Come before the Lord, singing with joy.
Year: B(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: Saint Alfonso Rodríguez
31 Oct (where celebrated)
Alfonso Rodriguez (1533-1617) was born in Segovia, Spain. His family played host to Saint Peter Faber, who prepared the young Alfonso for his First Communion. He left school at age 14 to help his widowed mother run the family wool business. At age twenty-seven, he married and had three children. Five years later, he found himself a widower with one surviving child, who died Soon after. He joined the Society of Jesus as a Brother at the age of thirty-eight. He spent the next forty-six years of his religious life as guest master and doorkeeper of the Jesuit college in Majorca, where he exercised a marvellous influence not only on the members of the college, but upon a great number of people who came to him for spiritual advice. He was a friend and advisor to Saint Peter Claver, encouraging him to go to the missions in South America. His daily routine, though ordinary, offered him opportunities for holiness of life: each time the bell rang, he looked at the door and envisioned that it was God who was standing outside. He was often heard to say “I’m just coming, Lord.”
Other saints: In Honour of St Alphonsus Rodriguez
31 Oct (where celebrated)
In honour of
St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus
Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: Saint Athanasius (295 - 373)
Athanasius was born in Alexandria. He assisted Bishop Alexander at the Council of Nicaea, and later succeeded him as bishop. He fought hard against Arianism all his life, undergoing many sufferings and spending a total of 17 years in exile. He wrote outstanding works to explain and defend orthodoxy.
The matters in dispute with the Arians were vital to the very nature of Christianity; and, as Cardinal Newman put it, the trouble was that at that time the laity tended to be champions of orthodoxy while their bishops (seduced by closeness to imperial power) tended not to be. The further trouble (adds Henry Chadwick) is that the whole thing became tangled up with matters of power, organization and authority, and with cultural differences between East and West. Athanasius was accused of treason and murder, embezzlement and sacrilege. In the fight against him, any weapon would do.
Arianism taught that the Son was created by the Father and in no way equal to him. This was in many ways a “purer” and more “spiritual” approach to religion, since it did not force God to undergo the undignified experience of being made of meat. Islam is essentially Arian. But Arianism leaves an infinite gap between God and man, and ultimately destroys the Gospel, leaving it either as a fake or as a cruel parody. Only by being orthodox and insisting on the identity of the natures of the Father and the Son and the Spirit can we truly understand the goodness of creation and the love of God, and live according to them. For this reason many extracts from the works of St Athanasius have been adopted as Second Readings in the Office of Readings.
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) | Galatians 5:13-14 |
|---|
My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty; but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence. Serve one another, rather, in works of love, since the whole of the Law is summarised in a single command: Love your neighbour as yourself.
|
| Noon reading (Sext) | Galatians 5:16-17 |
|---|
Let me put it like this: if you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit, the Spirit is totally against such a thing, and it is precisely because the two are so opposed that you do not always carry out your good intentions.
|
| Afternoon reading (None) | Galatians 5:22,23,25 |
|---|
What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit.
|