How wonderful is God among his saints: come, let us adore him.
Year: C(I). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: White.
St Elizabeth of Hungary (1207 - 1231)
She was a daughter of the King of Hungary. She was given in marriage to Ludwig, the Landgrave of Thuringia, by whom she had three children. She frequently meditated on heavenly things and when her husband died she embraced poverty and built a hospice in which she cared for the sick herself.
Other saints: St Roque González and his companions (-1628)
Brazil
Saint Roque González de Santa Cruz was born in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, on 17 November 1576. He came from a noble Spanish family but also spoke the local language, Guaraní, from an early age.
He was ordained priest at the age of 22 and joined the Jesuits in 1609 to work as a missionary. He was the first European to enter the region that is now the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Delicate diplomacy was required to convince the local Indian leaders that he, as a priest, was not there to prepare the way for European settlement of the land.
From 1613 onwards he founded several of the Jesuit ‘reductions’ which brought Indians together to learn to live in settlements. The ‘reductions’ later became part of Brazil as a result of a territorial exchange between the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Because of the support the ‘reductions’ gave the Indians as against the colonial authorities, they were one of the reasons for the suppression of the Jesuits by the Portuguese Empire in the mid-18th century.
In the region of Iyuí (now in Brazil) he had difficulties with the local chieftain and sorcerer (‘cacique’) Nheçu (Spanish ‘Ñezú’), who had him killed on 15 November 1628, along with his Spanish companions Juan de Castillo and Alfonso Rodríguez.
They were beatified in 1934 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on 16 May 1988.
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) | Philippians 2:2-4 © |
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Be united in your convictions and united in your love, with a common purpose and a common mind. There must be no competition among you, no conceit; but everybody is to be self-effacing. Always consider the other person to be better than yourself, so that nobody thinks of his own interests first but everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | 2 Corinthians 13:4 © |
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He was crucified through weakness, but still he lives now through the power of God. So then, we are weak, as he was, but we shall live with him, through the power of God, for your benefit.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Colossians 3:12-13 © |
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You are God’s chosen race, his saints; he loves you, and you should be clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same.
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