Category: +Religion

Today is the 9th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

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

It is Most Holy Trinity Sunday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 3, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, martyrs. It is a memorial.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, 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:

Commenting on today’s celebration, the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety states:

159. Together with the little doxology (Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit….) and the great doxology (Glory be to God in the highest), pious exercises addressed directly to the Most Blessed Trinity often include formulas such as the biblical Trisagion (Holy, Holy, Holy) and also its liturgical form (Holy God, Holy Strong One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us), especially in the Eastern Churches, in some Western countries as well as among numerous religious orders and congregations.

The liturgical Trisagion is inspired by liturgical hymns and its biblical counterpart. Here mention could be made of the Sanctus used in the celebration of the Mass, the Te Deum, theimproperia of Good Friday’s veneration of the Cross, all of which are derived from Isaiah 6, 3 and Apocalypses 4, 8. The Trisagion is a pious exercise in which the faithful, united with the Angels, continually glorify God, the Holy, Powerful and Immortal One, while using expressions of praise drawn from Scripture and the Liturgy.

For about half a year I’ve been running a daily feature on “The Church Year” as part of JimmyAkin.com, which offers information and links about the current liturgical day in the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Latin rite.

I’m thinking about splitting this off into it’s own site, with its own web address.

If you like getting this feature by email or RSS, those options would still be available. It would just come under its own banner rather than JimmyAkin.com.

So I wanted to get reader feedback on this subject.

Please take a moment to use the poll below to let me know your thoughts.

NOTE: You don’t have to be a fan of “The Church Year” to vote. I’m trying to get a sense of what readers in general would like, Church Year fans and non-fans included.

Thanks much!

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Today is Saturday of the 8th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Ember Saturday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 2, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St.s Marcellinus and Peter, martyred at Rome who died in A.D. 302. It is an optional memorial.

In both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Erasmus, bishop and martyr, who died in A.D 303. It is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about St.s Marcellinus and Peter, you can click here.

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

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

If you’d like to learn more about St. Erasmus, 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 is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

158. Worship, as has been said in the first part of this Directory, is the dialogue of God with man through Christ in the Holy Spirit. A Trinitarian orientation is therefore an essential element in popular piety. It should be clear to the faithful that all pious exercises in honor of the Blessed Virgin May, and of the Angels and Saints have the Father as their final end, from Whom all thing come and to Whom all things return; the incarnate, dead and resurrected Son is the only mediator (1Tim 2,5) apart from whom access to the Father is impossible (cf. John 14,6); the Holy Spirit is the only source of grace and sanctification. It is important to avoid any concept of “divinity” which is abstract from the three Divine Persons.

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Today is Friday of the 8th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is red.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Ember Friday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 1, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Justin martyr. It is a memorial.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Angela Merici, foundress of the Ursulines, virgin, who died in A.D. 1540. It is a Class III day.

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

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

This Sunday is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

157. The solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity is celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost. With the growth of devotion to the mystery of God in His Unity and Trinity, John XXII extended the feast of the Holy Trinity to the entire Latin Church in 1334. During the middle ages, especially during the carolingian period, devotion to the Blessed Trinity was a highly important feature of private devotion and inspired several liturgical expressions. These events were influential in the development of certain pious exercises.

In the present context, it would not appear appropriate to mention specific pious exercises connected with popular devotion to the Blessed Trinity, “the central mystery of the faith and of the Christian life.” It sufficies to recall that every genuine form of popular piety must necessarily refer to God, “the all-powerful Father, His only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit.” Such is the mystery of God, as revealed in Christ and through him. Such have been his manifestations in salvation history. The history of salvation “is the history of the revelation of the one true God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who reconciles and unites to Himself those who have been freed from sin.”

Numerous pious exercises have a Trinitarian character or dimension. Most of them begin with the sign of the cross “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, the same formula with which the disciples of Jesus are baptized (cf. Mt 28, 19), thereby beginning a life of intimacy with the God, as sons of the Father, brothers of Jesus, and temples of the Holy Spirit. Other pious exercises use formulas similar to those found in the Liturgy of the Hours and begin by giving “Glory to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Some pious exercises end with a blessing given in the name of the three divine Persons. Many of the prayers used in these pious exercises follow the typical liturgical form and are addressed to the “Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit”, and conserve doxological formulas taken from the Liturgy.

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Today is Thursday of the 8th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Pentecost Thursday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On May 31, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a feast.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate Our Lady, virgin and Queen. It is a Class II day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St. Petronilla, virgin, who died in A.D. 60. This celebration is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about Our Lady, you can click here.

