SPIRITUALITY
About Today
The Lord is a great king: come, let us adore him.
Year: B(II). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: Green.
| St John of Capistrano (1386 - 1456) |
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He was born in Capistrano in the Abruzzi in 1386. He studied law at Perugia and for some time held the office of a judge. He joined the Friars Minor and was ordained. He travelled throughout Germany, Poland, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Russia, leading an apostolic life, strengthening Christian morals and combating heresy.
When the Turks were invading Europe in the wake of the fall of Constantinople, they laid siege to Belgrade, then a border fort of the kingdom of Hungary. John preached a crusade against them and took part in the battle on 22 July 1456 in which John Hunyadi, his army and John’s peasant crusaders lifted the siege and defeated the Turks, keeping Christian Europe safe from Turkish invasion for the next 70 years.
Plague spread through the camp and John died of it, at Ilok, in what is now Croatia, on 23 October 1456. He is the patron saint of military chaplains.
See the article in the Wikipedia.
| Other saints: Saint Ethelflæda (10th century) |
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Romsey
Ethelflæda was the daughter of Æthelwold of Wessex. She joined the Abbey of Romsey under the abbacy of Morwenna, and eventually became abbess herself. She practised an austere life, and on her death was buried in the Abbey beside St Morwenna.
| Portsmouth Ordo |
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
| Second Reading: St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430) |
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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: green |
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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 season in which we are being neither especially penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).
| Mid-morning reading (Terce) | Jeremiah 17:7-8 © |
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A blessing on the man who puts his trust in the Lord, with the Lord for his hope. He is like a tree by the waterside that thrusts its roots to the stream: when the heat comes it feels no alarm, its foliage stays green; it has no worries in a year of drought, and never ceases to bear fruit.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Proverbs 3:13-15 © |
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Happy the man who discovers wisdom, the man who gains discernment: gaining her is more rewarding than silver, more profitable than gold. She is beyond the price of pearls, nothing you could covet is her equal.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Job 5:17-18 © |
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Happy indeed the man whom God corrects! So do not refuse this lesson from the Omnipotent: for he who wounds is he who soothes the sore, and the hand that hurts is the hand that heals.
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Office of Readings for Tuesday of week 29
Morning Prayer for Tuesday of week 29
Evening Prayer for Tuesday of week 29
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Copyright © 1996-2015 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are 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.