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Monday 8 May 2023    (other days)
Monday of the 5th week of Eastertide 

Using calendar: Australia - Maitland-Newcastle. You can change this.

The Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Year: A(I). Psalm week: 1. Liturgical Colour: White.

Other saints: Blessed Catherine of Saint Augustine (1632 - 1668)

Canada
Catherine de Longpré was born May 3, 1632 at Saint-Sauveur, France. Following the advice of Saint John Eudes, she entered the Augustinian Hospitaller Sisters of the Mercy of Jesus in 1644. She volunteered to go to her community’s mission in Quebec. Her family was strongly opposed to the idea, but she prevailed, and arrived there in 1648.
  She spent her life ministering to the poor and sick in Quebec, and died there at the age of 36.

Other saints: Blessed John Sullivan (1861-1933)

8 May (where celebrated)
John Sullivan (1861 – 1933) was born into a wealthy Dublin family and baptized in the Church of Ireland. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1896, at the age of thirty-five. Four years later, he entered the Jesuits. He was known for his life of deep spiritual reflection and personal sacrifice; he is recognised for his dedicated work with the poor and afflicted; during his lifetime, cures were attributed to his intercession, though he himself did not accept this. He spent much of his time walking and riding his bike to visit those who were troubled or ill in the villages around Clongowes Wood College school where he taught from 1907 until his death.

Other saints: Bl Aloysius Rabatà (c.1443-1490)

8 May (where celebrated)
Aloysius was born at Erice, near Trapani, Sicily, around the year 1443. Little is known of his early life. Accounts from the canonical process of beatification identify him as the prior of the Carmelite Community of St Michael in Randazzo, Sicily. Brother Aloysius is remembered as a model Carmelite prior, living the care, concern and responsibility of a prior as outlined in the Carmelite Rule. His simple, virtuous and exemplary life was a model for the other brothers of his community. He shared in all aspects of work in the community, including the humbler tasks such as begging for the community’s bread. His welcome, hospitality and spiritual counsel were well remembered by visitors to the community. As well, his generosity of spirit overflowed into his care for the poor of Randazzo.
  Toward the end of his life, while out collecting wood for the community, he was assaulted and wounded on the forehead and suffered for a long time as a consequence. In iconography Aloysius is often represented with a palm in his hand and an arrow driven into his forehead, believed to be the cause of his death. According to tradition, an unknown assailant had wounded Aloysius because he thought Aloysius had been excessive in reproving a brother for immoral conduct. He would never reveal who had hurt him and when questioned would only reply, “I pray that God will pardon him, and will be glorified by what has happened.”
  Brother Aloysius died at Randazzo and was buried there in the church. Devotion to the memory of the Christ-like care Aloysius lived out brought healing to many at his tomb following his death.
MT

Other saints: Patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary over the entire Order of Preachers

8 May (where celebrated)
It has been customary for the Church to invoke the Blessed Virgin Mary under titles such as Mediatrix, thereby indicating the continuing saving role of her maternity in the order of grace, for “by her many acts of intercession she continues to gain for us gifts of eternal salvation.” (Lumen gentium, 62)
  Blessed Humbert of Romans declares that “the Blessed Virgin was of great help in beginning the Order ... and it is to be hoped that she will bring it to a good end.” (Opera II, 70-71) From its foundation the Order has not hesitated to acknowledge the Patronage of the Blessed Virgin, to continuously experience it and to commend it to the hearts of the brothers and sisters, so that encouraged by this maternal help they might adhere more closely to their Mediator and Redeemer as they labor to carry out their mission of salvation in the world. (See Lumen gentium, 62)
  Until the recent restoration of the liturgical calendar, the Order celebrated the Patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary on December 22, the anniversary of the approval of the Order by Pope Honorius III (December 22, 1216). Keeping in mind the special character of the weekdays of Advent which take precedence over all other memorials, it is suggested that the commemoration of this Patronage be celebrated on May 8 – during the month which is specially dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and on the day when she is honored under similar titles in other proper liturgical calendars.

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

Second Reading: St Gregory of Nyssa (335 - 395)

Gregory of Nyssa was the younger brother of St Basil of Caesarea (“St Basil the Great”). He, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, “Gregory of Nazianzus”, are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. They were active after the Council of Nicaea, working to formulate Trinitarian doctrine precisely and, in particular, to pin down the meaning and role of the least humanly comprehensible member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Basil was the leader and organizer; Gregory of Nazianzus was the thinker, the orator, the poet, pushed into administrative and episcopal roles by circumstances and by Basil; and Gregory of Nyssa, although not a great stylist, was the most gifted of the three as a philosopher and theologian. Together, the Cappadocian Fathers hammered out the doctrine of the Trinity like blacksmiths forging a piece of metal by hammer-blows into its perfect, destined shape. They were champions – and successful champions – of orthodoxy against Arianism, a battle that had to be conducted as much on the worldly and political plane as on the philosophical and theological one.
  The works of Gregory of Nyssa whose extracts appear as Second Readings are not as rhetorically beautiful as those of Gregory of Nazianzus, who was an acclaimed orator; but they are helpful and clear. Most of them are commentaries on Scripture passages. They involve the mind and deepen the understanding.

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)(Apocalypse 1:17-18) ©
I saw the Son of Man, and he said to me, ‘Have no fear! I am the First and the Last. I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.’

Noon reading (Sext)Colossians 2:9,12 ©
In Christ lives the fullness of divinity, and in him you too find your own fulfilment. You have been buried with him, when you were baptised; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead.

Afternoon reading (None)2 Timothy 2:8,11 ©
Remember the Good News that I carry, ‘Jesus Christ risen from the dead, sprung from the race of David’. Here is a saying that you can rely on: ‘If we have died with him, then we shall live with him.’

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Australia

Maitland-Newcastle


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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