Liturgical Year 2019-2020, Vol. 2
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Liturgical Year 2019-2020, Vol. 2 Ordinary Time before Lent by Jennifer Gregory Miller and Darden Brock (editors) Second of six volumes covering the 2019-2020 Catholic liturgical year, including all the days of the initial portion of Ordinary Time which falls between Christmas and Lent. Trinity Communications CatholicCulture.org P.O. Box 582 Manassas, VA 20108 © Copyright Trinity Communications 2020 Book ID: LY20192020-V2-OTBL-jmgmdb The chapters of this book appeared first on the Trinity Communications website, CatholicCulture.org. Our website includes many more Catholic materials, including daily news, commentary, liturgical year resources, Church documents, reviews, and collections of historic Catholic writings and references. You can also sign up for daily and weekly email newsletters. Trinity Communications is a non-profit corporation. If you would like to support our work, please register and contribute on the website; or mail a check or money order along with your email address to Trinity Communications, P.O. Box 582, Manassas, VA 20108, USA. We look forward to seeing you at www.catholicculture.org. Table of Contents Introduction to the Liturgical Year 6 Introduction to Ordinary Time 9 January 13th (First Monday in Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Hilary of Poitiers, bishop and doctor; Memorial of St. Kentigern, bishop (Scotland)) 11 January 14th (Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time) 16 January 15th (Wednesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time; Our Lady of Prompt Succor; Black Christ of Esquipulas (Guatemala) ) 24 January 16th (Thursday of the First Week of Ordinary Time) 30 January 17th (Memorial of St. Anthony, abbot) 34 January 18th (Saturday of the First Week of Ordinary Time) 38 January 19th (Second Sunday of Ordinary Time) 41 January 20th (Monday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorials of St. Fabian, pope and martyr; St. Sebastian, martyr) 46 January 21st (Memorial of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr; Our Lady of High Grace (Dominican Republic)) 51 January 22nd (Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children) 57 January 23rd (Thursday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorials of St. Vincent of Saragossa, deacon & martyr; St. Marianne Cope) 62 January 24th (Memorial of St. Francis de Sales, bishop and doctor; Optional memorial of Our Lady of Peace) 68 January 25th (Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle) 73 January 26th (Third Sunday in Ordinary Time) 77 January 27th (Monday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Angela Merici, virgin) 81 January 28th (Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, priest and doctor) 84 January 29th (Wednesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time) 90 January 30th (Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time) 93 January 31st (Memorial of St. John Bosco, priest) 97 February 1st (Saturday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time; Feast of St. Brigid, Virgin (Ireland) (NZ, Opt. Mem.)) 101 February 2nd (The Presentation of the Lord) 105 February 3rd (Monday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr; St. Ansgar, bishop ) 112 February 4th (Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time) 117 February 5th (Memorial of St. Agatha, virgin and martyr) 121 February 6th (Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions, martyrs) 126 February 7th (Friday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time) 131 February 8th (Saturday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorials of St. Jerome Emiliani, priest; St. Josephine Bakhita, virgin) 134 February 9th (Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time ) 141 February 10th (Memorial of St. Scholastica, virgin) 145 February 11th (Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes) 149 February 12th (Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time) 155 February 13th (Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time) 159 February 14th (Memorial of Sts. Cyril, monk and St. Methodius, bishop) 164 February 15th (Saturday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time; St. Claude de la Colombiere, priest (some places)) 170 February 16th (Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time) 176 February 17th (Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of Seven Founders of the Order of Servites) 180 February 18th (Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time) 184 February 19th (Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time) 188 February 20th (Thursday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time; Sts. Francisco & Jacinta Marto (Portugal)) 193 February 21st (Friday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Peter Damian, bishop and doctor) 197 February 22nd (Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, apostle) 201 February 23rd (Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time) 205 February 24th (Monday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time) 209 February 25th (Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time) 212 LITURGICAL YEAR 2019-2020, VOL. 2 6 Introduction to the Liturgical Year The Church inculcates Christ and His mission through the patterns and rhythms of her Liturgical Year. She is herself the universal sacrament of salvation and the visible manifestation on earth of the presence of the Kingdom of God even now. But the Church also has various ministries and means by which she carries out her special mission. The Liturgical Year is perhaps the most important means she uses to sanctify the concept of time itself. During the course of the Liturgical Year, the saving actions of Christ are presented again to the Faithful in an effective spiritual sequence that provides occasions for deepening our experience of Christ, for giving scope to our need for fasts and feasts, penance and joy, the remission of sin and the foretaste of heavenly glory. The annual cycle invites us to live the Christian mysteries more deeply, to let the Christ-life seep into our very bones, and in so doing to transform and renew all human endeavors, all human culture. The backbone of the Liturgical Year is the Liturgical Calendar, an annual cycle of seasons and feasts which both commemmorate and invite us to more fully enter into the real history of our salvation. At the same time, the days devoted to the celebration of many of the Church’s saints provide us with inspiring models of what it means to exemplify the love and virtues which Our Lord and Savior so zealously wishes us to share. In this way, we may develop in and through time a heart like unto His own. On the CatholicCulture.org website, we have collected and organized a great many resources for helping all of us to live the Liturgical Year more consciously and more actively. In addition to the accounts of the nature, history and purposes of the great feasts, and of course the lives of the saints, we have brought together a wide variety of customs for celebrating the various seasons and feasts which have grown up in cultures throughout the world. And in connection with these customs, we have also collected appropriate prayers and devotions, family activities, and even receipes—the better to help us taste and see the glory of the Lord! (Ps 34:8) All of these resources are organized according to the Liturgical Calendar, and many of them are deliberately oriented toward use by the family, or what recent popes have referred to as the domestic church. The family is to be the Church in miniature, the first of all Christian communities, the warm embrace in which new souls are claimed for Christ and nourished in every way for His service. The family is also the source of the www.catholicculture.org LITURGICAL YEAR 2019-2020, VOL. 2 7 Church’s manifold vocations, including the vocations of those who dedicate themselves exclusively to Christ and the Church’s service as priests and religious. Thus, in every way, the Church public, the Church as a whole, the mystical body of Christ in its fulness, depends on the health and strength of the domestic church, even as she nourishes the domestic church through her presence, her sacraments, her counsel, her teaching—and, of course, her Liturgical Year. It is not possible in an eBook to reproduce the full richness and flexibility of these resources as they are presented on our website ( www.catholicculture.org). The visual displays of eBooks cannot, in most cases, equal those of web pages, and it is generally not as easy to follow the many links available to explore the full range of offerings. What we have done in the volumes of this series is to present the days of the Liturgical Year in sequence, grouped in their proper seasons, so that the user can follow the unfolding of the Liturgical Year with immediate access to the meaning of each day, complete with its spiritual and liturgical explanations, and its biographies of the saints. Following the basic presentation for each day are many links to additional information, prayers, activities and recipes which relate specifically to that day or the Season as a whole. These materials can be used with profit by anyone. However, if we were to offer specific advice to parents on how they may make the best use of all the resources in their own families, we would emphasize the following two points: First, remember that all of us, but especially children, grow spiritually when we have the opportunity to associate living examples, customs and activities with God’s love and saving power. This sort of participation helps children to learn the Faith along with their mother’s milk, so to speak—or, as we said above, to get it into their very bones. Children also need heroes, and one way or another they will find them. The saints make the best of all possible heroes.