Year: B(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: Saint Fergal (c.700 - 784)
Ireland, Dunkeld: 27 Nov
Aberdeen: 18 Nov
Fergal (Ferghil, Vergil, Virgil) was an Irish monk, possibly educated at Colbroney under StÂÂ Samthann and going on to become Abbot of Aghaboe. Like many Irish monks of the time, he set off on his ‘pilgrimage of the love of Christ’, in 723. He passed through France and southern Germany. He was invited to Bavaria by Duke Odilo and founded the monastery of Chiemsee. Eventually he became Abbot of St Peter’s at Salzburg. He engaged in controversy with StÂÂ Boniface, but on Boniface’s martyrdom he became his successor as Bishop of Salzburg in 766 or 767. He is remembered as Apostle of the Slovenes; he also had a keen interest in mathematics and astronomy.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Macarius (300 - 391)
SaintÂÂ Macarius the Great was one of the Egyptian desert recluses and a disciple of SaintÂÂ Anthony. Fifty Spiritual Homilies were ascribed to Macarius a few generations after his death. Modern patristic scholarship doubts this attribution but concludes from internal evidence that the author was from Upper Mesopotamia, where the Roman Empire bordered the Persian Empire, and that the homilies were written not later than 534. None of this, of course, affects the spiritual value of the homilies themselves.
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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