4th Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday)Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Blessed John Anne (- 1589)) It is hard to know who he was. He may have been John Amias, born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, where he married and had a family: on his wife’s death he divided his property among his children and left for the Continent to become a priest. In this case the surname “Anne” would be an alias. But equally he may have been William Anne, youngest son of John and Katherine Anne, of Frickley near Wakefield.In any case, on 22 June 1580 a widower calling himself “John Amias” entered the English College at Rheims to study for the priesthood. He was ordained a priest in Rheims Cathedral on 25 March 1581 and on 5 June he set out for Paris and then England, as a missionary, in the company of another priest, Edmund Sykes. Little is known of his missionary life. Towards the end of 1588 he was arrested at the house of a Mr. Murton at Melling in Lancashire and imprisoned in York Castle. He was hanged, drawn and quartered outside York on 16 March 1589, together with a fellow priest, Robert Dalby. Both were beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

Saturday of the 3rd week of LentOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass

Friday of the 3rd week of LentOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass

Thursday of the 3rd week of LentOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass

Wednesday of the 3rd week of LentOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint Aengus (- 824)) He was born near Clonenagh and educated there at the monastic school founded there by St Fintan, not far from the present town of Mountrath. He lived for some time as a hermit and then joined the monastery of Tallaght, near Dublin, under St Maelruain. He was a co-author of a martyrology (written in 790 and the oldest in Ireland) and wrote a long poem, the Féilire, or Festology of the Saints, which he finished in about 805. After St Maelruain’s death he returned to his hermitage, where he died on 11 March 824. See the article in Wikipedia.(Blessed John Larke, Priest and Martyr) (St Constantine (6th century)) St Constantine has been revered at Govan since time immemorial and there is no reason to doubt that the tradition was based on a real person. But attempts to construct a biography for him have to depend purely on occasional references in chronicles, and there is always the risk of tripping over the problem of “someone else of the same name”. This will happen to all of us eventually: in the year 1,000,000 AD, will anyone be sure of the difference between Thomas More and Thomas Becket, who were both martyred by kings called Henry?A Constantine was converted to Christianity (Annals of Ulster, 588). A Constantine appears in the Breviary of Aberdeen as entering a monastery in Ireland incognito before joining Saint Mungo (alias Kentigern) and becoming a missionary to the Picts. He is probably the same man. This Constantine was martyred in Scotland about 576 and John of Fordun tells how he was buried at Govan, where his shrine can still be seen today. He is probably not the Saint Constantine of Devon and Cornwall, and certainly not the King Constantine of Dumnonia (south-western Britain) mentioned unfavourably by the chronicler Gildas. The fact that there were separate tribes of Dumnonii in the south-west and in Scotland merely serves to make things even more interesting. But – at the risk of upsetting historians – the only thing that matters to us is that the Constantine we celebrate today has been revered as a saint continuously for a millennium and a half. When all the facts about us are lost, may we also be worthy to be remembered.

Tuesday of the 3rd week of LentOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St John Ogilvie (1579 - 1615)) John Ogilvie was born of noble Calvinist parents in 1579 at Drum-na-Keith in Banffshire, Scotland. As a boy he was sent to the continent to further his education. With the help of Father Cornelius van den Steen (‘Cornelius a Lapide’) he was received into the Catholic Church. He entered the Society of Jesus on the 5th November 1599, and was ordained priest at Paris in 1610. He returned to his native country, but his ministry was cut short by his betrayal and capture in Glasgow. After extreme suffering he was hanged on the 10th of March 1615. The principal cause of his martyrdom was his insistence on the primacy of the Pope in spiritual matters, a primacy he affirmed with great constancy to the very end. His last words were “If there be here any hidden Catholics, let them pray for me but the prayers of heretics I will not have.” After he was pushed from the ladder, he threw his hidden Rosary beads out into the crowd. One of his enemies caught them, and he became a devout Catholic for the rest of his life.

Monday of the 3rd week of Lent, (commemoration of Saint Frances of Rome, Religious) Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Frances of Rome (1384 - 1440)) She was born in Rome in 1384 and was married at the age of 13. Although she had wanted to be a nun, she was happily married for 40 years and had three sons. She distributed gifts to the poor and ministered to the sick. She was remarkable for her humility and detachment, her obedience and patience in adversity (including her husband’s banishment, the death of two of her sons from plague, and the loss of all her property). She was a mystic and contemplative, part of the great flourishing of mysticism in that period, and after her husband’s death she retired to a convent she had founded, where she died on 9 March 1440. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.

3rd Sunday of LentOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St John of God (1495 - 1550)) He was born to a poor but devout family in Portugal in 1495. After serving as a soldier under the Emperor Charles V he devoted his life wholly to the service of the poor and the sick. He founded a hospital in Granada and a circle of disciples formed round him, which later became the Order of Hospitallers. He died on 8 March 1550, his 55th birthday. See the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.(Saint Senan, Bishop (488 - 544)) He is one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. He was born in County Clare, and having travelled and studied in Europe he returned to Ireland, where he established a church and monastery at Inniscarra, in Cork. He then moved back to his native district and eventually founded a monastery (with an exceptionally austere rule) at Scattery, an island off Kilrush, where he died. See the article by Clare Library.(Saint Duthac (1000-1065)) He was born in Tain, in Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. He was educated in Ireland, and was Bishop of Ross.(St Felix (7th century)) A native of Burgundy, Felix became a bishop in Gaul and offered himself to work for the conversion of the East Angles. In 630 Sigebert, their king, came back from exile and work began.Felix undertook the mission with the approval of Honorius of Canterbury, and placed his episcopal see at Dunwich, now washed away by the sea. He preached with great success in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.East Anglian Ordo

Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent, (commemoration of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, Martyrs) Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saints Perpetua and Felicity (- 203)) They were martyred at Carthage in 203 during the persecution of Septimius Severus. With so many martyrs of the third and fourth centuries we have to say “they were martyred but nothing else is known about them.” That is not the case here. We have a detailed contemporary account of their arrest, trial, sufferings and martyrdom, written partly by the saints themselves and partly by an eye-witness. Devotion to them spread rapidly and they are mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article contains links to the original account of their martyrdom.

Pope Francis' top diplomats met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on April 19, where the two sides discussed migrants and refugees following months of clashes between U.S. church leaders and the Trump administration over immigration policy and foreign aid.