Saturday of week 21 in Ordinary Time, or Saturday memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saturday memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

Friday of week 21 in Ordinary TimeOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Margaret Clitherow, née Middleton (1556 - 1586))

She was born in York and lived there all her life. At the age of 15 she married a butcher, John Clitherow, and three years later became a Catholic. Imprisoned for her non-attendance at the Protestant church, she taught herself to read, and on her release ran a small school for her own and her neighbours’ children. Her husband, although he remained a Protestant himself, allowed her to hide priests in the house. In 1586 the secret hiding places were discovered and Margaret was put on trial. As the law then stood, to be found guilty would have meant destitution for her children, so she refused to plead: thus she could not be tried, and instead was crushed to death with a heavy stone, on 25 March 1586.(St Anne Line, née Heigham (1565? - 1601))

The Beheading of Saint John the BaptistOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassSt John the Baptist

Apart from Mary and Joseph, John the Baptist is the only saint in the General Calendar who has two feasts to himself. One, in August, celebrates his death, and one, in June, celebrates his birth. And this is as it should be, for as Christ himself said, John was the greatest of the sons of men. The greatest, but also the most tragic. A prophet from before his birth, leaping in the womb to announce the coming of the incarnate God, his task was to proclaim the fulfilment of all prophecies – and thus his own obsolescence. And he did it: with unequalled courage he spread the news that he, the greatest of all men, was the least in the kingdom of heaven. His disciples, and the devil, would have preferred him to fight, to build his sect, to defeat this upstart whom he himself had baptized, to seize his place in history. But he did not – and so, rightly, he has his place, and he has glory in heaven.We envy the great and the talented, and sometimes we think that they themselves are beyond envy. But when they come across someone with greater gifts, as one day most of them will, they will see for the first time what it means to feel like us. Let us pray that they, like John the Baptist, may pass that test.See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.