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Wednesday 12 July 2023    (other days)
Wednesday of week 14 in Ordinary Time 

Using calendar: England - Portsmouth - Hampshire - Romsey. You can change this.

Cry out with joy to God, all the earth: serve the Lord with gladness.

Year: A(I). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.

Other saints: St John Jones (- 1598)

Wales
He was a novice at the Franciscan convent in Greenwich, but when this was dissolved in 1559 he had to move to France, where he took his final vows. Later he joined the Roman province of the Franciscan Order and in 1592, at his own request, he went on a mission to England. He was arrested on false charges in 1596 and severely tortured. In 1598 he was tried and convicted of being a priest and on 12 July he was executed. Despite the deliberately early hour chosen for the execution, a large crowd gathered, to which he preached before being hanged, drawn and quartered.

Other saints: St John Jones (c.1540-1598)

Wales
John Jones (known also as John Buckley, John Griffith and Godfrey Maurice) was born in Clynnog Fawr in Wales, about 1540, into a Welsh family which had remained true to the Catholic faith. As a young man, he entered the Franciscan house at Greenwich. Eventually he went to Rome and asked to be sent to England. He reached London at the end of 1592, and worked for some years in different parts of the country. His brother Franciscans in England elected him their provincial. In 1596 the ‘priest catcher’ Richard Topcliffe was informed by a spy that Father Jones had visited two Catholics and had said Mass in their house. He was promptly arrested, tortured and scourged. He was then imprisoned for nearly two years. On 3 July 1598 he was tried on the charge of “going over the seas in the first year of Her Majesty’s reign (1558) and there being made a priest by the authority from Rome and then returning to England contrary to statute”. He was convicted of high treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. By this time people were becoming sympathetic to the Catholic victims of these awful butcheries, so the execution was arranged for an early hour in the morning in order to escape notice. In spite of the earliness of the hour, a large crowd had gathered. John Jones spoke to the crowd, reminding them that he was dying for his faith alone and had no political interest. His dismembered remains were fixed on the poles on the roads to Newington and Lambeth, they were removed by some young Catholic gentlemen, one of whom suffered a long imprisonment for this offence.
DK

Other saints: SS. Louis Martin and Marie Azélie Guérin

12 Jul (where celebrated)
Louis Martin was born in Bordeaux, on August 22, 1823. While he was master-watchmaker in Alençon, he met Marie Azélie (Zélie) Guérin, a lace maker, born in Gandelain (St-Denis-sur-Sarthon), on December 23, 1831. They were married on July 13, 1858,and had nine children, including the future Saint Thérèse of the Infant Jesus. Model spouses, devoted parents, workers, attentive to the poor, always nourishing a missionary spirit, they found their strength and hope in regular attendance at Holy Mass and in a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin. After a long illness Zélie died in Alençon on August 28, 1877. Louis, in retirement, went to Lisieux near his in-laws to ensure a better future for his five children (the other four having died in infancy). This patriarch of the family, after offering all his children to God, knew suffering and illness. He died near Evreux on July 29, 1894.

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

Second Reading: The Didache

The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or (from the Greek) the Didache, is an early Christian document of the first century, perhaps before the year 80, quite possibly earlier than some of the Gospels. It falls into three parts: the first is the “Two Ways”, the Way of Life and the Way of Death; the second part covers baptism, fasting, and Holy Communion; and the third speaks of the ministry. Eusebius judged it not to be part of the canon of Scripture (he was also doubtful of the Apocalypse), while Athanasius and Rufinus place it among the deutero-canonical works. Many of the Church Fathers were aware of it, and referred to it explicitly or implicitly. The text was lost for many centuries: it was rediscovered by a Greek bishop in 1873.
  The part of the Didache which appears in the Office of Readings bears witness to a very early stage of the liturgy, long before doctrinal issues such as the meaning of the Redemption had even been thought about. Nevertheless, from a time when some of the Apostles were still living, we already have the core of what is recognisably the Mass.

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)Deuteronomy 1:16-17 ©
At that time I told your judges: You must give your brothers a fair hearing and see justice done between a man and his brother or the stranger who lives with him. You must be impartial in judgement and give an equal hearing to small and great alike. Do not be afraid of any man, for the judgement is God’s.

Noon reading (Sext)Isaiah 55:8-9 ©
My thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways – it is the Lord who speaks.
Yes, the heavens are as high above earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.

Afternoon reading (None)1 Samuel 16:7 ©
God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.

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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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