Universalis
Sunday 7 May 2023    (other days)
5th Sunday of Easter 

Using calendar: Australia - Hobart. You can change this.

The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Year: A(I). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: White.

Other saints: St John of Beverley (-721)

Hallam, Hexham & Newcastle, Leeds, Middlesbrough
John of Beverley was born at Harpham a few miles from Driffield on the Yorkshire Wolds. He studied at Canterbury under St Adrian, the African-born abbot of the famous monastery there, who was a great scripture scholar and a fine teacher of Greek and Latin. When John returned to the North, he entered the double monastery at Whitby under the remarkable abbess, St Hilda, who had a great influence on many of the outstanding religious people of her time.
  In 687 John was consecrated Bishop of Hexham in succession to Bishop Eata, one of the twelve disciples of St Aidan and the teacher of St Cuthbert. During his time at Hexham, John ordained the future St Bede as priest. He was a good pastoral bishop, a man who loved the Scriptures, and a patient teacher. Like many of his contemporaries he also had a deep seated need for prayerful solitude and used to retire to a quiet place on the banks of the Tyne for prayer and the study of Scriptures, especially during the season of Lent. In 705 he was appointed to the See of York in succession to St Bosa, himself a former monk of the monastery at Whitby. John remained in the diocese for 12 years but the call of solitude remained strong, and four years before his death he retired to Beverley to a religious house he founded there.
  John died on 7 May 721, having worked for more than thirty years as a bishop. His shrine became famous up and down the country and was considered to be one of the chief places of devotion in England for many years.
  Many miracles of healing are ascribed to John, and the popularity of his cult was a major factor in the prosperity of Beverley during the Middle Ages. He was celebrated for his scholarship as well as for his virtues. He was canonized in 1037. In 1541, his shrine was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII. About a hundred years later workmen discovered a vault under the floor of the Minster’s nave. The inscription on it indicates that the contents contained the relics of St John. In 1738, when the present Minster floor was laid, these relics were disinterred and replaced in the same position with an arched brick vault over them. The inscription on the tomb now reads:
HERE LIES
THE BODY OF SAINT JOHN OF BEVERLEY
FOUNDER OF THIS CHURCH
BISHOP OF HEXHAM A.D. 687-705
BISHOP OF YORK A.D. 705-718
HE WAS BORN AT HARPHAM
DK, Middlesbrough Ordo

Other saints: Bl. Albert of Bergamo OP (1214 - 1279)

7 May (where celebrated)
Lay Dominican and Husband.
  Blessed Albert was born in Valle d’Ogna near Bergamo in 1214. As a married man he was known for his generosity to the poor, a virtue for which his wife reproached him. Upon the death of his wife, being childless, he left his father’s farm and went to Cremona where he lived in poverty. His poverty was a witness to a group of heretics there who boasted of their own poverty. Attracted by the life of Saint Dominic he joined the Brothers of Penance, which later became the Order of Penance of Saint Dominic, and lived at the Dominican priory. He died on May 7, 1279.

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

Second Reading: St Maximus of Turin (- 420?)

Maximus was born in the late 4th century in northern Italy. He is considered to have been the first Archbishop of Turin, and historians put his death around 420, although a wide range of dates have been proposed.
  A large number of homilies, sermons and treatises by Maximus survive, covering the seasons of the Church’s year and also the feasts of particular saints. Their ornate late-Imperial style is not always to modern taste, but they are often short and to the point and they provide valuable evidence of Christian practice and belief at that time.

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)(1 Corinthians 15:3-5) ©
Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures; he was buried; and he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures. He appeared first to Cephas and secondly to the Twelve.

Noon reading (Sext)Ephesians 2:4-6 ©
God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sins, he brought us to life with Christ – it is through grace that you have been saved – and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus.

Afternoon reading (None)Romans 6:4 ©
When we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.

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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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