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    (other days)
Wednesday of week 2 in Ordinary Time 
 or Saint Fabian, Pope, Martyr 
 or Saint Sebastian, Martyr 

Using calendar: New Zealand - Palmerston North. You can change this.

Cry out with joy to God, all the earth: serve the Lord with gladness.

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

Pope St Fabian (- 250)

He became Pope in 236 and was martyred on 20 January 250, during the persecution of the Emperor Decius. See the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

St Sebastian

Nothing is known about St Sebastian except the fact that he was martyred early on in the persecutions of Diocletian. St Ambrose knew of him and states that he was already venerated in Milan in the fourth century. One of the seven chief churches of Rome was built over his grave in 367.
  All else (his youth, his martyrdom by arrows) is fiction, some of it dating from more than a thousand years after his death. But what we know is what we need to know. For the Christians of the fourth century the important, the true, the sufficient fact about Sebastian was that he was a martyr, and they venerated him as such. It should be enough for us as well. See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Other saints: Blessed Cyprian Michael Tansi (1903 - 1964)

Kenya, Nigeria, Southern Africa, Nottingham
Father Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi was born in Nigeria in 1903. He was brought up by the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans) and trained as a teacher and a catechist. Later he decided to join the seminary and in 1937 he was ordained a priest. In 1950 he left his Diocese in order to go to England where he joined the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St Bernard, near Nottingham. He had been singled out as the ideal candidate to be trained in England and then return to establish a Trappist Monastery in the Diocese of Onitsha in Nigeria. Fr Tansi lived the monastic life with great faith and humility. Absorbed in prayer, he was a living example of patience and charity. Early in 1964 he was diagnosed with aortic aneurysm and died two weeks later on 20 January 1964. See the article in Wikipedia.

Other saints: Bl Angelo Paoli (1642-1720)

20 Jan (where celebrated)
Angelo Paoli, a professed priest of the Carmelite Order, was born in Tuscany on 1 September 1642. In the convents in which he lived, he served others in a multitude of ways with dedication and humility, and held the post of master of novices several times. Everywhere he sought to help the poor in their need. In 1687 the Prior General called him to Rome, to entrust him with the formation of the novices. A much sought after animator and spiritual director, he devoted himself without reserve to the poor, the sick and the imprisoned, whom he assisted in every way, including by recourse to original and novel initiatives. He established a hospice for the convalescent poor of the hospital of S. Giovanni, in which they could recover their strength in order to rejoin society and the labour market. His devotion to the cross led him to place the sign of Christ in a number of places. He died in Rome on 20 January 1720 in the odour of sanctity. He was beatified on 25 April 2010.
Carmelite Proper

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 1:16-17 ©
At that time I told your judges: You must give your brothers a fair hearing and see justice done between a man and his brother or the stranger who lives with him. You must be impartial in judgement and give an equal hearing to small and great alike. Do not be afraid of any man, for the judgement is God’s.

Noon reading (Sext)Isaiah 55:8-9 ©
My thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways – it is the Lord who speaks.
Yes, the heavens are as high above earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.

Afternoon reading (None)1 Samuel 16:7 ©
God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.

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General Calendar

New Zealand

Palmerston North


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.
 
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