Universalis
Friday 23 January 2026    (other days)
Friday of week 2 in Ordinary Time 

Universalis podcast: The week ahead – from 25 to 31 January

Sunday of the Word of God. Reading; listening; commentaries. Lectio Divina. Saint Thomas Aquinas. The Rees-Mogg interview. (23 minutes)
Episode notes.

Using calendar: England - Portsmouth - Alderney. You can change this.

Indeed, how good is the Lord: bless his holy name.

Year: A(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.

Other saints: St Marianne Cope (1838 - 1918)

Trinidad & Tobago, United States
Maria Anna Barbara Koob was born in Heppenheim, in Grand Duchy of Hesse, which is now part of Germany, on 23 January 1838. Her family emigrated the following year to Utica, in New York State. The family’s surname was anglicized to Cope.
  In 1862 she entered the Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse, New York, after having postponed her entrance nine years in order to work to support her family. She was instrumental in the founding of several schools and hospitals for immigrants. In 1883 she led a group of sisters to the Hawaiian Islands to care for the poor, especially those suffering from leprosy. In 1888 she went to Kalaupapa, Moloka‘i, where she set up a home for girls with leprosy. After the death of Saint Damien de Veuster she also took over the home he built for boys. She died on 9 August, 1918. She was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 16 May 2005 and canonized by him on 21 October 2012.

Other saints: Bl. Henry Suso OP ( - 1366)

23 Jan (where celebrated)
Dominican Friar and Priest.
  Blessed Henry Suso was born in Constance-Swabia, Germany, towards the end of the thirteen century and is associated with Meister Eckhart and John Tauler in the school of Dominican spirituality know as the “Rhineland Mystics.” He pursued Divine Wisdom and manifested a great love for the Passion of the Lord. In his writings he taught detachment from all sensible reality and union with God through the contemplation of the perfections and sufferings of Christ. He died in Ulm on January 25, 1366.

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

Second Reading: St Diadochus of Photiké

Diadochus was an influential ascetic of the fifth century. He was born around 400 and died probably between 474 and 486. Photiké, of which he is known to have been bishop in 451, is small town in the province of Old Epira, in the north-western part of present-day Greece.

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)Deuteronomy 1:31
The Lord carried you, as a man carries his child, all along the road you travelled.

Noon reading (Sext)Baruch 4:28-29
As by your will you first strayed away from God, so now turn back and search for him ten times as hard; for as he brought down those disasters on you, so will he rescue you and give you eternal joy.

Afternoon reading (None)Wisdom 1:13-15
Death was not God’s doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living. To be – for this he created all; the world’s created things have health in them, in them no fatal poison can be found, and Hades holds no power on earth; for virtue is undying.

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