Universalis
Saturday 9 December 2023    (other days)
Saturday of the 1st week of Advent 
 or Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin 

Using calendar: Australia - Port Pirie. You can change this.

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

Year: B(II). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: Violet.

Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474 - 1548)

He was born in about 1474 in Cuauhtitlan in the kingdom of Texcoco, part of present-day Mexico. As an adult he embraced Christianity and he and his wife were baptized. In 1531 the Mother of God appeared to him, on the hill called Tepeyac near Mexico City, and told him to ask the bishop to have a church built on the spot. Through the purity of his faith, his humility and his fervour, a church was built, in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe (whose feast is celebrated on 12 December). He left everything and devoted himself to the care of the sanctuary and the reception of pilgrims until his death in 1548.

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

Second Reading: St Cyprian (210 - 258)

Cyprian was born in Carthage and spent most of his life in the practice of the law. He was converted to Christianity, and was made bishop of Carthage in 249. He steered the church through troubled times, including the persecution of the emperor Decius, when he went into hiding so as to be able to continue looking after the church. In 258 the persecution of the emperor Valerian began. Cyprian was first exiled and then, on the 14th of September, executed, after a trial notable for the calm and courtesy shown by both sides.
  Cyprian’s many letters and treatises shed much light on a formative period in the Church’s history, and are valuable both for their doctrine and for the picture they paint of a group of people in constant peril of their lives but still determined to keep the faith.

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)Isaiah 4:2 ©
That day, the branch of the Lord shall be beauty and glory, and the fruit of the earth shall be the pride and adornment of Israel’s survivors.

Noon reading (Sext)Isaiah 4:3 ©
Those who are left of Zion and remain of Jerusalem shall be called holy and those left in Jerusalem, noted down for survival.

Afternoon reading (None)Isaiah 61:11 ©
As the earth makes fresh things grow, as a garden makes seeds spring up, so will the Lord make both integrity and praise spring up in the sight of the nations.

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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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