Let us come before the Lord, giving thanks.
Year: B(II). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: Saint Botolph (7th century)
East Anglia
Botolph was born of noble Saxon parentage in the 7th century. With his brother, Adulph, he was educated and received the Benedictine habit in Belgian Gaul. He returned to England and became one of the foremost missionaries of the 7th century. He founded an abbey at Ikanhoe, formerly thought to be near Boston in Lincolnshire but now generally supposed to Iken in Suffolk.
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: 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) | 2 Corinthians 13:11 |
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Brethren, be joyful. Try to grow perfect; help one another. Be united; live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Romans 6:22 |
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Now you have been set free from sin, you have been made slaves of God, and you get a reward leading to your sanctification and ending in eternal life.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Colossians 1:21-22 |
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Not long ago, you were foreigners and enemies, in the way that you used to think and the evil things that you did; but now he has reconciled you, by his death and in that mortal body. Now you are able to appear before him holy, pure and blameless.
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