Universalis
Friday 7 April 2023    (other days)
Friday of the 5th week of Lent 
 (optional commemoration of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, Priest)

Using calendar: Eastern Mediterranean. You can choose a country.

Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us. Come, let us adore him.
Or: O that today you would listen to his voice: harden not your hearts.

Year: A(I). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: Violet.

St John Baptist de la Salle (1651 - 1719)

He was born in Rheims in France in 1651. He became a priest and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the education of children, founding schools for the poor. He and his colleagues formed a congregation called the Brothers of the Christian Schools, in whose cause he suffered many tribulations. He died in Rouen in 1719. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.

Other saints: St Henry Walpole (1558-1595)

East Anglia
Henry Walpole was born at Docking (Norfolk) in 1558, the eldest son of Christopher and Margery Walpole. He was educated at Norwich Grammar School, at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and at Gray’s Inn. He is said to have become a Catholic as a consequence of the martyrdom of Edmund Campion. In 1582 he went abroad to study, first to Reims and then to the English College, Rome. Shortly afterwards he joined the Society of Jesus. In spite of poor health he was ordained priest at Paris in 1588, served as chaplain to the Spanish army in the Netherlands, and then taught in the English seminaries of Seville and Valladolid. In 1593 he returned to England, landing at Bridlington on 6 December, but was arrested the very next day on suspicion of being a priest. He was interrogated at York, transferred to the Tower of London where he was frequently tortured. He was indicted on a charge of high treason because he was ordained abroad to minister in England; he was condemned to death. He was executed at York on 7 April 1595, by being hanged, drawn and quartered.
DK

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe (462/7 - 527/ 533)

Fulgentius was bishop of the city of Ruspe in the Roman province of Africa, which is in modern-day Tunisia. At that time Africa and parts of the Near East were ruled by the Vandals, who were Arians, calling themselves Christians but denying the divinity of Christ. As a result Fulgentius’ early career was marked by a series of flights from persecution, as Catholics tried to maintain their faith under Vandal rule. It was a complicated time. In 499 he was tortured for saying that Jesus was both God and man; the next year the Vandal king Thrasamund, impressed by his talents, invited him to return from exile and become a bishop (Fulgentius declined, since he knew that Thrasamund had ordered that none but Arians should be bishops); two years later he was persuaded to become bishop of Ruspe in Tunisia but shortly afterwards he was exiled to Sardinia. Thrasamund invited him back in 515 to debate against the Arians but exiled him again in 520.
  In 523, following the death of Thrasamund and the accession of his Catholic son Hilderic, Fulgentius was allowed to return to Ruspe and try to convert the populace back to the faith. He worked to reform many of the abuses which had infiltrated his old diocese in his absence. The power and effectiveness of his preaching were so profound that his archbishop, Boniface of Carthage, wept openly every time he heard Fulgentius preach, and publicly thanked God for giving such a preacher to his church.

Liturgical colour: violet

Violet is a dark colour, ‘the gloomy cast of the mortified, denoting affliction and melancholy’. Liturgically, it is the colour of Advent and Lent, the seasons of penance and preparation.
Mid-morning reading (Terce)Isaiah 53:2-3 ©
Like a sapling he grew up in front of us, like a root in arid ground. Without beauty, without majesty (we saw him), no looks to attract our eyes; a thing despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, a man to make people screen their faces; he was despised and we took no account of him.
Noon reading (Sext)Isaiah 53:4-5 ©
And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. But we, we thought of him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low. Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed.
Afternoon reading (None)Isaiah 53:6-7 ©
We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and the Lord burdened him with the sins of all of us. Harshly dealt with, he bore it humbly, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers never opening its mouth.

Local calendars

Africa:  Kenya · Madagascar · Nigeria · Southern Africa

Latin America:  Brazil

Asia:  India · Malaysia · Singapore

Australia

Canada

Europe:  Belarus · Denmark · England · Estonia · Finland · France · Ireland · Italy · Malta · Netherlands · Poland · Scotland · Slovakia · Slovenia · Sweden · Wales

Middle East:  Southern Arabia

New Zealand

Philippines

United States

Scripture readings taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. For on-line information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.
 		 This web site © Copyright 1996-2024 Universalis Publishing Ltd · Contact us · Cookies/privacy
(top)