The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.
Year: C(I). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: St John Jones (- 1598)
Wales
He was a novice at the Franciscan convent in Greenwich, but when this was dissolved in 1559 he had to move to France, where he took his final vows. Later he joined the Roman province of the Franciscan Order and in 1592, at his own request, he went on a mission to England. He was arrested on false charges in 1596 and severely tortured. In 1598 he was tried and convicted of being a priest and on 12 July he was executed. Despite the deliberately early hour chosen for the execution, a large crowd gathered, to which he preached before being hanged, drawn and quartered.
Other saints: St John Jones (c.1540-1598)
Wales
John Jones (known also as John Buckley, John Griffith and Godfrey Maurice) was born in Clynnog Fawr in Wales, about 1540, into a Welsh family which had remained true to the Catholic faith. As a young man, he entered the Franciscan house at Greenwich. Eventually he went to Rome and asked to be sent to England. He reached London at the end of 1592, and worked for some years in different parts of the country. His brother Franciscans in England elected him their provincial. In 1596 the ‘priest catcher’ Richard Topcliffe was informed by a spy that Father Jones had visited two Catholics and had said Mass in their house. He was promptly arrested, tortured and scourged. He was then imprisoned for nearly two years. On 3 July 1598 he was tried on the charge of “going over the seas in the first year of Her Majesty’s reign (1558) and there being made a priest by the authority from Rome and then returning to England contrary to statute”. He was convicted of high treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. By this time people were becoming sympathetic to the Catholic victims of these awful butcheries, so the execution was arranged for an early hour in the morning in order to escape notice. In spite of the earliness of the hour, a large crowd had gathered. John Jones spoke to the crowd, reminding them that he was dying for his faith alone and had no political interest. His dismembered remains were fixed on the poles on the roads to Newington and Lambeth, they were removed by some young Catholic gentlemen, one of whom suffered a long imprisonment for this offence.
Other saints: SS. Louis Martin and Marie Azélie Guérin
12 Jul (where celebrated)
Louis Martin was born in Bordeaux, on August 22, 1823. While he was master-watchmaker in Alençon, he met Marie Azélie (Zélie) Guérin, a lace maker, born in Gandelain (St-Denis-sur-Sarthon), on December 23, 1831. They were married on July 13, 1858,and had nine children, including the future Saint Thérèse of the Infant Jesus. Model spouses, devoted parents, workers, attentive to the poor, always nourishing a missionary spirit, they found their strength and hope in regular attendance at Holy Mass and in a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin. After a long illness Zélie died in Alençon on August 28, 1877. Louis, in retirement, went to Lisieux near his in-laws to ensure a better future for his five children (the other four having died in infancy). This patriarch of the family, after offering all his children to God, knew suffering and illness. He died near Evreux on July 29, 1894.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Bede the Venerable (673 - 735)
Bede was born in the north of England, near the monastery of Wearmouth. He joined that monastery, and spent all his life there or at Jarrow, teaching and writing. He was the outstanding ecclesiastical author of his time. He wrote commentaries on Scripture; an ecclesiastical history of the English people, which is a unique and irreplaceable resource for much of early English history; and the first martyrology (collection of saints’ lives) to be compiled on historical principles. He was also the first known writer of English prose, though this has not survived. He died at Jarrow on 25 May 735, teaching and working until the last moments of his life. He is venerated as the “light of the Church” in the Dark Ages, and as a forerunner of the 8th and 9th century renaissance of the Western Church.
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) | (Apocalypse 1:17-18) © |
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I saw the Son of Man, and he said to me, ‘Have no fear! I am the First and the Last. I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.’
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Colossians 2:9,12 © |
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In Christ lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you too find your own fulfilment. You have been buried with him, when you were baptised; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | 2 Timothy 2:8,11 © |
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Remember the Good News that I carry, ‘Jesus Christ risen from the dead, sprung from the race of David’. Here is a saying that you can rely on: ‘If we have died with him, then we shall live with him.’
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