Category: Liturgical Year

Today is the Tuesday of Holy Week. The liturgical color is violet.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 3, 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:

This coming Friday is Good Friday. One type of devotion the Directory on Popular Piety speaks of in connection with that day is devotion to Our Lady of Dolours (Sorrows). According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

Our Lady of Dolours

145. Because of its doctrinal and pastoral importance, it is recommended that “the memorial of Our Lady of Dolours” should be recalled. Popular piety, following the Gospel account, emphasizes the association of Mary with the saving Passion her Son (cf, John 19, 25-27; Lk 2, 34f), and has given rise to many pious exercises, including:

• the Planctus Mariae, an intense expression of sorrow, often accompanied by literary or musical pieces of a very high quality, in which Our Lady cries not only for the death of her Son, the Innocent, Holy, and Good One, but also for the errors of his people and the sins of mankind;
• the Ora della Desolata, in which the faithful devoutly keep vigil with the Mother of Our Lord, in her abandonment and profound sorrow following the death of her only Son; they contemplate Our Lady as she receives the dead body of Christ (the Piet+á) realizing that the sorrow of the world for the Lord’s death finds expression in Mary; in her they behold the personification of all mothers throughout the ages who have mourned the loss of a son. This pious exercise, which in some parts of Latin America is called El P+¬same, should not be limited merely to the expression of emotion before a sorrowing mother. Rather, with faith in the resurrection, it should assist in understanding the greatness of Christ’s redemptive love and his Mother’s participation in it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today is the Monday of Holy Week. The liturgical color is violet.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 2, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Francis of Paola, hermit, founder of the Minims, and confessor, who died in A.D. 1508. 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. Francis, 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:

Passion Plays

144. In many countries, passion plays take place during Holy Week, especially on Good Friday. These are often “sacred representations” which can justly be regarded as pious exercises. Indeed, such sacred representations have their origins in the Sacred Liturgy. Some of these plays, which began in the monks’ choir, so as to speak, have undergone a progressive dramatization that has taken them outside of the church.

In some places, responsibility for the representations of the Lord’s passion has been given over to the Confraternities, whose members have assumed particular responsibilities to live the Christian life. In such representations, actors and spectators are involved in a movement of faith and genuine piety. It is singularly important to ensure that representations of the Lord’s Passion do not deviate from this pure line of sincere and gratuitous piety, or take on the characteristics of folk productions, which are not so much manifestations of piety as tourist attractions.

In relation to sacred “representations” it is important to instruct the faithful on the difference between a “representation” which is commemorative, and the “liturgical actions” which are anamnesis, or mysterious presence of the redemptive event of the Passion.

Penitential practices leading to self-crucifixion with nails are not to be encouraged.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today is the Sunday of Holy Week. The liturgical color is red.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season of Passiontide, and the liturgical color for today is red and violet.

In the Ordinary Form, this is Passion (Palm) Sunday.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Palm Sunday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 1, 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:

Palm Sunday

Palms, olive branches and other fronds

139. Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, or “Passion Sunday”, which unites the royal splendor of Christ with the proclamation of his Passion.”

The procession, commemorating Christ’s messianic entry into Jerusalem, is joyous and popular in character. The faithful usually keep palm or olive branches, or other greenery which have been blessed on Palm Sunday in their homes or in their work places.

The faithful, however, should be instructed as to the meaning of this celebration so that they might grasp its significance. They should be opportunely reminded that the important thing is participation at the procession and not only the obtaining of palm or olive branches. Palms or olive branches should not be kept as amulets, or for therapeutic or magical reasons to dispel evil spirits or to prevent the damage these cause in the fields or in the homes, all of which can assume a certain superstitious guise.

Palms and olive branches are kept in the home as a witness to faith in Jesus Christ, the messianic king, and in his Paschal Victory.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today is Saturday 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 31, 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:

Tomorrow we begin Holy Week. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

Holy Week

138. “In Holy Week, the Church celebrates the mysteries of salvation accomplished by Christ in the last days of the earthly life, beginning with his messianic entry into Jerusalem.”

The people are notably involved in the rites of Holy Week. Many of them still bear the traces of their origins in popular piety. It has come about, however, that in the course of the centauries, a form of celebrative parallelism has arisen in the Rites of Holy Week, resulting in two cycles each with its own specific character: one is strictly liturgical, the other is marked by particular pious exercise, especially processions.

This divergence should be oriented towards a correct harmonization of the liturgical celebrations and pious exercises. Indeed, the attention and interest in manifestations of popular piety, traditionally observed among the people, should lead to a correct appreciation of the liturgical actions, which are supported by popular piety.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today is Friday 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 30, 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:

The Church: Worshipping Community

81. The Church, “gathered in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, is a worshipping community. By command of her Lord and Founder, the Church effects many acts of worship whose object is the glory God and the sanctification of man. In different ways and in different measure, these are all celebrations of the Paschal Mystery of Christ, and aimed at realizing the divine will to gather the scattered children [of the Father] into the unity of a single nation.

