Today is Monday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is white.
Saints & Celebrations:
On June 18, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Ephrem, deacon, confessor, and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 379. It is a Class III day.
In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St.s Mark and Marcellian, martyrs, who died in A.D. 286. This celebration is a commemoration.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Ephrem, you can click here.
If you’d like to learn more about St.s Mark and Marcellian, 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:
19. Therefore, one has to interpret correctly the teaching of those masters who recommend “emptying” the spirit of all sensible representations and of every concept, while remaining lovingly attentive to God. In this way, the person praying creates an empty space which can then be filled by the richness of God. However, the emptiness which God requires is that of the renunciation of personal selfishness, not necessarily that of the renunciation of those created things which he has given us and among which he has placed us. There is no doubt that in prayer one should concentrate entirely on God and as far as possible exclude the things of this world which bind us to our selfishness. On this topic St. Augustine is an excellent teacher: if you want to find God, he says, abandon the exterior world and re-enter into yourself. However, he continues, do not remain in yourself, but go beyond yourself because you are not God: He is deeper and greater than you. “I look for his substance in my soul and I do not find it; I have however meditated on the search for God and, reaching out to him, through created things, I have sought to know ‘the invisible perfections of God’ (Rom 1:20).”21 “To remain in oneself”: this is the real danger. The great Doctor of the Church recommends concentrating on oneself, but also transcending the self which is not God, but only a creature. God is “deeper than my inmost being and higher than my greatest height.”22 In fact God is in us and with us, but he transcends us in his mystery.23
IN MY 34 YEAR JOURNEY WITH THE LORD, I CLEARLY SEE THAT THE JOURNEY TO HOLINESS IS A CONSTANT CALL OF DYING TO SELF AND A DEEPENING OF A LOVE FOR JESUS CHRIST. WITHOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT AND QUIET TIME WITH THE LORD, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. I HAVE FOUND THAT OUR GOD IS A GOD WHO WHISPERS AND ONE NEEDS TO BE STILL, REVERENT, AND IN A CONTEMPLATIVE MODE PRAISING HIM FOR WHO HE IS, SEEKING HIS WILL IN ALL MATTERS, ASKING FOR THE PROTECTION OF HIS PRECIOUS BLOOD OVER OUR SENSES, INTELLECT, ETC. SO AS NOT TO BE DECEIVED, AND THEN BATHING IN HIS LOVE IN TOTAL SILENCE. THAT’S WHAT I HEAR AUGUSTINE SAYING.