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

14. In order to draw near to that mystery of union with God, which the Greek Fathers called the divinization of man, and to grasp accurately the manner in which this is realized, it is necessary in the first place to bear in mind that man is essentially a creature,16 and remains such for eternity, so that an absorbing of the human self into the divine self is never possible, not even in the highest states of grace. However, one must recognize that the human person is created in the “image and likeness” of God, and that the archetype of this image is the Son of God, in whom and through whom we have been created (cf. Col 1:16). This archetype reveals the greatest and most beautiful Christian mystery: from eternity the Son is “other” with respect to the Father and yet, in the Holy Spirit, he is “of the same substance.” Consequently this otherness, far from being an ill, is rather the greatest of goods. There is otherness in God himself, who is one single nature in three Persons, and there is also otherness between God and creatures, who are by nature different. Finally, in the Holy Eucharist, as in the rest of the sacraments?and analogically in his works and in his words?Christ gives himself to us and makes us participate in his divine nature,17 without nevertheless suppressing our created nature, in which he himself shares through his Incarnation.

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Today is Wednesday of the 8th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Ember Wednesday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On May 30, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Felix I, pope and martyr, who died in A.D. 274. It is a commemoration.

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

13. To find the right “way” of prayer, the Christian should consider what has been said earlier regarding the prominent features of the way of Christ, whose “food is to do the will of him who sent (him), and to accomplish his work” (Jn 4:34). Jesus lives no more intimate or closer a union with the Father than this, which for him is continually translated into deep prayer. By the will of the Father he is sent to mankind, to sinners. to his very executioners, and he could not be more intimately united to the Father than by obeying his will. This did not in any way prevent him, however, from also retiring to a solitary place during his earthly sojourn to unite himself to the Father and receive from him new strength for his mission in this world. On Mount Tabor, where his union with the Father was manifest, there was called to mind his passion (cf. Lk 9:31), and there was not even a consideration of the possibility of remaining in “three booths” on the Mount of the Transfiguration. Contemplative Christian prayer always leads to love of neighbor, to action and to the acceptance of trials, and precisely because of this it draws one close to God.

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Today is Tuesday of the 8th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Pentecost Tuesday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On May 29, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, virgin, who died in A.D. 1607. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi, you can click here.

www.newadvent.org/cathen/09762a.htm

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:

12. With the present diffusion of eastern methods of meditation in the Christian world and in ecclesial communities, we find ourselves faced with a pointed renewal of an attempt, which is not free from dangers and errors, to fuse Christian meditation with that which is non-Christian. Proposals in this direction are numerous and radical to a greater or lesser extent. Some use eastern methods solely as a psycho-physical preparation for a truly Christian contemplation; others go further and, using different techniques, try to generate spiritual experiences similar to those described in the writings of certain Catholic mystics.13 Still others do not hesitate to place that absolute without image or concepts, which is proper to Buddhist theory,14 on the same level as the majesty of God revealed in Christ, which towers above finite reality. To this end, they make use of a “negative theology,” which transcends every affirmation seeking to express what God is and denies that the things of this world can offer traces of the infinity of God. Thus they propose abandoning not only meditation on the salvific works accomplished in history by the God of the Old and New Covenant, but also the very idea of the One and Triune God, who is Love, in favor of an immersion “in the indeterminate abyss of the divinity.”15 These and similar proposals to harmonize Christian meditation with eastern techniques need to have their contents and methods ever subjected to a thorough-going examination so as to avoid the danger of falling into syncretism.

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Today is Monday of the 8th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

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

In the Ordinary Form, this is the beginning of Ordinary Time after Easter.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Pentecost Monday.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On May 28, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Augustine, B of Canterbury, apostle of England, confessor, who died in A.D. 604. It is a Class III day.

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

11. However, these forms of error, wherever they arise, can be diagnosed very simply. The meditation of the Christian in prayer seeks to grasp the depths of the divine in the salvific works of God in Christ, the Incarnate Word, and in the gift of his Spirit. These divine depths are always revealed to him through the human-earthly dimension. Similar methods of meditation, on the other hand, including those which have their starting-point in the words and deeds of Jesus, try as far as possible to put aside everything that is worldly, sense-perceptible or conceptually limited. It is thus an attempt to ascend to or immerse oneself in the sphere of the divine, which, as such, is neither terrestrial, sense-perceptible nor capable of conceptualization.12 This tendency, already present in the religious sentiments of the later Greek period (especially in “Neoplatonism”), is found deep in the religious inspiration of many peoples, no sooner than they become aware of the precarious character of their representations of the divine and of their attempts to draw close to it.

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