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: B(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Violet.
|Other saints: St Ethelbert (c.560 - 616)|
Ethelbert, or Aethelberht, was King of Kent from about 580 or 590 until his death. He was the first king in England to convert to Christianity: according to Bede, this happened shortly after St Augustine arrived on his mission to the English. He helped the Church to establish itself by making it a gift of land at Canterbury.
|Other saints: Bl. Maria Adeodata Pisani (1806 - 1855)|
She was the daughter of noble Maltese parents, who separated while she was still a small child. She renounced her wealth and position and became a nun at the age of 21 despite her mother’s disapproval. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001.
|Other saints: St Walburga (- 776)|
Walburga was the daughter of the saintly Saxon prince Richard of Wessex. At the invitation of St Boniface, she accompanied her brothers SS. Willibald and Winebald to Germany, where she founded monasteries. She died on May 11th 776, as Abbess of Heidenheim, and her body was placed in a rocky niche in Eichstadt. It was said that there began to exude from this place a miraculously therapeutic oil, which drew many pilgrims.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
|Second Reading: Pope St Leo the Great (- 461)|
Leo was born in Etruria and became Pope in 440. He was a true shepherd and father of souls. He constantly strove to keep the faith whole and strenuously defended the unity of the Church. He repelled the invasions of the barbarians or alleviated their effects, famously persuading Attila the Hun not to march on Rome in 452, and preventing the invading Vandals from massacring the population in 455.
Leo left many doctrinal and spiritual writings behind and a number of them are included in the Office of Readings to this day. He died in 461.
|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.
|Other notes: Stanisław Leon Kochanski (1923 - 1999)|
On this day in 1999 died Staszek Kochanski, father of Martin Kochanski, the founder of Universalis. Please pray for the repose of his soul; and for his son and daughter, who survive him.
If you would like to follow the funeral service, you can do so here
|Mid-morning reading (Terce)||1 Thessalonians 4:1,7 ©|
My brethren, we urge you and appeal to you in the Lord Jesus to make more and more progress in the kind of life that you are meant to live: the life that God wants, as you learnt from us, and as you are already living it. We have been called by God to be holy, not to be immoral.
|Noon reading (Sext)||Isaiah 30:15,18 ©|
For thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel: ‘Your salvation lies in conversion and tranquillity, your strength will come from complete trust.’ The Lord is waiting to be gracious to you, to rise and take pity on you, for the Lord is a just God. Happy are all who hope in him.
|Afternoon reading (None)||Deuteronomy 4:29-31 ©|
You will seek the Lord your God, and if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul, you shall find him. In your distress, all that I have said will overtake you, but at the end of days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God and will not desert or destroy you or forget the covenant he made on oath with your fathers.