Christ is the son of Mary: come, let us adore him.
Year: C(I). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: Saint Giles (c.650 - c.710)
St Andrews & Edinburgh, Slovenia
Giles was a Greek Christian hermit saint from Athens. He settled in Gaul to escape his high reputation in Greece, and became for many years a hermit in a forest near Nîmes. He spent many years in solitude there but eventually founded a monastery. This monastery, at Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, became a place of pilgrimage and a stop on the road that led from Arles to Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrim Way of St James.
His life and personality became a magnet for pious legends, behind which a coherent biography is sometimes hard to discern. He is the patron saint of Edinburgh.
Other saints: St Teresa Margaret Redi of the Sacred Heart (1747-1770)
1 Sep (where celebrated)
Teresa Margaret was born in Arezzo, Tuscany, in 1747 of the noble Redi family and baptised Anna Maria. At the age of nine, she was sent to a boarding school run by Benedictine nuns, St Apollonia’s in Florence. At the age of sixteen, as her time of schooling came to an end, Anna Maria discerned a call to religious life. During this time, in a quiet experience of prayer it became clear that she was called to the life of Carmel. She entered the Discalced Carmelites in Florence in 1764, taking the name Teresa of the Sacred Heart. Her writings and charity within the community attested to a deep interior life. On one occasion she writes of a special contemplative experience concerning the words of St John, “God is Love.” She worked with care and compassion in the community infirmary. A sudden onset of ill-health, in 1770, ended with her death, aged twenty-three.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: St Sophronius of Jerusalem (c.560 - 638)
Sophronius was born in Damascus around 560. He became an ascetic in Egypt about 580 and subsequently entered the monastery of St Theodosius near Bethlehem. He was active in the battle against the heretics who rejected the nature of Christ as both God and man. He became Patriarch of Jerusalem in 634. At that time the Saracen armies under the caliph Umar I were advancing into Palestine, and Jerusalem itself fell in 637, Sophronius negotiating with Umar the terms of a surrender which gave religious freedom to Christians and preserved the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as a Christian church.
Sophronius’ writings show little sign of these grand historical events. He wrote a series of poems in classical style on Christian subjects, and a number of sermons and doctrinal works.
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) | Zephaniah 3:14,15 © |
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Shout for joy, daughter of Zion, Israel, shout aloud! Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord, the king of Israel, is in your midst; you have no more evil to fear.
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| Noon reading (Sext) | Zechariah 9:9 © |
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Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion! Shout with gladness, daughter of Jerusalem! See now, your king comes to you; he is victorious, he is triumphant.
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| Afternoon reading (None) | Judith 13:18-19 © |
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May you be blessed, my daughter, by God Most High,
beyond all women on earth;
and may the Lord God be blessed,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
by whose guidance you cut off the head
of the leader of our enemies.
The trust you have shown
shall not pass from the memories of men,
but shall ever remind them
of the power of God.
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