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Saturday after Epiphany Sunday 

Using calendar: Scotland - Argyll & the Isles. You can change this.

Christ has appeared to us: come, let us adore him.

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: White.

Other saints: St Adrian of Canterbury (d. 710)

Kenya, Southern Africa
Feeling called to the monastic life, Adrian left his native North Africa and joined the Benedictines in Italy. Renowned for his scholarship and holiness, he was elected abbot of his monastery and later nominated archbishop of Canterbury. Out of humility he declined the appointment to archbishop, but volunteered to go to England as a missionary. He endured various trials and even imprisonment on his journey to Canterbury, since he was taken for a spy. Once in England, he was appointed abbot of the monastery of Sts Peter and Paul where he lived for 39 years, actively involved in preaching and education. He died in 710.

Other saints: St Andrew Corsini (c.1315-1374)

9 Jan (where celebrated)
Andrew was born into nobility, a member of the powerful Corsini family of Florence, and was one of 12 children. He joined the Carmelite community at the Carmine on the southern bank of the Arno sometime before the year 1338. This community was known for its sanctity and regular observance amidst a more tumultuous environment of religious life in the early Renaissance period. After completing his studies in Florence he was teacher of the younger students in the community.
  During the 1348 general chapter at Metz, he was made Tuscan provincial and briefly lead the province through the ravages of the Black Death that was to claim over 100 Carmelites. This election was short-lived because in October 1349 Pope Clement VI nominated him to be bishop of Fiesole, a town about 5 miles north-east of Florence. Taking up his episcopal duties in March of the following year, Andrew was faced not only with the consequences of the Black Death, but also with a diocese that had been neglected by his predecessors. The diocesan bishops of Fiesole had not lived in the diocese for over a century leaving the cathedral and diocese to fall into ruin. Andrew moved swiftly to repair the material and spiritual damage to his diocese, working tirelessly to rebuild the cathedral, restore parish churches, and improve the moral life of his priests.
  Andrew went about establishing a small religious community around him, disbanding the large Episcopal entourage and reducing the number of house servants to six. He also invited two friars from the Carmine to live with him in community. He considered himself the “father and helper of the poor” and devoted special care to the sick in the wake of the devastation brought about by the plague. He was also an eloquent preacher of reconciliation, and a successful peacemaker in Fiesole, Florence, Prato and Pistoia.
  After his death in January 1374, Andrew was venerated in Fiesole and Florence as a devout religious and an outstanding bishop whose life demonstrated the pattern for a true shepherd of the Christ’s people.
MT

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

Second Reading: Faustus of Riez (405/10 - 490/95)

Faustus was born in Britain, though there is some disagreement as to whether this means the island of Great Britain or Less Britain, that is, Brittany. As a young man he entered the monastery of Lérins, on an island off the coast of the French Riviera, where he was elected abbot at a remarkably young age, in 439, on the elevation of his predecessor, Maximus, to the nearby bishopric of Riez. (St Vincent of Lérins, another monk of this abbey, is another author of a Second Reading: he died in about 445). When Maximus died in about 466, Faustus succeeded him as bishop. He wrote extensively on the Trinity and on grace and free will and took part in the controversies of the time on these subjects. It is heartening to note that the same volume of our Liturgy of the Hours contains readings from both Faustus and one of his opponents, Fulgentius of Ruspe.

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)Ezekiel 20:41-42 ©
I will welcome you like an appeasing fragrance when I bring you out from among the peoples. I mean to gather you together from the foreign countries in which you have been scattered and through you I intend to display my holiness for all the nations to see. You will learn that I am the Lord.

Noon reading (Sext)Ezekiel 34:11-12 ©
I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view. As a shepherd keeps all his flock in view when he stands up in the middle of his scattered sheep, so shall I keep my sheep in view. I shall rescue them from wherever they have been scattered.

Afternoon reading (None)Micah 2:12 ©
I am going to gather all Jacob together, I will gather the remnant of Israel, bring them together like sheep in the fold; like a flock in its pasture they will fear no man.

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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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