Universalis
Friday 6 December 2024    (other days)
2nd Sunday of Advent 

Using calendar: Middle East - Southern Arabia - Special Fridays. You can change this.

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

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: Violet.

In other years: St Nicholas

He was bishop of Myra, in Lycia (now part of Turkey) and died about the middle of the fourth century. He has been venerated throughout the Church, especially since the 10th century. Because of his help to the poor he is the patron saint of pawnbrokers, whose insignia of three golden balls represent the three purses of gold he is said to have given secretly to a poor man who could not afford dowries for his three daughters. See the article in Wikipedia.

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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