Liturgical Year 2020-2021, Vol. 2 Ordinary Time before Lent by Jennifer Gregory Miller and Darden Brock (editors) Second of six volumes covering the 2020-2021 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 2021 Book ID: LY20202021-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 Ordinary Time: January 11th (Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time) 11 Ordinary Time: January 12th (Tuesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time) 15 Ordinary Time: January 13th (Wednesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Hilary of Poitiers, bishop and doctor; Memorial of St. Kentigern, bishop (Scotland)) 21 Ordinary Time: January 14th (Thursday of the First Week of Ordinary Time) 26 Ordinary Time: January 15th (Friday of the First Week of Ordinary Time; Our Lady of Prompt Succor; Black Christ of Esquipulas (Guatemala) ) 34 Ordinary Time: January 16th (Saturday of the First Week of Ordinary Time) 41 Ordinary Time: January 17th (Second Sunday of Ordinary Time) 45 Ordinary Time: January 18th (Monday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time) 50 Ordinary Time: January 19th (Tuesday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time) 53 Ordinary Time: January 20th (Wednesday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorials of St. Fabian, pope and martyr; St. Sebastian, martyr) 59 Ordinary Time: January 21st (Memorial of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr; Our Lady of High Grace (Dominican Republic)) 64 Ordinary Time: January 22nd (Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children) 70 Ordinary Time: January 23rd (Saturday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorials of St. Vincent of Saragossa, deacon & martyr; St. Marianne Cope) 75 Ordinary Time: January 24th (Third Sunday of Ordinary Time) 81 Ordinary Time: January 25th (Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle) 85 Ordinary Time: January 26th (Memorial of Sts. Timothy and Titus, bishops) 89 Ordinary Time: January 27th (Wednesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Angela Merici, virgin) 95 Ordinary Time: January 28th (Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, priest and doctor) 99 Ordinary Time: January 29th (Friday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time) 105 Ordinary Time: January 30th (Saturday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time) 108 Ordinary Time: January 31st (Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time) 112 Ordinary Time: February 1st (Monday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time; Feast of St. Brigid, Virgin (Ireland) (NZ, Opt. Mem.)) 117 Ordinary Time: February 2nd (Feast of the Presentation of the Lord) 121 Ordinary Time: February 3rd (Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr; St. Ansgar, bishop ) 129 Ordinary Time: February 4th (Thursday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time) 134 Ordinary Time: February 5th (Memorial of St. Agatha, virgin and martyr) 138 Ordinary Time: February 6th (Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions, martyrs) 143 Ordinary Time: February 7th (Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time ) 148 Ordinary Time: February 8th (Monday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorials of St. Jerome Emiliani, priest; St. Josephine Bakhita, virgin) 152 Ordinary Time: February 9th (Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time; St. Teilo (Wales)) 159 Ordinary Time: February 10th (Memorial of St. Scholastica, virgin) 163 Ordinary Time: February 11th (Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time; Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes) 167 Ordinary Time: February 12th (Friday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time) 173 Ordinary Time: February 13th (Saturday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time) 177 Ordinary Time: February 14th (Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time) 182 Ordinary Time: February 15th (Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time; St. Claude de la Colombiere, priest (some places)) 186 Ordinary Time: February 16th (Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time) 192 LITURGICAL YEAR 2020-2021, 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 2020-2021, 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. Second, avoid trying to do too much. Select carefully and emphasize a few things that you believe will work well in your situation.