Tuesday 25 November 2025    (other days)
Blessed Niels Stensen, Bishop 
 on Tuesday of week 34 in Ordinary Time

Using calendar: Denmark. You can pick a diocese or region.

Christ is the chief shepherd, the leader of his flock: come, let us adore him.

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: White.

Blessed Niels Stensen (1638-86)

Niels Steensen was born as the son of a Copenhagen goldsmith. After studying medicine in Copenhagen, he went on a European study trip, where in the Netherlands he encountered a religious and philosophical diversity that brought him into a religious crisis. He overcame the crisis and found a fervent faith in God’s providence, but he could no longer find the Protestant faith of his homeland convincing.
  After a series of anatomical discoveries and a stay in Copenhagen, he set out in 1664 on a new study trip, and in Florence he found friends and well-wishers. There he converted to the Catholic Church in 1667 and in the following years made a number of further anatomical and geological discoveries. After a stay in Copenhagen 1672-74, he gave up science and was ordained a priest in 1675 to devote himself to pastoral care among foreign travellers in Tuscany.
  In 1677 he was made a bishop and sent to Northern Germany, where he worked in Hanover, Münster, Hamburg and finally Schwerin, where he died in the reputation of sanctity. His mortal remains were taken to Florence and today lie in the Medici burial church of San Lorenzo. In 1988 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II. He is loved not only for his pastoral zeal, his deep spirituality and his love for poverty and the poor, but also as an example of the cohesion of natural science and religious knowledge.

Other saints: Saint Colman of Cloyne (522 - 600)

Ireland
He was a royal bard who in later life became a bishop. He founded several churches, including the church at Cloyne: he is patron saint of the diocese. See the article in Wikipedia.

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

Second Reading: St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)

Augustine was born in Thagaste in Africa of a Berber family. He was brought up a Christian but left the Church early and spent a great deal of time seriously seeking the truth, first in the Manichaean heresy, which he abandoned on seeing how nonsensical it was, and then in Neoplatonism, until at length, through the prayers of his mother and the teaching of St Ambrose of Milan, he was converted back to Christianity and baptized in 387, shortly before his mother’s death.
  Augustine had a brilliant legal and academic career, but after his conversion he returned home to Africa and led an ascetic life. He was elected Bishop of Hippo and spent 34 years looking after his flock, teaching them, strengthening them in the faith and protecting them strenuously against the errors of the time. He wrote an enormous amount and left a permanent mark on both philosophy and theology. His Confessions, as dazzling in style as they are deep in content, are a landmark of world literature. The Second Readings in the Office of Readings contain extracts from many of his sermons and commentaries and also from the Confessions.

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.
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