Christ is the bread of life: come, let us adore him.
Year: A(I). Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: Blessed Peter Snow and Ralph Grimston
Leeds
Peter Snow (c. 1567-1598) was born at or near Ripon and arrived at the English College, Reims in 1589. He was ordained priest two years later in Soissons, France and left for the English mission. He worked for seven years before being arrested in May 1598, when on his way to York. His companion on this journey was Ralph Grimston (?-1598) of Nidd, a married layman who had previously suffered imprisonment for opening his house to Catholic priests. He was arrested for trying to prevent Peter Snow being taken. Both were shortly afterwards tried. Peter Snow was convicted of treason as a Catholic priest and was condemned to being hanged, drawn and quartered. Ralph Grimston was convicted of felony, for having aided and assisted Snow, and was condemned to death by hanging. Both suffered at York. They were beatified in 1987. Their skulls were for many years in the Catholic chapel at Hazlewood Castle and were placed in the main altar at St Anne’s Cathedral, Leeds on 13 November 2006 when this new altar was consecrated.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274)
Thomas was born of a noble family in southern Italy, and was educated by the Benedictines. In the normal course of events he would have joined that order and taken up a position suitable to his rank; but he decided to become a Dominican friar instead.
He studied in Paris and in Cologne under the great philosopher St Albert the Great, at a time of great philosophical ferment, when the writings of Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of the ancient world, had been newly rediscovered and were becoming available to people in the West for the first time in a thousand years. Many feared that Aristotelianism was flatly contradictory to Christianity, and the fact that Aristotle’s works were coming to the West from mostly Muslim sources did nothing to help matters.
Thomas’ clarity of thought ensured that the truth would be recognised whatever its source. He inaugurated a form of disputation which would bring ideas together not so that one would win and the other lose through clever tricks of debate, but so that the single unifying truth behind them should be found. He thus not only transformed the practice of theology but also laid the foundations of the modern scientific revolution.
As well as producing major philosophical and theological works, Thomas, at the request of Pope Urban IV, composed the Divine Office for the newly-created feast of Corpus Christi.
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) | Wisdom 16:20 © |
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Lord, you have given your people the food of angels, from heaven untiringly sending them bread already prepared, containing every delight, satisfying every taste.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Proverbs 9:1-2 © |
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Wisdom has built herself a house, she has erected her seven pillars, she has slaughtered her beasts, prepared her wine, she has laid her table.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Acts 2:42,47 © |
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These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. They praised God and were looked up to by everyone.
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