Year: C(I). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: Bl. Alvarez of Cordoba OP ( - 1430)
19 Feb (where celebrated)
Dominican Friar and Priest.
Born at Zamora, Spain, towards the middle of the fourteenth century, Blessed Alvarez entered the Order in 1368. He preached throughout Spain and Italy and established the priory of Scala Caeli at Cordova where he promoted the regular life. By his preaching and contemplation of the Lord’s Passion he spread the practice of the Way of the Cross throughout the West. He died on February 19, about the year 1430.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: Procopius of Gaza (c. 465 - 528)
Procopius of Gaza was a Christian sophist and rhetorician, one of the most important representatives of the famous school of his native place. Here he spent nearly the whole of his life teaching and writing; he took no part in the theological movements of his time. Procopius’s theological works are a series of commentaries on books of the Bible: Kings and Chronicles, Isaiah, the Proverbs, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. The form is that of a catena – that is to say, a chain in which the links are the phrases in the work being discussed, while from each link there hangs a second chain of comments or elucidations by the Fathers or other authorities and ultimately by Procopius himself.
Liturgical colour: green
The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the orderly sequence of weeks through the year, a season in which we are being neither single-mindedly penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).
| Mid-morning reading |
Deuteronomy 1:16-17 |
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At that time I told your judges: You must give your brothers a fair hearing and see justice done between a man and his brother or the stranger who lives with him. You must be impartial in judgement and give an equal hearing to small and great alike. Do not be afraid of any man, for the judgement is God’s.
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| Noon reading |
Isaiah 55:8-9 |
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My thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways – it is the Lord who speaks.
Yes, the heavens are as high above earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.
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| Afternoon reading |
1 Samuel 16:7 |
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God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.
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