Sunday 25 January 2026 (other days)
Saint Ansgar (Oscar), Bishop
Solemnity
Solemnity
Using calendar: Denmark - Greenland. You can change this.
Pages
About Today · Readings at Mass · Office of Readings · Morning Prayer · Terce · Sext · None · Evening Prayer · Night Prayer · Yearly calendarLinks
· Donate · Tweet · Show QR codeChrist is the chief shepherd, the leader of his flock: come, let us adore him.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: White.
St Ansgar or Oscar (- 865)
He was born in Amiens at the start of the ninth century and educated at the monastery of Corbie in Picardy. He went as a missionary to Denmark in 826 but had little success; but in Sweden he did better. He was elected Bishop of Hamburg (this was at that time a missionary see dedicated to evangelizing the North) and appointed papal legate to Denmark and Sweden by Pope Gregory IV. He encountered huge difficulties in his work of evangelization but he overcame them. He died in Bremen on 3 February 865.
He is known as “the apostle of the North.” His diaries are an important documentary source for early Scandinavian history. See also the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.
In other years: The Conversion of Saint Paul
Saul, the young man who looked after the cloaks of the men who were stoning St Stephen, grew into a dedicated and efficient persecutor of Christians. Today’s feast celebrates the day that Christ appeared to him in a vision as he was on the way to Damascus, reproached him for his persecutions and converted him to the true faith.
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.
