Jimmy Akin

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

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

Saints & Celebrations:

On April 4, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Isidore, bishop of Seveille, confessor and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 636. 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. Isidore, 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 the season of Lent ends and the season of Triduum begins. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

The Paschal Triduum

140. Every year, the Church celebrates the great mysteries of the redemption of mankind in the “most sacred triduum of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection.” The Sacred Triduum extends from the Mass of the Lord’s Supper to Vespers on Easter Sunday and is celebrated “in intimate communion with Christ her Spouse.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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