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Saint Erik of Sweden, King and Martyr 
 on Tuesday of week 7 in Ordinary Time

Using calendar: Denmark - The Faroe Islands. You can change this.

The Lord is the king of martyrs: come, let us adore him.

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Red.

Saint Erik of Sweden (-1160)

Historical records of 12th-century Scandinavia are scanty. Erik existed; he was king; he was a Christian; he is said to have done much to consolidate Christianity in his realm. He led the first Swedish crusade into Finland – an act implicitly confirmed by a Papal bull of the 1170s. He was killed fighting Danish invaders. A chronicle of 1240 says: “The twelfth king was Erik. He was rashly killed in an unhappy moment. He always gave a good example while he lived, and God rewarded him well. Now his soul is at rest with God and his angels, and his bones rest in Uppsala. And he has, with God’s help, made and manifested many precious miracles.”

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

Second Reading: St Gregory of Nyssa (335 - 395)

Gregory of Nyssa was the younger brother of St Basil of Caesarea (“St Basil the Great”). He, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, “Gregory of Nazianzus”, are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. They were active after the Council of Nicaea, working to formulate Trinitarian doctrine precisely and, in particular, to pin down the meaning and role of the least humanly comprehensible member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Basil was the leader and organizer; Gregory of Nazianzus was the thinker, the orator, the poet, pushed into administrative and episcopal roles by circumstances and by Basil; and Gregory of Nyssa, although not a great stylist, was the most gifted of the three as a philosopher and theologian. Together, the Cappadocian Fathers hammered out the doctrine of the Trinity like blacksmiths forging a piece of metal by hammer-blows into its perfect, destined shape. They were champions – and successful champions – of orthodoxy against Arianism, a battle that had to be conducted as much on the worldly and political plane as on the philosophical and theological one.
  The works of Gregory of Nyssa whose extracts appear as Second Readings are not as rhetorically beautiful as those of Gregory of Nazianzus, who was an acclaimed orator; but they are helpful and clear. Most of them are commentaries on Scripture passages. They involve the mind and deepen the understanding.

Liturgical colour: red

Red is the colour of fire and of blood. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate the fire of the Holy Spirit (for instance, at Pentecost) and the blood of the martyrs.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)Jeremiah 22:3 ©
Practise honesty and integrity; rescue the man who has been wronged from the hands of his oppressor; do not exploit the stranger, the orphan, the widow; do no violence; shed no innocent blood in this place.

Noon reading (Sext)Deuteronomy 15:7-8 ©
Is there a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any town of yours in the land that the Lord your God is giving you? Do not harden your heart or close your hand against that poor brother of yours, but be open-handed with him and lend him enough for his needs.

Afternoon reading (None)Proverbs 22:22-23 ©
Because a man is poor, do not therefore cheat him, nor, at the city gate, oppress anybody in affliction; for the Lord takes up their cause, and extorts the life of their extortioners.

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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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