Universalis
Thursday 4 September 2025    (other days)
Thursday of week 22 in Ordinary Time 

Using calendar: Australia - Perth. You can change this.

Come before the Lord, singing with joy.

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

Other saints: St Cuthbert (634? - 687)

England, St Andrews & Edinburgh: 4 Sep
Hexham & Newcastle: 20 Mar
According to tradition, he was a shepherd boy. Certainly he became a monk, and later prior, at Melrose. After the Synod of Whitby in 664 he became prior of Lindisfarne and gradually won over the community to Roman ecclesiastical customs. He was zealous in preaching the Gospel but most attracted to living the life of a hermit, and in 676 he left the monastery and lived in solitude on the nearby island of Inner Farne. For the last two years of his life he served as bishop of Lindisfarne, but he returned to his island to die, on 20 March 687. His remains were removed from their resting place at Lindisfarne to escape Viking raiders and were eventually enshrined at Durham Cathedral. Because the anniversary of his death always falls within Lent, his feast is celebrated on the anniversary of the enshrinement of his remains at Durham.

Other saints: Saint Mac Nissi

Ireland
He founded the diocese of Connor in Ireland in 480, and is patron saint of the diocese, which is now part of the diocese of Down and Connor.

Other saints: Blessed Dina Bélanger (1897 - 1929)

Canada
She was born on 30 April 1897 in Québec and at the recommendation of her parish priest she went to New York to study at the Institute of Musical Art, with the intention of becoming a concert pianist. On her return home, she decided to enter the religious life in the Congregation of Jésus-Marie at Sillery, where the nuns had their mother house. She entered the convent on 11 August 1921, at the age of 24, and, as Sister Marie Sainte-Cécile of Rome, took her final vows on 15 August 1928.
  She went to teach music at the Couvent Jésus-Marie at Saint-Michel, near Québec, but soon caught scarlet fever after caring for a sick pupil. She returned to Sillery where, her constitution weakened by the illness, she developed tuberculosis.
  For the rest of her life she taught whenever she was not too ill to do so. She died on 4 September 1929, at the age of 32.
  She wrote an autobiography at the request of her superiors, and this was published in 1934 under the title Une vie dans le Christ (a life in Christ). The book revealed her hidden life as a mystic, entering into the mystery of love at the heart of the Trinity. It was a worldwide success, being translated into five languages, fulfilling the promise made by Christ before she entered the convent, that ‘You will do good above all by your writing’.
  She was beatified in Rome by Pope John Paul II on 20 March 1993.
  See also the article in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

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: 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)Galatians 5:13-14
My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty; but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence. Serve one another, rather, in works of love, since the whole of the Law is summarised in a single command: Love your neighbour as yourself.

Noon reading (Sext)Galatians 5:16-17
Let me put it like this: if you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit, the Spirit is totally against such a thing, and it is precisely because the two are so opposed that you do not always carry out your good intentions.

Afternoon reading (None)Galatians 5:22,23,25
What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit.

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