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2nd Sunday of Advent 

Using calendar: Asia - India - Goa & Daman. You can change this.

Let us adore the Lord, the King who is to come.

Year: A(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Violet.

Other saints: St John Almond (c.1565-1612)

Liverpool
John Almond (or Lathom or Molyneux) was born at Allerton near Liverpool of Catholic parents about 1565 and went to school at Much Woolton. After studying at Reims he went to the English College in Rome, where in due course he was ordained priest. In 1602 he returned to England as a secular priest and ministered to Catholics there. He was arrested briefly in 1608, and then again in 1612. In November of that year, seven priests had escaped from prison, and this may have sharpened the zeal of those who interrogated him. He displayed to the last great skill in argument; the account of his death describes him as “a reprover of sin, a good example to follow, of an ingenious and acute understanding, sharp and apprehensive in his conceits and answers, yet complete with modesty, full of courage and ready to suffer for Christ, that suffered for him.” He refused to sign the Oath of Allegiance in the form in which it was offered him, but offered to swear that he bore in his heart “so much allegiance to King James as he, or any Christian king, could expect by the law of nature, or the positive law of the true Church, be it which it will, ours or yours.” He was committed to Newgate and within a few months was brought to trial as a seminary priest. Having been duly convicted he was hanged, drawn, and quartered on 5 December 1612 at Tyburn, London.
DK

Other saints: Saint Birinus

Birmingham, Northampton, Winchester, Oxfordshire
Saint Birinus was sent to England as a missionary by Pope Honorius I about the year 634; on his way, he was consecrated bishop in Genoa. He had intended to work in a remote part of Britain but when he found that the West Saxons were still pagan he stayed among them and baptised their King and a good number of his followers during his fifteen years’ apostolate. He died about 650 and the main Church of the West Saxons which he had established at Dorchester-on-Thames was later moved to Winchester, as were the relics of Saint Birinus.
Birmingham Ordo

Other saints: Saint Birinus (-649)

Birmingham, Northampton, Winchester, Oxfordshire
Birinus was a Frank, had been ordained a bishop in Genoa. He was sent to Wessex by Pope Honorius I, arriving in 634 at the port of Hamwic, now in the St Mary’s area of Southampton. He had intended to work in a remote part of Britain but when he found that the West Saxons were still pagan he stayed among them. He baptized the West Saxon king Cynegils, probably in 635. The king granted him the See of Dorchester, where he established a church. He is reputed to have baptised the king’s son and his grandson (and to have been godfather to the latter). During his 15-year apostolate, he founded churches across Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. He died on 3 December 649, and it is thought that his relics were later taken to Winchester, the capital of Wessex, when the See was moved from Dorchester to Winchester by St Hedda.
Portsmouth Ordo

Other saints: Saint Hedda (-705)

Birmingham, Northampton, Winchester, Oxfordshire
Hedda (Haeddi), whose feast is celebrated in Winchester on this day, was educated at Whitby, and ordained bishop in 676 by Theodore of Canterbury. He was appointed Bishop of the West Saxons, and moved his See from Dorchester to Winchester, which transformed it not only into the ecclesiastical centre of the kingdom but also for a time its capital. He died in 705.
Portsmouth Ordo

Other saints: Bl Bartholomew Fanti (c.1428-1495)

5 Dec (where celebrated)
Bartholomew Fanti was born in Mantua around the year 1428. In 1452 he is known to have already been a Carmelite priest of the Congregation of Mantua. For thirty-five years at the Order’s church in Mantua he was the spiritual director and rector of the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for which he composed a rule and statutes. He was a teacher of Bl Baptist Spagnoli and is especially remembered for his devotion to and love of the Eucharist. He died in 1495 in Mantua.
MT

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: Eusebius of Caeserea (c.260 - c.340)

Eusebius became bishop of Caeserea Maritima (an ancient city, later abandoned, on what is now the Israeli coast between Jaffa and Tel Aviv) in about 341. It is reasonable to suppose that he was born in the city, which was at the time an important centre of Christian learning.
  Eusebius was a prolific author and controversialist. Large parts of his work no longer survive. Doctrinally, he was not always found to be orthodox, at a time when the details of orthodoxy were still being worked out. His enduring contribution is his Ecclesiastical History, which is long, thorough and scholarly and an indispensable source for the history of the early Church. The Second Readings in the Office of Readings also include, in Advent, an extract from a commentary of his on the book of the prophet Isaiah.

Liturgical colour: violet

Violet is a dark colour, ‘the gloomy cast of the mortified, denoting affliction and melancholy’. Liturgically, it is the colour of Advent and Lent, the seasons of penance and preparation.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)Romans 13:13-14 ©
Let us live decently as people do in the daytime: no drunken orgies, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ.

Noon reading (Sext)1 Thessalonians 3:12-13 ©
May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another and the whole human race as much as we love you. And may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus Christ comes with all his saints.

Afternoon reading (None)(2 Thessalonians 1:6-10) ©
God will very rightly reward you, who are suffering now, with the same peace as he will give us, when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven with the angels of his power, when he comes to be glorified among his saints and seen in his glory by all who believe in him.

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Goa & Daman

 - Old Goa


Scripture readings taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.
 
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