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Monday of the 3rd week of Lent 
 (optional commemoration of Saint David, Bishop)

Using calendar: United States - Ordinariate. You can change this.

Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us. Come, let us adore him.
Or: O that today you would listen to his voice: harden not your hearts.

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

St David (520 - 589)

The earliest life of St David dates from five centuries after his death, probably in 589. He became eminent as abbot and bishop at the site now known as St David’s, but formerly Mynyw, from which the present diocese of Menevia is named. He is credited with a monastic rule based on the example of the Eastern Fathers, and also with a Penitentiary. He was invited to preside at the synod of Llandewibrefi. Monks trained at his monastery evangelized South Wales and made foundations in Cornwall, Brittany and Ireland. St David is said to have sent a Mass rite to Ireland. At his death his contemporary St Kentigern, founder of St Asaph’s in North Wales, witnessed in vision his joyful entrance into the joy of his Lord. His holy relics have been found hidden in the fabric of St David’s Cathedral, where they are carefully preserved. He was canonized by Pope Callistus II in 1123. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia/

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

Second Reading: St Basil the Great (330 - 379)

St Basil the Great, or Basil of Caesarea, was one of the three men known as the Cappadocian Fathers. The others are his younger brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, and St Gregory Nazianzen. 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, Basil’s brother, 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.
  In addition to his role in doctrinal development, Basil is also the father of Eastern monasticism. He moderated the heroic ascetic practices that were characteristic of earlier monastic life, to the point where they could be part of a life in which work, prayer and ascetic practices could be in harmonious balance. Knowledge of Basil’s work and Rule spread to the West and was an influence on the founding work of St Benedict.
  The works of Basil that appear in the Second Readings are mostly from his works on the Holy Spirit, but there are also extracts from his monastic Rule.

Liturgical colour: violet

Violet is a dark colour, ‘the gloomy cast of the mortified, denoting affliction and melancholy’. Liturgically, it is the colour of Advent and Lent, the seasons of penance and preparation.

Mid-morning reading (Terce)Wisdom 11:23-24 ©
Lord, you are merciful to all, because you can do all things and overlook men’s sins so that they can repent. Yes, you love all that exists, you hold in abhorrence nothing of what you have made.

Noon reading (Sext)Ezekiel 18:23 ©
Am I likely to take pleasure in the death of a wicked man – it is the Lord who speaks – and not prefer to see him renounce his wickedness and live?

Afternoon reading (None)Isaiah 58:6,7 ©
Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me – it is the Lord who speaks – to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin?

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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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