Jimmy Akin

Today is Ash Wednesday The liturgical color is violet.

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Chair of St. Peter the apostle. In the Ordinary Form, it is a feast, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class II day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St. Paul, apostle. This celebration is a commemoration.

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

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

If you’d like to learn more about St. Peter’s Chair, 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:

125. In the Roman Rite, the beginning of the forty days of penance is marked with the austere symbol of ashes, which are used in the Liturgy of Ash Wednesday. The use of ashes is a survival from an ancient rite according to which converted sinners submitted themselves to canonical penance. The act of putting on ashes symbolizes fragility and mortality, and the need to be redeemed by the mercy of God. Far from being a merely external act, the Church has retained the use of ashes to symbolize that attitude of internal penance to which all the baptized are called during Lent. The faithful who come to receive ashes should be assisted in perceiving the implicit internal significance of this act, which disposes them towards conversion and renewed Easter commitment.

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Today is Tuesday of the 7th 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.

Today is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday).

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 21, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Peter Damian, bishop and doctor of the Church. 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. Peter Damian, 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:

63. That harmonious fusion or the Gospel message with a particular culture, which is often found in popular piety, is a further reason for the Magisterium’s esteem of popular piety. In genuine forms of popular piety, the Gospel message assimilates expressive forms particular to a given culture while also permeating the consciousness of that culture with the content of the Gospel, and its idea of life and death, and of man’s freedom, mission and destiny.

The transmission of this cultural heritage from father to son, from generation to generation, also implies the transmission of Christian principles. In some cases, this fusion goes so deep that elements proper to the Christian faith become integral elements of the cultural identity of particular nations. Devotion to the Mother of the God would be an example of this.

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Today is Monday of the 7th 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 20, 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:

62. Popular piety can easily direct its attention to the Son of God who, for love of mankind, became a poor, small child, born of a simple humble woman. Likewise, it has a particular sensibility for the mystery of Passion and death of Christ.

Contemplation of the mystery of the afterlife is an important feature of popular piety, as is its interest in communion with the Saints in Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angels, and suffrage for the souls of the dead.

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Today is the 7th Sunday of 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.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Quinquagesima Sunday.

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 19, 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:

61. Popular piety, according to the Magisterium, is a living reality in and of the Church. Its source is the constant presence of the Spirit of God in the ecclesial community; the mystery of Christ Our Savior is its reference point, the glory of God and the salvation of man its object, its historical moment “the joyous encounter of the work of evangelisation and culture.” On several occasions, the Magisterium has expressed its esteem for popular piety and its various manifestations, admonishing those who ignore it, or overlook it, or even distain it, to adopt a more positive attitude towards it, taking due note of its many values. Indeed, the Magisterium sees popular piety as “a true treasure of the People of God.”

The Magisterium’s esteem for popular piety is principally motivated by the values which it incorporates.

Popular piety has an innate sense of the sacred and the transcendent, manifests a genuine thirst for God and “an acute sense of God’s deepest attributes: fatherhood, providence, constant and loving presence”, and mercy.

The documents of the Magisterium highlight certain interior dispositions and virtues particularly consonant with popular piety and which, in turn, are prompted and nourished by it: patience and “Christian resignation in the face of irremediable situations”; trusting abandonment to God; the capacity to bear sufferings and to perceive “the cross in every-day life”; a genuine desire to please the Lord and to do reparation and penance for the offences offered to Him; detachment from material things; solidarity with, and openness to, others; “a sense of friendliness, charity and family unity.”

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