There’s still time to join the Secret Information Club and get Pope Benedict’s frank assessment of the current quest for Christian unity–both its progress and its pitfalls.
You can sign up BY CLICKING HERE (or go to www.SecretInfoClub.com) and get Pope Benedict’s insights this weekend!
Did you know? Jeanne Calment was a French woman with the longest verified lifespan on record: 122 years, 164 days. She passed on August 4, 1997. LEARN MORE.
Today is Friday of the 6th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.
Saints & Celebrations:
On February 17, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order. It is an optional memorial.
If you’d like to learn more about the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order, you can click here.
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:
58. The Liturgy and popular piety, while not conterminous, remain two legitimate expressions of Christian worship. While not opposed to each other, neither are they to be regarded a equiparate to each other. Rather, they are to be seen in harmony with each in accordance with the Council’s liturgical constitution: “The popular devotions of the
Christian people […] should accord with the sacred Liturgy…[and] in some way derive from it, and lead people to it, since in fact the Liturgy by its very nature is far superior to any of them.”
Hence, the Liturgy and popular piety are two forms of worship which are in mutual and fruitful relationship with each other. In this relationship, however, the Liturgy remains the primary reference point so as “clearly and prudently to channel the yearnings of prayer and the charismatic life” which are found in popular piety. For its part, popular piety, because of its symbolic and expressive qualities, can often provide the Liturgy with important insights for inculturation and stimulate an effective dynamic creativity.
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Did you know? Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun on Feb. 16, 1923. LEARN MORE.
Today is Thursday of the 6th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.
Saints & Celebrations:
On February 16, 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:
57. Any exclusive promotion of popular piety, which should always be seen in terms of the Christian faith, can encourage a process that eventually leads the faithful away from Christian revelation and encourages the undue or distorted use of elements drawn from cosmic or natural religions. It can also give rise to the introduction into Christian worship of elements taken from pre-Christian beliefs, or that are merely cultural, national or ethnic psychological expressions. Likewise, the illusion can be created that the transcendent can be reached through unpurified religious experiences, thereby promoting the notion that salvation can be achieved through man’s own personal efforts (the constant danger of pelagianism should never be forgotten), thereby compromising any authentic Christian understanding of salvation as a gratuitous gift of God. Indeed, the role of secondary mediators, such as the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angels and Saints, or even national saints, can surpass that of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one Mediator, in the minds of the faithful.
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Did you know? The first electronic general-purpose computer–ENIAC–was formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia Feb. 15, 1946. LEARN MORE.
Today is Wednesday of the 6th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.
Saints & Celebrations:
On February 15, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St.s Faustinus and Jovita, martyrs, who died in A.D. 117. It is a commemoration.
If you’d like to learn more about St.s Faustinus and Jovita, 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:
56. Theoretical or practical contempt for the Liturgy inevitably leads to a clouding of the Christian understanding of the mystery of God, Who has mercifully deigned to look down on fallen man and bring him to Himself through the incarnation of His Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Such fails to perceive the significance of salvation history and the relationship between Old and New Testaments. It underestimates the saving Word of God which sustains the Liturgy, and to which the Liturgy always refers. Such a disposition attenuates in the faithful any realization of the importance of the work of Christ our only Savior who is the Son of God and the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Eventually, it leads to a loss of thesensus Ecclesiae.
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Did you know? The world’s heaviest creature is an aspen grove named “Pando” (Latin, “I spread”). It is in Utah, and it is a single superorganism where its individual trees are shoots of a single underground root network. It weighs around 6,600 tons and is thought to be 80,000 years old. LEARN MORE.
Today is Tuesday of the 6th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.
Saints & Celebrations:
On February 14, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St.s Cyril, monk, and Methodius, bishop. It is a memorial.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Valentine, priest and martyr, who died in A.D. 270. It is a commemoration.
If you’d like to learn more about St.s Cyril and Methodius, you can click here.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Valentine, 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:
55. Any unilateral exaltation of popular piety which fails to take account of the Liturgy, is inconsistent with the fact that the essential elements of the Liturgy derive from the will of Christ himself, and is unable to emphasize its indispensable sotereological and doxological importance. Following the Lord’s ascension to the glory of the Father, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, the perfect glorification of God and the salvation of man comes about primarily through the celebration of the liturgy, which requires an adherence of faith, and brings the believer to participate in the fundamental salvific event: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ (cf. Rm 6,2-6, 1 Cor 11,23-26).
The Church’s understanding of her mystery, and her worshipping and saving actions, constantly affirms that it is through “the Liturgy…, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, [that] ‘the work of our redemption is accomplished’.” This affirmation, however, does not deny the importance of other forms of piety.
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Join the Secret Information Club by Friday and get a frank assessment in which Pope Benedict discusses the progress–and the problems–of how ecumenism is being practiced and what pitfalls it must avoid.
Sign up here: www.SecretInfoClub.com