Category: Liturgical Year

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 22, 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:

72. Pious exercises are part of Christian worship. The Church has always been attentive to ensure that God is glorified worthily through them, and that man derives spiritual benefit from them and is encouraged to the live the Christian life.

The actions of Pastors in relation to pious exercises have been many. They have recommended and encouraged them, or guided and corrected them or simply tolerated them. Among the myriad of pious exercises, some must be mentioned, especially those erected by the Apostolic See, or which have been recommended by the same Apostolic See throughout the ages. Mention must also be made of the pious exercises of the particular Churches “that are undertaken by order of the bishops according to customs or books lawfully approved”; of the pious exercises that are practised in accordance with the particular law or tradition of certain religious families, or confraternities, or other pious associations of the faithful, since such have often received the explicit approbation of the Church; and of the pious exercises practised personally or in the home.

Some pious exercises which grew up among the community of the faithful and have received the approbation of the Magisterium, also enjoy the concession of indulgences.

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