Cry out with joy to God, all the earth: serve the Lord with gladness.
Year: B(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: Saint Fergal (c.700 - 784)
Ireland, Dunkeld: 27 Nov
Aberdeen: 18 Nov
Fergal (Ferghil, Vergil, Virgil) was an Irish monk, possibly educated at Clonbroney under St Samthann and going on to become Abbot of Aghaboe. Like many Irish monks of the time, he set off on his ‘pilgrimage of the love of Christ’, in 723. He passed through France and southern Germany. He was invited to Bavaria by Duke Odilo and founded the monastery of Chiemsee. Eventually he became Abbot of St Peter’s at Salzburg. He engaged in controversy with St Boniface, but on Boniface’s martyrdom he became his successor as Bishop of Salzburg in 766 or 767. He is remembered as Apostle of the Slovenes; he also had a keen interest in mathematics and astronomy.
Other saints: The Holy Crucifix of the Cathedral of Goa
Goa & Daman
This feast is linked to a miraculous event involving the famous Crucifix of the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Goa (Sé Cathedral). According to tradition, in the year 1619, a farmer was praying in the cathedral when he witnessed the miraculous movement of the eyes of the crucified Christ on the cross. This event is believed to have occurred on November 27, and it inspired widespread devotion to the crucifix.
The crucifix was venerated as a symbol of Christ’s love and suffering, and the Archdiocese began to commemorate this miracle annually as a memorial. The devotion also highlights the significance of the crucifix as a central symbol of the Catholic faith, reminding the faithful of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice.
This day is marked with special prayers and Masses, drawing pilgrims and the faithful to venerate the Holy Crucifix in thanksgiving for the miracle and as an expression of their faith.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Macarius (300 - 391)
Saint Macarius the Great was one of the Egyptian desert recluses and a disciple of Saint Anthony. Fifty Spiritual Homilies were ascribed to Macarius a few generations after his death. Modern patristic scholarship doubts this attribution but concludes from internal evidence that the author was from Upper Mesopotamia, where the Roman Empire bordered the Persian Empire, and that the homilies were written not later than 534. None of this, of course, affects the spiritual value of the homilies themselves.
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).