Category: +Religion

Today is Saturday of the 9th 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 9, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Ephrem, deacon, and doctor of the Church. It is an optional memorial.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St.s Primus and Felician, martyrs, who died in A.D. 286. It is a commemoration.

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

If you’d like to learn more about St.s Primus and Felician, 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:

Tomorrow,in the United States, we celebrate the solemnity of Corpus Christi, on which Eucharistic processions are often held. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

162. The Corpus Christi procession represents the typical form of an Eucharistic procession. It is a prolongation of the celebration of the Eucharist: immediately after Mass, the Sacred Host, consecrated during the Mass, is borne out of the Church for the Christian faithful “to make public profession of faith and worship of the Most Blessed Sacrament.”

The faithful understand and appreciate the values inherent in the procession: they are aware of being “the People of God”, journeying with the Lord, and proclaiming faith in him who has become truly “God-amongst-us.”

It is necessary however to ensure that the norms governing processions be observed, especially those ensuring respect for the dignity and reverence of the Blessed Sacrament. It is also necessary to ensure that the typical elements of popular piety accompanying the precession, such as the decoration of the streets and windows with flowers and the hymns and prayers used during the procession, truly “lead all to manifest their faith in Christ, and to give praise to the Lord”, and exclude any forms of competition.

163. The Eucharistic procession is normally concluded by a blessing with the Blessed Sacrament. In the specific case of the Corpus Christi procession, the solemn blessing with the Blessed Sacrament concludes the entire celebration: the usual blessing by the priest is replaced by the blessing with the Blessed Sacrament.

It is important that the faithful understand that this blessing is not an independent form of Eucharistic piety, but the end of a prolonged act of worship. Hence, liturgical norms prohibit “exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for the purpose of giving the blessing.”

Today is Friday of the 9th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 8, 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:

161. Eucharistic devotion, which is so deeply rooted in the Christian faithful, must integrate two basic principles:

• the supreme reference point for Eucharistic devotion is the Lord’s Passover; the Pasch as understood by the Fathers, is the feast of Easter, while the Eucharist is before all else the celebration of Paschal Mystery or of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ;
• all forms of Eucharistic devotion must have an intrinsic reference to the Eucharistic Sacrifice, or dispose the faithful for its celebration, or prolong the worship which is essential to that Sacrifice.

Hence, the Rituale Romanum states “The faithful, when worshipping Christ present in the Sacrament of the Altar, should recall that this presence comes from the Sacrifice of the Eucharist, and tends towards sacramental and spiritual communion.”

Today is Thursday of the 9th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In some parts of the world (but not the United States), this is a holyday of obligation (Body and Blood of Christ). If it is a holyday of obligation in your area, be sure to go to Mass if you didn’t go yesterday evening. (In the U.S. we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ this Sunday.)

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Corpus Christi.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 7, 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:

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

160. The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is observed on the Thursday following on the solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. This feast is both a doctrinal and [ritual] response to heretical teaching on the mystery of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the apogee of an ardent devotional movement concentrated on the Sacrament of the Altar. It was extended to the entire Latin Church by Urban IV in 1264.

Popular piety encouraged the process that led to the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi, which reciprocally inspired the development of new forms of Eucharistic piety among the people of God.

For centuries, the celebration of Corpus Christi remained the principal point of popular piety’s concentration on the Eucharist. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, faith, in reaction to various forms of Protestantism, and culture (art, folklore and literature) coalesced in developing lively and significant expressions Eucharistic devotion in popular piety.

Today is Wednesday of the 9th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

Note: Tomorrow, in some parts of the world (but not the United States), is a holyday of obligation (Body and Blood of Christ). If it is a holyday of obligation in your area, be sure to go to Mass either this evening or tomorrow. (In the U.S. we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ this Sunday.)

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 6, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Norbert, bishop of Magdeburg, founder of the Premonstratensians, and confessor, who died in A.D. 1134. 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. Norbert, 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:

17. In the later non-Christian classical period, there was a convenient distinction made between three stages in the life of perfection: the purgative way, the illuminative way and the unitive way. This teaching has served as a model for many schools of Christian spirituality. While in itself valid, this analysis nevertheless requires several clarifications so as to be interpreted in a correct Christian manner which avoids dangerous misunderstandings.

Today is Tuesday of the 9th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is red.

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

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 5, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Boniface, apostle of Germany, bishop and martyr, who died in A.D. 755. 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. Boniface, 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:

16. The majority of the great religions which have sought union with God in prayer have also pointed out ways to achieve it. Just as “the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions,”18 neither should these ways be rejected out of hand simply because they are not Christian. On the contrary, one can take from them what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic and requirements are never obscured. It is within the context of all of this that these bits and pieces should be taken up and expressed anew. Among these one might mention first of all that of the humble acceptance of a master who is an expert in the life of prayer, and of the counsels he gives. Christian experience has known of this practice from earliest times, from the epoch of the desert Fathers. Such a master, being an expert in “sentire cum Ecclesia,” must not only direct and warn of certain dangers; as a “spiritual father,” he has to also lead his pupil in a dynamic way, heart to heart, into the life of prayer, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today is Monday of the 9th 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 4, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Francis Caracciolo, confessor, who died in A.D. 1608. It is a Class III day.

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

15. A consideration of these truths together brings the wonderful discovery that all the aspirations which the prayer of other religions expresses are fulfilled in the reality of Christianity beyond all measure, without the personal self or the nature of a creature being dissolved or disappearing into the sea of the Absolute. “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). This profoundly Christian affirmation can reconcile perfect union with the otherness existing between lover and loved, with eternal exchange and eternal dialogue. God is himself this eternal exchange and we can truly become sharers of Christ, as “adoptive sons” who cry out with the Son in the Holy Spirit, “Abba, Father.” In this sense, the Fathers are perfectly correct in speaking of the divinization of man who, having been incorporated into Christ, the Son of God by nature, may by his grace share in the divine nature and become a “son in the Son.” Receiving the Holy Spirit, the Christian glorifies the Father and really shares in the Trinitarian life of God.