Universalis
Sunday 30 November 2025    (other days)
1st Sunday of Advent 

Using calendar: Asia - India - Goa & Daman. You can change this.

Let us adore the Lord, the King who is to come.

Year: A(II). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: Violet.

In other years: St Andrew the Apostle

He was born in Bethsaida, in Galilee, and worked as a fisherman. He may have been a disciple of St John the Baptist. He became one of the first to follow Jesus and introduced his brother, Simon Peter, to him. As one of the twelve Apostles he was widely venerated in ancient times, and became patron saint of Scotland because according to legend some of his bones were brought there and buried at the place where the town of St Andrew’s now stands.

Other saints: St Cuthbert Mayne (1543-1577)

30 Nov
Plymouth: 29 Nov
Cuthbert Mayne was born at Youlston, near Barnstaple, Devonshire, in 1543 and was executed at Launceston, Cornwall, 29 November 1577. He was the son of William Mayne; he was educated at Barnstaple Grammar School and Oxford, where he got to know a number of men who were favourable to the Catholic cause, notably Edmund Campion and Gregory Martin, who themselves went over to Douai. He was persuaded of the truth of the Catholic cause but held back initially for fear of losing his appointments and his income. Late in 1570 a letter from Gregory Martin to Cuthbert fell into the Bishop of London’s hands. He at once arranged for Cuthbert and others mentioned in the letter to be arrested. Being warned, Cuthbert managed to escape and got to Douai. There he was received into the Catholic Church, and was ordained priest in 1575. He soon left for the English mission. He went to live with Francis Tregian, of Golden Manor, in St Probus’s parish, Cornwall, who was subsequently imprisoned for harbouring him. Cuthbert was arrested in June 1577, taken to Launceston and put on trial in September. He was found guilty of high treason, and was sentenced accordingly. The trial attracted considerable attention partly because he was the first so-called ‘seminary priest’ to be tried; a legal distinction was made between ‘Marian’ priests who had been ordained in England, and ‘seminary’ priests who had studied and had been ordained overseas. His execution was delayed because one of the judges, Jeffries, altered his mind after sentence and sent a report to the Privy Council. They submitted the case to the whole Bench of Judges, which was inclined to Jeffries’s view. Nevertheless, for motives of policy, the Council ordered the conviction to stand “as a terror to the papists” and a warning to priests coming from abroad. A rough portrait of the martyr still exists.
  A correspondent asks us to make it clear that the “Bishop of London” who had Cuthbert arrested was not the Catholic Bishop of London. Indeed, there was no Catholic Bishop of London at that time, and there has never been one since. The last Catholic Bishop of London was deprived of his see in 1559 and died in prison ten years later.
DK

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

Second Reading: St Cyril of Jerusalem (315 - 386)

Cyril was born in 315 of Christian parents and succeeded Maximus as bishop of Jerusalem in 348. He was active in the Arian controversy and was exiled more than once as a result. His pastoral zeal is especially shown in his Catecheses, in which he expounded orthodox doctrine, holy Scripture and the traditions of the faith. They are still read today, and several of the Second Readings of the Office of Readings are taken from them. He died in 386. He is held in high esteem by both the Catholics and the Orthodox, and he was declared a Doctor of the Church by the Pope in 1883.

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.
Facebook link Twitter link Instagram link YouTube link

Local calendars

General Calendar

Asia

India

Goa & Daman

 - Old Goa


  This web site © Copyright 1996-2025 Universalis Publishing Ltd · Contact us · Cookies/privacy
(top