Author: Jimmy Akin

Today is Tuesday of the 5th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 27, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. John Damascene, confessor and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 754. It is a Class III day.

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

78. In the life of communion with the Father, the faithful are guided by the Spirit (cf. Rm 8, 14) who has been given progressively to transform them in Christ. He pours out to them “the spirit of adopted sons”, by which they assimilate the filial disposition of Christ (cf. Rm 8, 15-17), and his sentiments (cf. Phil 2,5). He makes present the teaching of Christ to the faithful (cf. John 14,26; 16, 13-25) so that they may interpret the events of life in its light. He brings them to a knowledge of the depths of God (cf. 1 Cor 2, 10) and enables them to transform their lives into a “holy sacrifice” (Rm 12, 1). He sustains them in rejection and in the trials that must be faced during the process of transforming themselves in Christ. The Spirit is given to sustain, nourish and direct their prayer: “The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God” (Rm 8, 26-27).

Christian worship originates in, and draws impetus from the Spirit. That same worship begins, and is brought to completion, in the Spirit. It can therefore be concluded that without the Spirit of Christ there can be neither authentic liturgical worship, nor genuine expressions of popular piety.

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Today is Monday of the 5th week of Lent. The liturgical color is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 26, 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:

77. In accordance with His eternal plan, “at various times in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, but in our own times, these last days, He has spoken to us through His Son, the Son that He has appointed to inherit everything and though whom he made everything there is” ( Heb 1, 1-2). The mystery of Christ, especially his Passover of death and Resurrection, is the full and definitive revelation and realization of God’s salvific promises. Since Jesus is the “only Son of God (John 3, 18), he is the one in whom God has given us all things without reserve” (cf Rm 8, 32; John 3, 16). Hence, the person and works of Christ are the essential reference point for the faith and prayer life of the people of God. In him we find the Teacher of truth (cf. Mt 22, 16), the faithful Witness (Aps 1, 5), the High Priest (cf Heb 4, 14), the Pastor of our souls (cf 1 Pet 2,25), and the one, perfect Mediator (cf 1 Tim 2, 5; Heb 8, 6; 9, 15; 12, 24). Through him, man comes to God (cf. John 14, 6), the Church’s praise and supplication rise up to God, and all of divine gifts are given to man.

In Baptism, we are buried with Christ and rise with him (cf Col 2, 12; Rm 6,4), we are freed from the dominion of the flesh and introduced to that of the Spirit (cf Rom 8, 9), and we are called to a state of perfection whose fulness is in Christ (cf. Eph 4, 13). We have a model in Christ of a life whose every moment was lived in hearing the word of the Father, and in acceptance of His will. Christ’s life is lived as a constant “fiat” to the will of God: “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me (John 4, 34).

Christ, therefore, is the perfect model of filial piety and of unceasing dialogue with the Father. He is the model of the constant quest for that vital, intimate, and trusting contact with God which enlightens, guides and directs all of man’s life.

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Today is the 5th Sunday of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Passion Sunday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 25, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Annunciation of the Lord. It is a solemnity.

In both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Annunciation of Our Lady. It is a Class I day.

If you’d like to learn more about the Annunciation of the Lord, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about the Annunciation of Our Lady, 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:

The Life of Worship: Communion with the Father, Through Christ, in the Holy Spirit

76. In the history or revelation, man’s salvation is constantly presented as a free gift of God, flowing from His mercy, given in sovereign freedom and total gratuity. The entire complex of events and words through which the plan of salvation is revealed and actualized, takes the form of a continuous dialogue between God and man. God takes the initiative, and man is asked for an attitude of listening in faith, and a response in “obedience to faith” (Rm 1,5; 16,26).

The Covenant stipulated on Sinai between God and His chosen people (cf Ex 19-24) is a singularly important event in this salvific dialogue, and makes the latter a “possession” of the Lord, a “kingdom of priests and a holy people” (Ex 19, 6). Israel, although not always faithful to the Covenant, finds in it inspiration and the power to model its life of God Himself (cf Lk 11,44-45; 19,2), and the content of that life on His Word.

Israel’s worship and prayer are directed towards the commemoration of the mirabilia Dei, or God’s saving interventions in history, so as to conserve a lively veneration of the events in which God’s promises were realized, since these are the constant point of reference both for reflection on the faith and for the life of prayer.

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Today is Saturday of the 4th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 24, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Gabriel the archangel. It is a Class III day.

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

General Principles for the Renewal of Pious Exercises

75. The Apostolic See has not failed to indicate those theological, pastoral, historical, and literary principles by which a renewal of pious exercises is to be effected. It has also signaled the manner in which they should reflect a biblical and liturgical spirit, as well as an ecumenical one. The criteria established by the Holy See emphasize how the essential nucleus of the various pious exercises is to be identified by means of an historical investigation, and also reflect something of contemporary spirituality. Pious exercises are also required to take due account of the implications of a healthy anthropology. They should respect the culture and expressive style of the peoples who use them without, however, losing those traditional elements that are rooted in popular customs.

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Today is Friday of the 4th week of Lent. The liturgical color is violet.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 23, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, bishop. It is an optional memorial.

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

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

Liturgy and Pious Exercises

73. The Church’s teaching on the relationship of Liturgy and pious exercises may be summarized as follows: the Sacred Liturgy, in virtue of its very nature, is by far superior to pious exercises, and hence pastoral praxis must always accord to the Sacred Liturgy “that preeminent position proper to it in relation to pious exercises”; Liturgy and pious exercises must co-exist in accordance with the hierarchy of values and the nature specific to both of these [ritual] expressions.

74. Careful attention to these principles should lead to a real effort to harmonize, in so far as possible, pious exercises with the rhythm and demands of the Liturgy, thereby avoiding any “mixture or admixture of these two forms of piety.” This in turn ensures that no hybrid, or confused forms emerge from mixing Liturgy and pious exercises, not that the latter, contrary to the mind of the Church, are eliminated, often leaving an unfilled void to the great detriment of the faithful.