Come, let us adore the Lord, for he is our God.
Year: B(II). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Saint Antony Mary Claret (1807 - 1870)
He was born at Sallent in Catalonia. After becoming a priest he spent several years preaching to the people throughout Catalonia and also in the Canary Islands. Returning to Spain, he established a missionary order, and founded a great religious library and publishing house in Barcelona which published millions of cheap copies of ancient and modern Catholic works. In 1851 the Pope appointed him Bishop of Santiago de Cuba. The diocese was in a terrible state and everything needed reform and renewal. He reorganised the seminary, enforced clerical discipline, and regularised thousands of marriages. He built a hospital and many schools. This was not done without opposition and he was the subject of fifteen assassination attempts.
Recalled to Spain in 1857 by Queen Isabella II to act as her confessor, he did further great work for the Church. His health began to fail, and he died at the Cistercian abbey at Fontfroide.
Other saints: St Magloire (-575)
Guernsey, Sark
Magloire was of Irish origin and was educated at Llantwit Major by St Illtyd. Together with his fellow pupil St Sampson he went to Brittany, and became Abbot of one of Sampson’s monasteries at Dol. After some years he retired to Sark, where he founded a monastery and died about 575. His remains were translated first to Léhon and later to Paris at the time of the Viking invasions.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)
Augustine was born in Thagaste in Africa of a Berber family. He was brought up a Christian but left the Church early and spent a great deal of time seriously seeking the truth, first in the Manichaean heresy, which he abandoned on seeing how nonsensical it was, and then in Neoplatonism, until at length, through the prayers of his mother and the teaching of St Ambrose of Milan, he was converted back to Christianity and baptized in 387, shortly before his mother’s death.
Augustine had a brilliant legal and academic career, but after his conversion he returned home to Africa and led an ascetic life. He was elected Bishop of Hippo and spent 34 years looking after his flock, teaching them, strengthening them in the faith and protecting them strenuously against the errors of the time. He wrote an enormous amount and left a permanent mark on both philosophy and theology. His Confessions, as dazzling in style as they are deep in content, are a landmark of world literature. The Second Readings in the Office of Readings contain extracts from many of his sermons and commentaries and also from the Confessions.
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) | Amos 4:13 |
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He it was who formed the mountains, created the wind, reveals his mind to man, makes both dawn and dark, and walks on the top of the heights of the world; the Lord, the God of Hosts, is his name.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Amos 5:8 |
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He made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns the dusk to dawn and day to darkest night. He summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the land. ‘The Lord’ is his name.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Amos 9:6 |
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He has built his high dwelling place in the heavens and supported his vault on the earth; he summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the land. ‘The Lord’ is his name.
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