The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.
Year: B(II). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: Saint Donan
Argyll & the Isles
St Donan, or Donnan, came from Ireland and established a monastery on the Isle of Eigg in the Inner Hebrides. On Easter Sunday 617 he and his 52 companions were celebrating Mass when Danish pirates arrived. The pirates allowed them to finish the Mass and then beheaded them all.
Donan is the patron saint of Eigg.
Other saints: Bl Baptist Spagnoli of Mantua (1447-1516)
17 Apr (where celebrated)
Baptist came from a family who served the Dukes of Mantua, in a northern region of Italy. He entered a Carmelite community in Ferrara and professed his religious vows in 1464. This community was part of what would later be known as the ‘Mantuan Reform’, living a stricter observance of the Carmelite Rule and seeking a spirituality of integrity amidst laxity and lethargy that characterised many religious groups of the time.
It was during his studies and doctoral work at the University of Bologna (completed in 1475) that Baptist discovered his passion for poetry in the style of classic Latin antiquity. In the wake of the rise of Christian Humanism in literature, his passion drew him into friendships with many writers. The great humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam, reading Baptist’s work, gave him the nickname “the Christian Vergil”. In addition to his poetic works, Baptist also used his writing skill to critique the violent political situation of Renaissance Italy. He used his pen to encourage his fellow Carmelites in their interior lives of solitude, prayer and recollection, and he also wrote prayers and poems that honoured Mary and the saints.
Baptist also demonstrated a gift for leadership. Six times he was elected Vicar General for the Reformed Congregation (the Mantuan Reform). He was well known for his direct and eloquent condemnation of the corruption and immorality that was prevalent in the Church of the time. In 1513 Baptist was elected Prior General for the whole Order, a role that lasted until his death in 1516.
Other saints: Bl. Clara Gambacorta OP (1362 - 1419)
17 Apr (where celebrated)
Dominican Nun and Widow.
Blessed Clara was born in Pisa in 1362, married at the age of twelve and widowed at the age of fifteen. She longed to join a religious order, but her family objected. When at last they relented, upon the advice of Saint Catherine of Siena she received the Dominican habit at the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Pisa. In 1385 along with Blessed Maria Mancini she founded the Monastery of Saint Dominic in Pisa where regular observance was strictly maintained. She was noted for her great prudence and charity, especially in pardoning the assassin of her father and brothers. She prized study and urged her sisters to do likewise. She died on April 17, 1419.
Other saints: Bl. Maria Mancini OP ( - 1431)
17 Apr (where celebrated)
Dominican Nun and Widow.
Catharine Mancini was born at Pisa around the middle of the fourteenth century. By the time she was twenty-five she had been widowed twice and left bereft of all her children. At the urging of Saint Catherine of Siena she became a Sister of Penance and later entered the monastery founded by Blessed Clara Gambacorta where she took the name Maria. There she devoted herself to contemplation and penance, and upon the death of Blessed Clara, became prioress. She died there on January 22, 1431.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: Saint Justin, Martyr (- 165)
Justin was born at the beginning of the second century in Nablus, in Samaria, of a pagan Greek family. He was an earnest seeker after truth, and studied many systems of philosophy before being led, through Platonism, to Christianity. While remaining a layman, he accepted the duty of making the truth known, and travelled from place to place proclaiming the gospel. In 151 he travelled from Ephesus to Rome, where he opened a school of philosophy and wrote defences and expositions of Christianity, which have survived to this day and are the earliest known writings of their kind. In the persecution of 165, in the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, he was denounced as a Christian, arrested and beheaded.
Justin treats the Greek philosophy that he studied as mostly true, but incomplete. In contrast to the Hebrew tendency to view God as making revelations to them and to no-one else, he follows the parable of the Sower, and sees God as sowing the seed of wisdom throughout the world, to grow wherever the soil would receive it.
Liturgical colour: white
White is the colour of heaven. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate feasts of the Lord; Christmas and Easter, the great seasons of the Lord; and the saints. Not that you will always see white in church, because if something more splendid, such as gold, is available, that can and should be used instead. We are, after all, celebrating.
In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.
Mid-morning reading (Terce) | (Romans 4:24-25) |
We believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, Jesus who was put to death for our sins and raised to life to justify us.
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Noon reading (Sext) | 1 John 5:5-6 |
Who can overcome the world? Only the man who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus Christ came by water and blood: not with water only, but with water and blood.
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Afternoon reading (None) | (Ephesians 4:23-24) |
Let your spirits be renewed so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.
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