Category: Liturgical Year

Today is the 4th Sunday of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 29, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor of the Church. It is a memorial.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Peter of Verona, OP, martyr, who died in A.D. 1252. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Catherine of Siena, you can click here.

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

7. Some consequences derive immediately from what has been called to mind. If the prayer of a Christian has to be inserted in the Trinitarian movement of God, then its essential content must also necessarily be determined by the two-fold direction of such movement. It is in the Holy Spirit that the Son comes into the world to reconcile it to the Father through his works and sufferings. On the other hand, in this same movement and in the very same Spirit, the Son Incarnate returns to the Father, fulfilling his Will through his Passion and Resurrection. The “Our Father,” Jesus’ own prayer, clearly indicates the unity of this movement: the Will of the Father must be done on earth as it is in heaven (the petitions for bread, forgiveness and protection make explicit the fundamental dimensions of God’s will for us), so that there may be a new earth in the heavenly Jerusalem.

The prayer of Jesus6 has been entrusted to the Church (“Pray then like this”, Lk 11:2). This is why when a Christian prays, even if he is alone, his prayer is in fact always within the framework of the “Communion of Saints” in which and with which he prays, whether in a public and liturgical way or in a private manner. Consequently, it must always be offered within the authentic spirit of the Church at prayer, and therefore under its guidance, which can sometimes take a concrete form in terms of a proven spiritual direction. The Christian, even when he is alone and prays in secret, is conscious that he always prays for the good of the Church in union with Christ, in the Holy Spirit and together with all the Saints.7

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Today is Saturday of the 3rd week of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 28, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Peter Chanel, priest and martyr and St. Louis Grignion de Monfort, priest. It is an optional memorial.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists, confessor, who died in A.D. 1775. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Peter Chanel and St. Louis Grignion de Monfort, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Paul of the Cross, 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:

6. There exists, then, a strict relationship between Revelation and prayer. The Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum teaches that by means of his revelation the invisible God, “from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends (cf. Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14-15), and moves among them (cf. Bar 3:38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company.”4 This revelation takes place through words and actions which have a constant mutual reference, one to the other; from the beginning everything proceeds to converge on Christ, the fullness of revelation and of grace, and on the gift of the Holy Spirit. These make man capable of welcoming and contemplating the words and works of God and of thanking him and adoring him, both in the assembly of the faithful and in the intimacy of his own heart illuminated by grace.

This is why the Church recommends the reading of the Word of God as a source of Christian prayer, and at the same time exhorts all to discover the deep meaning of Sacred Scripture through prayer “so that a dialogue takes place between God and man. For, ‘we speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles.'”5

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Today is Friday of the 3rd week of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

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

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Peter Canisius, SJ, confessor, and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 1597. It is a Class III day.

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

5. Thanks to the words, deeds, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the New Testament the Faith acknowledges in Him the definitive self-revelation of God, the Incarnate Word who reveals the most intimate depth of his love. It is the Holy Spirit, he who was sent into the hearts of the faithful, he who “searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10), who makes it possible to enter into these divine depths. According to the promise Jesus made to the disciples, the Spirit will explain all that he had not yet been able to tell them. However, this Spirit “will not speak on his own authority,” but “he will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn 16:13f.). What Jesus calls “his” is, as he explains immediately, also God the Father’s because “all that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn 16:15).

The authors of the New Testament, with full cognizance, always spoke of the revelation of God in Christ within the context of a vision illuminated by the Holy Spirit. The Synoptic Gospels narrate Jesus’ deeds and words on the basis of a deeper understanding, acquired after Easter, of what the disciples had seen and heard. The entire Gospel of St. John is taken up with the contemplation of him who from the beginning is the Word of God made flesh. Paul, to whom Jesus appeared in his divine majesty on the road to Damascus, instructs the faithful so that they “may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth (of the Mystery of Christ), and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:18 ff.). For Paul the Mystery of God is Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3) and, the Apostle clarifies, “I say this in order that no one may delude you with beguiling speech” (v. 4).

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Today is Thursday of the 3rd week of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, the liturgical color for today is red.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

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

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St.s Cletus and Marcellinus, popes and martyrs, who died in A.D. 91 and 304. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St.s Cletus and Marcellinus, 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:

4. The Bible itself teaches how the man who welcomes biblical revelation should pray. In the Old Testament there is a marvelous collection of prayers which have continued to live through the centuries, even within the Church of Jesus Christ, where they have become the basis of its official prayer: The Book of Praises or of Psalms.2 Prayers similar to the Psalms may also be found in earlier Old Testament texts or re-echoed in later ones.3 The prayers of the book of Psalms tell in the first place of God’s great works on behalf of the Chosen People. Israel meditates, contemplates and makes the marvels of God present again, recalling them in prayer.

In biblical revelation Israel came to acknowledge and praise God present in all creation and in the destiny of every man. Thus He is invoked, for example, as rescuer in time of danger, in sickness, in persecution, in tribulation. Finally, and always in the light of his salvific works, He is exalted in his divine power and goodness, in his justice and mercy, in his royal grandeur.

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Today is Wednesday of the 3rd week of Easter. The liturgical color is red.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 25, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Mark, evangelist. In the Ordinary Form, it is a feast, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class II day.

