Sunday 4 January 2026 (other days)
The Epiphany of the Lord
Solemnity
Solemnity
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· Donate · Tweet · Show QR codeChrist has appeared to us: come, let us adore him.
Year: A(II). Liturgical Colour: White.
Other saints: St Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774 - 1821)
Trinidad & Tobago, United States
She was born in New York into an Episcopalian family, who ostracized her and left her penniless when she became a Catholic in 1805. She had to leave New York and in 1808-9 she founded a religious community and a school for poor children at Emmitsburg, near Baltimore in Maryland. Mother Seton died in 1821 but the Sisters of Charity continue her work to this day. See the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: Pope St Leo the Great (- 461)
Leo was born in Etruria and became Pope in 440. He was a true shepherd and father of souls. He constantly strove to keep the faith whole and strenuously defended the unity of the Church. He repelled the invasions of the barbarians or alleviated their effects, famously persuading Attila the Hun not to march on Rome in 452, and preventing the invading Vandals from massacring the population in 455.
Leo left many doctrinal and spiritual writings behind and a number of them are included in the Office of Readings to this day. He died in 461.
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.
