Give thanks to the Lord, for his great love is without end.
Year: A(I). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Green.
In other years: Our Lady of Sorrows
The devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows flourished in the Middle Ages, and the hymn Stabat Mater was composed for it. Although it is officially celebrated today, the day after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, popular devotion in many parts of the Mediterranean celebrates it with processions on the Friday before Holy Week.
Other saints: Saint Mirin (565-620)
Paisley
Saint Mirin or Mirren is also known as Mirren of Benchor (now called Bangor), Merinus, Merryn and Meadhrán.
A contemporary of the better known Saint Columba of Iona and disciple of Saint Comgall, he was prior of Bangor Abbey in County Down, Ireland. He later took oversight of the monastery and thus became the prior of Bangor Abbey. He left Ireland on a missionary journey to the west of Scotland, where he founded a monastery around which there grew up the present city of Paisley.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)
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
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 orderly sequence of weeks through the year, a season in which we are being neither single-mindedly penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).
| Mid-morning reading (Terce) | Romans 1:16-17 © |
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The power of God saves all who have faith – Jews first, but Greeks as well – since this is what reveals the justice of God to us: it shows how faith leads to faith, or as scripture says: The upright man finds life through faith.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Romans 3:21-22 © |
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God’s justice that was made known through the Law and the Prophets has now been revealed outside the Law, since it is the same justice of God that comes through faith to everyone who believes.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Ephesians 2:8-9 © |
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It is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit.
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