Year: B(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: St Leonard of Porto Maurizio (1676 - 1751)
Hexham & Newcastle
Leonard was born in Porto Maurizio in 1676, the son of a master mariner. He joined the Franciscan order and for forty-seven years preached, wrote letters and sermons, and travelled the whole length of Italy. The popularity of the Stations of the Cross is much due to the impetus he gave to the devotion. He died at Rome in 1751.
Other saints: Saint John Berchmans (1599-1621)
26 Nov (where celebrated)
John Berchmans was born in Diest, Belgium. He joined the Jesuit novitiate when he was seventeen. Sent to Rome to study philosophy at the Roman College in 1619, he surprised both masters and classmates: he joined an exquisite charity and friendliness to a brilliant intelligence and great emotional maturity. His spiritual diary also reveals the depth of his interior life, which bespeaks a true mystical union with God. His health suffered from the effort he put into studying for his final examination, and he became steadily weaker as he prepared for the disputation. On July 8 1621, he passed his final examination brilliantly, but soon after he fell seriously ill with dysentery and died on 13 August 1621.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)
Augustine was born in Thagaste in Africa of a Berber family. He was brought up a Christian but left the Church early and spent a great deal of time seriously seeking the truth, first in the Manichaean heresy, which he abandoned on seeing how nonsensical it was, and then in Neoplatonism, until at length, through the prayers of his mother and the teaching of St Ambrose of Milan, he was converted back to Christianity and baptized in 387, shortly before his mother’s death.
ÂÂ ÂÂ Augustine had a brilliant legal and academic career, but after his conversion he returned home to Africa and led an ascetic life. He was elected Bishop of Hippo and spent 34 years looking after his flock, teaching them, strengthening them in the faith and protecting them strenuously against the errors of the time. He wrote an enormous amount and left a permanent mark on both philosophy and theology. His Confessions, as dazzling in style as they are deep in content, are a landmark of world literature. The Second Readings in the Office of Readings contain extracts from many of his sermons and commentaries and also from the Confessions.
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 |
1 Corinthians 12:4-6 |
|
There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them.
|
| Noon reading |
1 Corinthians 12:12-13 |
|
Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ. In the one Spirit we were all baptised, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.
|
| Afternoon reading |
1 Corinthians 12:24,25-26 |
|
God has arranged the body and that there may not be disagreements inside the body, but that each part may be equally concerned for all the others. If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it. If one part is given special honour, all parts enjoy it.
|