Category: Liturgical Year

Today is Wednesday of the 12th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 27, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Cyril of Alexandria, bishop and doctor of the Church. 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. Cyril, 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:

27. Eastern Christian meditation32 has valued psychophysical symbolism, often absent in western forms of prayer. It can range from a specific bodily posture to the basic life functions, such as breathing or the beating of the heart. The exercise of the “Jesus Prayer,” for example, which adapts itself to the natural rhythm of breathing can, at least for a certain time, be of real help to many people.33 On the other hand, the eastern masters themselves have also noted that not everyone is equally suited to making use of this symbolism, since not everybody is able to pass from the material sign to the spiritual reality that is being sought. Understood in an inadequate and incorrect way, the symbolism can even become an idol and thus an obstacle to the raising up of the spirit to God. To live out in one’s prayer the full awareness of one’s body as a symbol is even more difficult: it can degenerate into a cult of the body and can lead surreptitiously to considering all bodily sensations as spiritual experiences.

Today is Tuesday of the 12th 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 red.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 26, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St.s John and Paul, martyred at Rome, who died in A.D. 362. It is a Class III day.

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

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

26. Human experience shows that the position and demeanor of the body also have their influence on the recollection and dispositions of the spirit. This is a fact to which some eastern and western Christian spiritual writers have directed their attention.

Their reflections, while presenting points in common with eastern non-Christian methods of meditation, avoid the exaggerations and partiality of the latter, which, however, are often recommended to people today who are not sufficiently prepared.

The spiritual authors have adopted those elements which make recollection in prayer easier, at the same time recognizing their relative value: they are useful if reformulated in accordance with the aim of Christian prayer.30 For example, the Christian fast signifies, above all, an exercise of penitence and sacrifice; but, already for the Fathers, it also had the aim of rendering man more open to the encounter with God and making a Christian more capable of self-dominion and at the same time more attentive to those in need.

In prayer it is the whole man who must enter into relation with God, and so his body should also take up the position most suited to recollection.31 Such a position can in a symbolic way express the prayer itself, depending on cultures and personal sensibilities. In some aspects, Christians are today becoming more conscious of how one’s bodily posture can aid prayer.

Today is Monday of the 12th 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 25, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. William, abbot, who died in A.D. 1142. It is a Class III day.

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

25. With regard to mysticism, one has to distinguish between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the charisms granted by God in a totally gratuitous way. The former are something which every Christian can quicken in himself by his zeal for the life of faith, hope and charity; and thus, by means of a serious ascetical struggle, he can reach a certain experience of God and of the contents of the faith. As for charisms, St. Paul says that these are, above all, for the benefit of the Church, of the other members of the Mystical Body of Christ (cf. 1 Cor 12:17). With this in mind, it should be remembered that charisms are not the same things as extraordinary (“mystical”) gifts (cf. Rom 12:3-21), and that the distinction between the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” and “charisms” can be flexible. It is certain that a charism which bears fruit for the Church, cannot, in the context of the New Testament, be exercised without a certain degree of personal perfection, and that, on the other hand, every “living” Christian has a specific task (and in this sense a “charism”) “for the building up of the body of Christ” (cf. Eph 4:15-16),29 in communion with the Hierarchy whose job it is “not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good” (LG, n. 12).

Today is the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is the 4th Sunday after Pentecost.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 24, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. 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. John the Baptist, 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:

225. The devotion of St. John the Baptist has been present in the Christian Church since ancient time. From a very early date, it acquired popular forms and connotations. In addition to the celebration of his death (29 August), of all the Saints he is the only one whose birth is also celebrated (24 June) – as with Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In virtue of having baptized Jesus in the Jordan, many baptisteries are dedicated to him and his image as “baptizer” is to found close to many baptismal founts. He is the patron Saint of those condemned to death or who have been imprisoned for the witness to the faith, in virtue of the harsh prison which he endured and of the death which he encountered.

In all probability, the date of John the Baptists’ birth (24 June) was fixed in relation to that of Christ (25 December): according to what was said by the Angel Gabriel, when Mary conceived Our Savior, Elizabeth had already been with child for six months (cf Lk 1, 26.36). The date of 24 June is also linked to the solar cycle of the Northern hemisphere. The feast is celebrated as the Sun, turning towards the South of the zodiac, begins to decline: a phenomenon that was taken to symbolize John the Baptist who said in relation to Jesus: “illum oportet crescere, me autem minui” (John 3, 30).

John’s mission of witnessing to the light (cf John 1, 7) lies at the origin of the custom of blessing bonfires on St John’s Eve – or at least gave a Christian significance to the practice. The Church blesses such fires, praying God that the faithful may overcome the darkness of the world and reach the “indefectible light” of God.

