Indeed, how good is the Lord: bless his holy name.
Year: A(I). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Sunday of the Word of God
‘…At the conclusion of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, I proposed setting aside “a Sunday given over entirely to the word of God, so as to appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people”. Devoting a specific Sunday of the liturgical year to the word of God can enable the Church to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world…
‘Consequently, I hereby declare that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time is to be devoted to the celebration, study and dissemination of the word of God. This Sunday of the Word of God will thus be a fitting part of that time of the year when we are encouraged to strengthen our bonds with the Jewish people and to pray for Christian unity. This is more than a temporal coincidence: the celebration of the Sunday of the Word of God has ecumenical value, since the Scriptures point out, for those who listen, the path to authentic and firm unity.
‘The various communities will find their own ways to mark this Sunday with a certain solemnity. It is important, however, that in the Eucharistic celebration the sacred text be enthroned, in order to focus the attention of the assembly on the normative value of God’s word. On this Sunday, it would be particularly appropriate to highlight the proclamation of the word of the Lord and to emphasize in the homily the honour that it is due. Bishops could celebrate the Rite of Installation of Lectors or a similar commissioning of readers, in order to bring out the importance of the proclamation of God’s word in the liturgy. In this regard, renewed efforts should be made to provide members of the faithful with the training needed to be genuine proclaimers of the word, as is already the practice in the case of acolytes or extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. Pastors can also find ways of giving a Bible, or one of its books, to the entire assembly as a way of showing the importance of learning how to read, appreciate and pray daily with sacred Scripture, especially through the practice of lectio divina.’
| The Apostolic Letter "Aperuit Illis" of Pope Francis |
In other years: Pope St Fabian (- 250)
He became Pope in 236 and was martyred on 20 January 250, during the persecution of the Emperor Decius. See the articles in
Wikipedia and the
Catholic Encyclopaedia.
In other years: St Sebastian
Nothing is known about St Sebastian except the fact that he was martyred early on in the persecutions of Diocletian. St Ambrose knew of him and states that he was already venerated in Milan in the fourth century. One of the seven chief churches of Rome was built over his grave in 367.
All else (his youth, his martyrdom by arrows) is fiction, some of it dating from more than a thousand years after his death. But what we know is what we need to know. For the Christians of the fourth century the important, the true, the sufficient fact about Sebastian was that he was a martyr, and they venerated him as such. It should be enough for us as well. See the article in the
Catholic Encyclopaedia.
Other saints: Blessed Cyprian Michael Tansi (1903 - 1964)
Kenya, Nigeria, Southern Africa, Nottingham
Father Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi was born in Nigeria in 1903. He was brought up by the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans) and trained as a teacher and a catechist. Later he decided to join the seminary and in 1937 he was ordained a priest. In 1950 he left his Diocese in order to go to England where he joined the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St Bernard, near Nottingham. He had been singled out as the ideal candidate to be trained in England and then return to establish a Trappist Monastery in the Diocese of Onitsha in Nigeria. Fr Tansi lived the monastic life with great faith and humility. Absorbed in prayer, he was a living example of patience and charity. Early in 1964 he was diagnosed with aortic aneurysm and died two weeks later on 20 January 1964. See the article in
Wikipedia.
Other saints: Bl Angelo Paoli (1642-1720)
20 Jan (where celebrated)
Angelo Paoli, a professed priest of the Carmelite Order, was born in Tuscany on 1 September 1642. In the convents in which he lived, he served others in a multitude of ways with dedication and humility, and held the post of master of novices several times. Everywhere he sought to help the poor in their need. In 1687 the Prior General called him to Rome, to entrust him with the formation of the novices. A much sought after animator and spiritual director, he devoted himself without reserve to the poor, the sick and the imprisoned, whom he assisted in every way, including by recourse to original and novel initiatives. He established a hospice for the convalescent poor of the hospital of S. Giovanni, in which they could recover their strength in order to rejoin society and the labour market. His devotion to the cross led him to place the sign of Christ in a number of places. He died in Rome on 20 January 1720 in the odour of sanctity. He was beatified on 25 April 2010.
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 (Terce) | Deuteronomy 1:31 © |
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The Lord carried you, as a man carries his child, all along the road you travelled.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Baruch 4:28-29 © |
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As by your will you first strayed away from God, so now turn back and search for him ten times as hard; for as he brought down those disasters on you, so will he rescue you and give you eternal joy.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Wisdom 1:13-15 © |
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Death was not God’s doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living. To be – for this he created all; the world’s created things have health in them, in them no fatal poison can be found, and Hades holds no power on earth; for virtue is undying.
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