In her ritual actions, the Church proclaims the Gospel of salvation and announces the Death and Resurrection of Christ, and actualizes the work of his salvation in sacred signs. In the Eucharist she celebrates the memorial of his blessed Passion, his glorious Resurrection, and Ascension. In the celebration of the other sacraments she draws from the gifts of the Holy Spirit which flow from the Cross of our Savior. The Church glorifies the Father in psalms and hymns for the wonders that He has accomplished in the death and exaltation of Christ His Son, and supplicates that the saving mystery of Easter might reach all mankind. With the sacramentals which have been instituted to assist the faithful at various times and in various situations, she prays that their activity might be directed and enlightened by the Spirit of Easter.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

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

On March 29, 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:

80. Reference to the Most Blessed Trinity, while seminally present in popular piety, is an element requiring further emphasis. The following points offer an outline of how that might be done:

• The faithful require instruction on the character of Christian prayer, which is directed to the Father, through the mediation of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
• The formulae used in popular piety should give greater emphasis to the person and action of the Holy Spirit. The lack of a “name” for the Spirit of God and the custom of not representing him anthropomorphically have contributed to a certain absence of the Holy Spirit in the texts and formulae of popular piety, while not overlooking the role of music and gestures in expressing our relationship with the Holy Spirit. This lacuna, however, can be overcome by the evangelization of popular piety, as the Magisterium has already recommended on several occasions.
• It is also necessary for popular piety to emphasize the primary and basic importance of the Resurrection of Christ. The loving devotion for the suffering of Christ, often demonstrated by popular piety, should also be completed by setting it in the context his glorification so as to give integral expression to the salvific plan of God as revealed in Christ, and allow for its inextricable link with his Paschal mystery. Only in this manner can the authentic face of Christianity be seen with its victory over death and its celebration of him who is “God of the living and not of the dead” (Mt 22, 32), of Christ, the living one, who was dead but now lives forever (cf. Ap 1, 28) and of the Spirit “who is Lord and giver of life.”
• Finally, devotion to the Passion of Christ should lead the faithful to a full and conscious participation in the Eucharist, in which the Body of Christ, sacrificed for our sake (cf. 1 Cor 11, 24) is given as food; and in which the Blood of Christ, shed on the cross in the new and eternal Covenant and for the remission of sin, is given to drink. Such participation has its highest and most significant moment in the celebration of the Paschal Triduum, apex of the liturgical year, and in the Sunday celebration of the Sacred Mysteries.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today is Wednesday 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 28, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. John Capistran, Franciscan, confessor, who died in A.D. 1456. It is a Class III day.

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

79. From the principles already outlines above, popular piety should always be formed as a moment of the dialogue between God and man, through Christ in the Holy Spirit. Despite some deficiencies – such as confusion between God the Father and Jesus Christ – popular piety does bare a Trinitarian mark.

Popular piety, indeed, is especially susceptible to the mystery of God’s paternity and arouses a sense of awe for His goodness, power and wisdom. It rejoices in the beauty of creation and gives thanks to God for it. Popular piety can express an awareness of the justice and mercy of God the Father, and of His care for the poor and lowly, and it can proclaim that He commends the good and rewards those who live properly and honestly, while abhorring evil and casting away from Himself those who obstinately follow the path of hatred, violence, injustice and deceit.

Popular piety can easily concentrate on the person of Christ, Son of God and Savior of mankind. It can movingly recount the birth of Christ and intuit the immense love released by the child Jesus, true God and true man, a true brother in poverty and persecution from the moment of his birth. Innumerable scenes from the public life of Christ, the Good Shepherd who reaches out to sinners and publicans, the Miracle-worker healing the sick and helping the poor, or the Teacher proclaiming the truth, can be represented in popular piety. Above all it has the capacity to contemplate the mysteries of Christ’s Passion because in them it can perceive Christ’s boundless love and the extent of his solidarity with human suffering: Jesus betrayed and abandoned, scourged and crowned with thorns, crucified between thieves, taken down from the cross and buried in the earth, and mourned by his friends and disciples.

Popular piety is also consciously aware of the person of the Holy Spirit in the mystery of God. It professes that “through the Holy Spirit” the Son of God “became incarnate of Virgin Mary and was made man” and that the Spirit was poured out to the Apostles at the beginning of the Church (cf. Acts 2, 1-13). Popular piety is especially conscious that the power of the Spirit of God, whose seal is placed on all Christians in the Sacrament of Confirmation, is alive in all of the Church’s sacraments; that baptism is conferred, sins forgiven, and the Holy Eucharist begun “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”; and that all prayer in the Christian community, and the invocation of divine blessing on mankind and all creatures, is done in the name of the three Divine Persons.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download