life; a dichotomy between worship and the duties of Christian life; a utilitarian view of some forms of popular piety; the use of “signs, gestures and formulae, which sometimes become excessively important or even theatrical”; and in certain instances, the risk of “promoting sects, or even superstition, magic, fatalism or oppression.”

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