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

3. To answer this question, one must first of all consider, even if only in a general way, in what does the intimate nature of Christian prayer consist. Then one can see if and how it might be enriched by meditation methods which have been developed in other religions and cultures. However, in order to achieve this, one needs to start with a certain clear premise. Christian prayer is always determined by the structure of the Christian faith, in which the very truth of God and creature shines forth. For this reason, it is defined, properly speaking, as a personal, intimate and profound dialogue between man and God. It expresses therefore the communion of redeemed creatures with the intimate life of the Persons of the Trinity. This communion, based on Baptism and the Eucharist, source and summit of the life of the Church, implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from “self” to the “You” of God. Thus Christian prayer is at the same time always authentically personal and communitarian. It flees from impersonal techniques or from concentrating on oneself, which can create a kind of rut, imprisoning the person praying in a spiritual privatism which is incapable of a free openness to the transcendental God. Within the Church, in the legitimate search for new methods of meditation it must always be borne in mind that the essential element of authentic Christian prayer is the meeting of two freedoms, the infinite freedom of God with the finite freedom of man.

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Today is Tuesday of the 3rd week of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, the liturgical color for today is red.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 24, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, priest and martyr who died in A.D. 1622. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial and in the Extraordinary Form, a Class III day.

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

2. The ever more frequent contact with other religions and with their different styles and methods of prayer has, in recent decades, led many of the faithful to ask themselves what value non-Christian forms of meditation might have for Christians. Above all, the question concerns eastern methods.1 Some people today turn to these methods for therapeutic reasons. The spiritual restlessness arising from a life subjected to the driving pace of a technologically advanced society also brings a certain number of Christians to seek in these methods of prayer a path to interior peace and psychic balance. This psychological aspect is not dealt with in the present letter, which instead emphasises the theological and spiritual implications of the question. Other Christians, caught up in the movement towards openness and exchanges between various religions and cultures, are of the opinion that their prayer has much to gain from these methods. Observing that in recent times many traditional methods of meditation, especially Christian ones, have fallen into disuse, they wonder whether it might not now be possible, by a new training in prayer, to enrich our heritage by incorporating what has until now been foreign to it.

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Today is Monday of the 3rd week of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 23, in both the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. George, martyred at Nicomedia, who died in A.D. 304. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a commemoration.

In the Ordinary Form, we also celebrate St. Adalbert, bishop and martyr. It is an optional memorial.

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

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

1. Many Christians today have a keen desire to learn how to experience a deeper and authentic prayer life despite the not inconsiderable difficulties which modern culture places in the way of the need for silence, recollection and meditation. The interest which in recent years has been awakened also among some Christians by forms of meditation associated with some eastern religions and their particular methods of prayer is a significant sign of this need for spiritual recollection and a deep contact with the divine mystery. Nevertheless, faced with this phenomenon, many feel the need for sure criteria of a doctrinal and pastoral character which might allow them to instruct others in prayer, in its numerous manifestations, while remaining faithful to the truth revealed in Jesus, by means of the genuine Tradition of the Church. This present letter seeks to reply to this urgent need, so that in the various particular Churches, the many different forms of prayer, including new ones, may never lose their correct personal and communitarian nature.

These indications are addressed in the first place to the Bishops, to be considered in that spirit of pastoral solicitude for the Churches entrusted to them, so that the entire people of God?priests, religious and laity?may again be called to pray, with renewed vigor, to the Father through the Spirit of Christ our Lord.

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Today is the 3rd Sunday of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 22, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St.s Soter and Caius, popes and martyrs, who died in A.D. 174 and 296. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St.s Soter and Caius, 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:

92. The adaptation or inculturation of a particular pious exercise should not present special difficulties at the level of language, musical and artistic forms, or even of adopting certain gestures. While at one level pious exercises do not concentrate on the essential elements of the sacramental life, at another, it has to be remembered, they are in many cases popular in origin and come directly from the people, and have been formulated in the language of the people, within the framework of the Catholic faith.

The fact that pious exercises and devotions express popular sentiment, does not, however, authorize personalistic or subjective approaches to this material. With due respect for the competence proper to local Ordinaries or the Major Superiors of religious orders in cases involving devotions connected with their Orders, the Conference of Bishops should decide in matters relating to pious exercises widely diffused in a particular country or in a vast region.

Great vigilance and a deep sense of discernment are required to ensure that ideas contrary to the Christian faith, or forms of worship vitiated by syncretism, are not insinuated into pious exercises though various forms of language.

It is especially necessary to ensure that those pious exercises undergoing adaptation or inculturation retain their identity and their essential characteristics. In this regard, particular attention must always be given to their historical origin and to the doctrinal and [ritual] elements by which they are constituted.

With regard to the question of assuming certain elements from popular piety in the process of inculturating the Liturgy, reference should be made to the relative Instruction already published on the subject by this Dicastery.

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Today is Saturday of the 2nd week of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 21, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Anselm, bishop of Canterbury, and doctor of the Church who died in A.D. 1109. 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. Anselm, 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:

Inculturation and Popular Piety

91. Popular piety is naturally marked by historical and cultural factors. The sheer variety of its expressions is an indicator of that fact. It reflects forms of popular piety that have arisen and been accepted in many particular Churches throughout the ages, and are a sure sign of the extent to which the faith has taken root in the hearts of particular peoples, and of its influence on the daily lives of the faithful. Indeed, “popular piety is the first and most fundamental form of the faith’s “inculturation”, and should be continually guided and oriented by the Liturgy, which, in its turn, nourishes the faith though the heart.” The encounter between the innovative dynamism of the Gospel message, and the various elements of a given culture, is affirmed in popular piety.

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Today is Friday of the 2nd week of Easter. The liturgical color is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 20, 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:

Popular Piety and Private Revelation

90. Popular piety has always been interested in extraordinary happenings and events that are not infrequently connected with private revelations. While not confined to Marian piety alone, this phenomenon is particularly involved with “apparitions” and “messages.” In this regard, it is useful to recall what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about private revelation: “Throughout the ages, there have been so-called private revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church” (n. 67).

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