Give thanks to the Lord, for his great love is without end.
Year: C(I). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: St Paulinus (-644)
England
Paulinus was a monk from Rome sent to England by St Gregory the Great in 601. We have an idea of his appearance. St Bede describes him as ‘tall, with a slight stoop, black hair, a thin face, a slender aquiline nose, at once venerable and awe-inspiring in appearance’. Though he worked for nearly twenty-five years in Kent, almost nothing is known about this period of his life save that he was greatly respected. In 625 he played a large part in the conversion of Northumberland which by then had become the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, stretching from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, and from the North Sea to the Pennines. He accompanied Ethelburga (sister of the King of Kent) when she went north to marry the pagan King Edwin of Northumbria. On Easter Sunday 627 Edwin was baptised along with ‘all the nobility and a large number of humbler folk’ in a wooden chapel in York.
From this time onwards, Paulinus was able to make a series of missionary journeys over the whole region, converting and baptising huge numbers of people. He ministered as far south as Lincoln, where he built a stone church. The success of his ministry was given recognition when he was appointed Archbishop of York by Pope Honorius I in 632.
Almost at the same time, his work was cut short by the death of King Edwin while fighting the pagan leader, Cadwallon. Paulinus was persuaded to take the widowed Queen Ethelburga and her children, by sea, to safety in her native Kent. He himself spent the remaining twelve years of his life as Bishop of Rochester. He died there in 644.
Other saints: St Daniel Comboni (1831 - 1881)
Kenya, Southern Africa
Daniel Comboni was born in Italy in 1831. Early in life he felt the call to evangelize the peoples of Central Africa, who, at that time, were the poorest and most abandoned. He set off to Africa and established several missions. He presented an appeal to the Fathers of the first Vatican Council, founded two missionary Institutes and was given the responsibility of the whole Apostolic Vicariate of Central Africa. Faithful to his motto “Africa or death” and his plan for the salvation of Africa, he lived and worked for the success of the mission until he died in Khartoum (Sudan) on 10 October 1881, at the age of fifty.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Vincent of Lérins (- c.445)
Vincent was born in Toulouse and after a secular career he joined the abbey of Lérins, on an island just offshore from the French Riviera town of Cannes. He took part in the major theological controversies of the day, which were far from sterile academic squabbling but were part of the vital process of finding out what precisely Christianity is. He opposed Nestorianism, defending the status of Mary as Mother of God. He enunciated the famous principle that “In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus)”.
The other great controversy of the time, which took more than a century to settle, was on the nature of grace. At one extreme was Pelagianism, named after Pelagius, a British monk (who held at least some form of it): this made justification something we could achieve for ourselves. If you take that argument far enough, there seems little room for the grace of God. At the other extreme was what might be called Augustinism, a selective view of St Augustine’s counter to Pelagianism, according to which all that is good comes from God and we, of ourselves, can achieve nothing good at all. Now, if you take that particular argument far enough, God has already decided whether we are saved or not, and nothing we can do can have any effect on it, so that there is no point in performing good works or avoiding sin.
Current opinion is that in striking the balance between these extremes Vincent himself was what would now be called a “semi-Pelagian”, semi-Pelagianism being a kind of half-way doctrine which was formulated in southern Gaul in the early fifth century and formally condemned in 529 at the Second Council of Orange. It was only in the 17th century that this particular label was applied to Vincent, and in any case the presence or absence of such a label does not detract from the value of everything that Vincent taught and wrote. The branding of one’s doctrinal opponents as being in every sense depraved and unclean is a characteristic of only certain historical periods – admittedly, including the 21st century. Vincent’s own analysis of the development of doctrine brings good sense into an area where it is much needed, and this is why this reading has been chosen for the Liturgy of the Hours.
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 |
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 |
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 |
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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