Universalis
Friday 5 May 2023    (other days)
Friday of the 4th week of Eastertide 

Using calendar: Belarus. You can change this.

The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Year: A(I). Psalm week: 4. Liturgical Colour: White.

Other saints: St Asaph

Wales
He was a monk of the monastery at Llanelwy, founded by St Kentigern. He was consecrated bishop in 573, and the town of Llanelwy (as well as the diocese) is called St Asaph in his honour. See also the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Other saints: Blessed Edmund Rice (1762 - 1844)

Ireland
Following the death of his wife in 1789, he devoted himself to prayer and good works, in particular to the education of the poor in his home town of Waterford: the children being taught were so poor that they needed to be clothed and fed as well. He founded schools, and undertook the training of teachers. In 1808 he and six companions took religious vows. This was the nucleus of the Presentation Brothers, who continue to this day. The Christian Brothers share the same root: the two congregations separated in the 1820s. See the article in Wikipedia.

Other saints: St Richard Reynolds (- 1535)

Plymouth
Richard Reynolds is thought to have come from Pinhoe in Exeter, and was a Bridgettine monk of Syon Abbey on the Thames. He suffered martyrdom with the Carthusians at Tyburn on May 4th 1535, for refusing to take the oath of royal supremacy under Henry VIII. He was known for his personal holiness, and was one of the forty martyrs canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970. Syon Abbey, one of the great medieval monasteries, was dissolved in 1539 by Henry. The expelled community moved from place to place in France and Spain, finally settling in Lisbon in 1594. This same community moved from Lisbon back to England in 1861, settling first in Spetisbury, Dorset, then in Chudleigh, and finally in 1925 in South Brent. The community remained here until the closure of Syon Abbey in 2011.
Plymouth Ordo

Other saints: St Angelus (1185-c.1220)

5 May (where celebrated)
The history of Angelus belongs to the time of the first Carmelites of the 13th century, a time when the histories of holy people were expressed in legend and myth that encouraged and taught the faithful. Angelus is remembered as one of the hermits who spent time with the founding community of hermits on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. The legends attribute to Angelus miracles of curing the sick, calling down fire, making an axe head float and raising the dead. These images evoke the echoes of the deeds of Elijah and Elisha, the inspirational figures of the original Carmelite hermits. It appears that the medieval chronicler writing about Angelus, honoured him for a personality and life that closely imitated these Biblical Carmelite role models.
  Angelus did not remain at Mount Carmel, but travelled to Sicily in 1219, according to the legends. He would have been one of the first Carmelites to arrive in Europe and living as an itinerant preacher, as no Carmelite communities had yet been established in Europe. Another account describes Angelus’ travels to Rome, where we are told he met with both St Francis and St Dominic. This meeting of three representatives from the mendicant orders became a popular subject for artists in later times, with each one identified by his distinctive habit.
  Reports tell of Angelus receiving a martyr’s death in Sicily in the year 1220, where today he continues to be revered as a great saint. Angelus had spoken out against the immorality of a Sicilian nobleman, who then swore to punish Angelus. While he was preaching a mob attacked him. He later died from several stab wounds, while praying for his attackers. The memory of St Angelus embodies the historical movement of the Carmelites from their hermit home on Mount Carmelite to their mendicant beginnings in Europe.
MT

Today's Mass reading: The God-fearers

Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows us the ‘God-fearers’, the non-Jews who revered Judaism without actually becoming Jews themselves. We tend to forget them in our view of history because they don’t fit easily into our ‘either-or’ categories, but the Jews were aware of them to the extent – for example – of having rules about which parts of the Temple they were or were not allowed to enter.
  In today’s pagan world there are also many who are ‘God-fearers.’ We have a duty to them just as the Jews did. On the one hand we must deny them nothing that might nourish them, on the other hand (just like the Jews) we must not pretend that there is no difference between them and us: to say that there is no difference would be to deny the very thing that they revere. On the other hand, to go all-out enthusiastic about bringing them into the fold is usually the best way of chasing them away from it. You lead a horse by walking beside it, not by pulling it from the front. To catch a fish, you do not jump into the water and splash around trying to grab it.
  There is no simple instant formula. We don’t know what God’s plan for our friend’s soul is – nor for ours. But there is a plan, and one way or another each of us can be a means of grace for anyone, a channel through which the Spirit will do his work.

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

Second Reading: Pope St Clement I

Clement was Bishop of Rome after Peter, Linus and Cletus. He lived towards the end of the first century, but nothing is known for certain about his life. Clement’s letter to the Corinthian church has survived. It is the first known Patristic document, and exhorts them to peace and brotherly harmony.

Liturgical colour: white

White is the colour of heaven. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate feasts of the Lord; Christmas and Easter, the great seasons of the Lord; and the saints. Not that you will always see white in church, because if something more splendid, such as gold, is available, that can and should be used instead. We are, after all, celebrating.
  In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)Acts 2:32,36 ©
God raised this man Jesus to life, and all of us are witnesses to that. For this reason the whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.

Noon reading (Sext)Galatians 3:27-28 ©
All baptised in Christ, you have all clothed yourselves in Christ, and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Afternoon reading (None)1 Corinthians 5:7-8 ©
Get rid of all the old yeast, and make yourselves into a completely new batch of bread, unleavened as you are meant to be. Christ, our passover, has been sacrificed; let us celebrate the feast, then, by getting rid of all the old yeast of evil and wickedness, having only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

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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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