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Today is Friday of the 12th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is red.
In some parts of the world (like England and Wales but not the United States or Canada), this is a holy day of obligation (St.s Peter and Paul, Apostles). If you live in a place where it is a holy day of obligation, be sure to go to Mass if you didn’t go yesterday evening.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost.
Saints & Celebrations:
On June 29, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St.s Peter and Paul, apostles. In the Ordinary Form, it is a solemnity, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class I day.
If you’d like to learn more about St.s Peter and Paul, 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:
We will now begin a brief series looking at devotion to the Precious Blood of Christ. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:
The Most Precious Blood of Christ
175. Biblical revelation, both in its figurative stage in the Old Testament and in its perfect and fulfilled stage in the New Testament, connects blood very closely with life, and authentically with death, exodus and the Pasch, with the priesthood and sacrificial worship, with redemption and the covenant.
The Old Testament figures associated with blood and its redemptive significance are fulfilled perfectly in Christ, especially in his Passion, Death and Resurrection. Thus the mystery of the Blood of Christ is to be found at the very centre of the faith and of our salvation.
The mystery of the Saving Blood of Christ recalls and refers to:
- the Incarnation of the Word (cf. John 1, 14) and Christ’s becoming a member of the people of the Old Testament through circumcision (Lk 2,21);
- the Biblical image of the Lamb abounds with implication: “The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1,29), in which Isaiah’s Suffering Servant image (Is 53) is also to be found, carries upon himself the sins of mankind (cf Is 53, 4-5); the “Paschal Lamb”, symbol of Israel’s redemption (cf. At 8, 31-35; 1 Cor 5, 7; 1 Pet 1, 18-20);
- the “chalice of the passion” of which Jesus spoke in allusion to his imminent redemptive death, when he asked the sons of Zebede: “Can you drink this chalice that I must drink?” (Mt 20, 22; cf Mk 10, 38) and the chalice of the agony in the garden of olives (cf Lk 22, 42-43) which was accompanied by th Lord’s sweating blood (cf. Lk 22, 44);
- the Eucharistic chalice, under the form of wine, contains the Blood of the New Covenant poured out for the remission of sins; is a memorial of the Lord’s Pasch (1 Cor 11, 25); and the drink of salvation according to the Lord’s own words: “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood shall have life eternal and I shall raise him up on the last day” (John 6, 54);
- the event of the Lord’s death, since by pouring out his Blood on the Cross, Christ reconciled heaven and earth (cf Col 1, 20);
- the lance which transfixed the immolated Lamb, from whose open side flowed blood and water (cf John 19, 34), a sign of the redemption that had been achieved, and of the sacramental life of the Church -blood and water, Baptism and Eucharist-, symbol of the Church born from the side of Christ dying on the Cross.