30 Nov – First Sunday of Advent ____________________ Isaiah 63:16b-17; 64:2-7 You, the Lord, yourself are our Father, ‘Our Redeemer’ is your ancient name. Why, the Lord, leave us to stray from your ways and harden our hearts against fearing you? Return, for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your inheritance. Oh, that you [...]
29 Nov – Saturday in the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time ____________________ Revelation 22:1-7 The angel showed me, John, the river of life, rising from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing crystal-clear down the middle of the city street. On either side of the river were the trees of life, which [...]
28 Nov – Friday in the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time ____________________ Revelation 20:1-4. 11 – 21:2 I, John, saw an angel come down from heaven with the key of the Abyss in his hand and an enormous chain. He overpowered the dragon, that primeval serpent which is the devil and Satan, and chained him [...]
27 Nov – Thursday in the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time ____________________ Revelation 18:1-2. 21.23 I, John, saw an angel come down from heaven, with great authority given to him; the earth was lit up with his glory. At the top of his voice he shouted, ‘Babylon has fallen, Babylon the Great has fallen, and [...]
26 Nov – Wednesday in the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time ____________________ Revelation 15:1-4 What I, John, saw in heaven was a great and wonderful sign: seven angels were bringing the seven plagues that are the last of all, because they exhaust the anger of God. It seemed to see a glass lake suffused with [...]
25 Nov – Memorial for St. Catherine of Alexandria, virgin, martyr Legends coming from a number of sources say that St Catherine was very outspoken at the time of the persecutions of Christians. She even protested openly to the emperor Maxentius who had her arrested, tortured on the wheel and decapitated in 305. St Catherine’s [...]
24 Nov – Memorial for St. Andrew Dung-Lac, priest, martyr, and companions, Martyrs of Vietnam Between the arrival of the first Portuguese missionary in 1533, through the Dominicans and then the Jesuit missions of the 17th century, the politically inspired persecutions of the 19th century, and the Communist-led terrors of the 20th, there have been [...]
23 Nov – Last Week in Ordinary Time: Sunday, Year A; Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King Christ, The King Christ is a King on the model of the homeric kings who called themselves ‘shepherds of the people’. As a royal shepherd he is leading us to the Kingdom of his Father. – [...]
22 Nov – Memorial for St. Cecilia, virgin, martyr Cecilia (d. 117) was a cultivated young patrician woman whose ancestors loomed large in Rome’s history. She vowed her virginity to God, but her parents married her to Valerian of Trastevere. She told her new husband that she was accompanied by an angel, but in order [...]
21 Nov – Memorial of The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today we commemorate the presentation of the Blessed Virgin as a child in the Temple where, according to tradition, she was educated. The feast originated in the Orient probably about the seventh century, and is found in the constitution of Manuel Comnenus (1166) [...]