Today is Saturday 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 violet.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 23, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Vigil of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. It is a Class II day.

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

24. There are certain mystical graces, conferred on the founders of ecclesial institutes to benefit their foundation, and on other saints, too, which characterize their personal experience of prayer and which cannot, as such, be the object of imitation and aspiration for other members of the faithful, even those who belong to the same institutes and those who seek an ever more perfect way of prayer.28 There can be different levels and different ways of sharing in a founder’s experience of prayer, without everything having to be exactly the same. Besides, the prayer experience that is given a privileged position in all genuinely ecclesial institutes, ancient and modern, is always in the last analysis something personal. And it is to the individual person that God gives his graces for prayer.

Today is Friday 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 red.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Paulinus of Nola, bishop of Nola and confessor, who died in A.D. 432. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

In the Ordinary Form, we also celebrate St.s John Fisher, bishop, and Thomas More, both martyrs. It is an optional memorial.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Paulinus, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. John Fisher, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about Thomas More, 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:

23. Without doubt, a Christian needs certain periods of retreat into solitude to be recollected and, in God’s presence, rediscover his path. Nevertheless, given his character as a creature, and as a creature who knows that only in grace is he secure, his method of getting closer to God is not based on any technique in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. Genuine Christian mysticism has nothing to do with technique: it is always a gift of God, and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy.27

Today is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is the 8th Sunday after Pentecost.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On July 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Mary Magdalene, penitent, who died in the 1st century. In the Ordinary Form, it is a feast, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

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

 

Today is Thursday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 21, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Aloysius Gonzaga, SJ, confessor, who died in A.D. 1591, religious. In the Ordinary Form, it is a memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

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

22. Finally, the Christian who prays can, if God so wishes, come to a particular experience of union. The Sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist,26 are the objective beginning of the union of the Christian with God. Upon this foundation, the person who prays can be called, by a special grace of the Spirit, to that specific type of union with God which in Christian terms is called mystical.

Today is Wednesday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 20, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Silverius, pope and martyr, who died in A.D. 538. It is a commemoration.

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

21. On the path of the Christian life, illumination follows on from purification, through the love which the Father bestows on us in the Son and the anointing which we receive from him in the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Jn 2:20). Ever since the early Christian period, writers have referred to the “illumination” received in Baptism. After their initiation into the divine mysteries, this illumination brings the faithful to know Christ by means of the faith which works through love. Some ecclesiastical writers even speak explicitly of the illumination received in Baptism as the basis of that sublime knowledge of Christ Jesus (cf. Phil 3:8), which is defined as “theoria” or contemplation.24 The faithful, with the grace of Baptism, are called to progress in the knowledge and witness of the mysteries of the faith by “the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience.”25 No light from God can render the truths of the faith redundant. Any subsequent graces of illumination which God may grant rather help to make clearer the depth of the mysteries confessed and celebrated by the Church, as we wait for the day when the Christian can contemplate God as He is in glory (cf. 1 Jn 3:2).

Today is Tuesday 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 19, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Romuald, abbot. It is an optional memorial.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Juliana Falconieri, virgin, who died in A.D. 1340. It is a Class III day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St.s Gervase and Protase, martyred at Milan, who died in A.D. 170. This celebration is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Romuald, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Juliana Falconieri, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St.s Gervase and Protase, 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:

20. From the dogmatic point of view, it is impossible to arrive at a perfect love of God if one ignores his giving of himself to us through his Incarnate Son, who was crucified and rose from the dead. In Him, under the action of the Holy Spirit, we participate, through pure grace, in the interior life of God. When Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9), he does not mean just the sight and exterior knowledge of his human figure (“the flesh is of no avail”, Jn 6:63). What he means is rather a vision made possible by the grace of faith: to see, through the manifestation of Jesus perceptible by the senses, just what he, as the Word of the Father, truly wants to reveal to us of God (“It is the Spirit that gives life […]; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life”, ibid.). This “seeing” is not a matter of a purely human abstraction (“abs-tractio”) from the figure in which God has revealed himself; it is rather the grasping of the divine reality in the human figure of Jesus, his eternal divine dimension in its temporal form. As St. Ignatius says in the Spiritual Exercises, we should try to capture “the infinite perfume and the infinite sweetness of the divinity” (n. 124), going forward from that finite revealed truth from which we have begun. While he raises us up, God is free to “empty” us of all that holds us back in this world, to draw us completely into the Trinitarian life of his eternal love. However, this gift can only be granted “in Christ through the Holy Spirit,” and not through our own efforts, withdrawing ourselves from his revelation.