Wednesday of the 4th week of Lent, (commemoration of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop, Doctor) Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Cyril of Jerusalem (315 - 386)) Cyril was born in 315 of Christian parents and succeeded Maximus as bishop of Jerusalem in 348. He was active in the Arian controversy and was exiled more than once as a result. His pastoral zeal is especially shown in his Catecheses, in which he expounded orthodox doctrine, holy Scripture and the traditions of the faith. They are still read today, and several of the Second Readings of the Office of Readings are taken from them. He died in 386. He is held in high esteem by both the Catholics and the Orthodox, and he was declared a Doctor of the Church by the Pope in 1883.(St Edward the Martyr (962 - 978)) He was the eldest son of King Edgar of the English, and on Edgar’s death in 975 the kingship was contested, with some supporting Edward’s claim and others supporting his much younger half-brother Æthelred (known to history as ‘Ethelred the Unready’). Edward was chosen as king and was crowned by his main clerical supporters, Archbishops Dunstan and Oswald of Worcester.The great nobles of the kingdom quarrelled, and civil war almost broke out. The nobles took advantage of Edward’s weakness to dispossess the Benedictine reformed monasteries of lands and other properties which King Edgar had granted to them. Edward was murdered at Corfe Castle on 18 March 978 in circumstances which are not altogether clear.His body was reburied with great ceremony at Shaftesbury Abbey early in 980. In 1001 his remains were moved to a more prominent place in the abbey, probably with the blessing of his half-brother King Æthelred. Edward was already reckoned a saint by this time.

Tuesday of the 4th week of Lent, (commemoration of Saint Patrick, Bishop, Missionary) Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Patrick (385 - 461)) He was born in Roman Britain around the end of the 4th century, and died in Ireland about the middle of the 5th century. As a missionary bishop, he endured many hardships and faced opposition even from his friends and fellow Christians. Nevertheless, he worked hard to conciliate, to evangelize, and to educate local chieftains and their families. He is remembered for his simplicity and pastoral care, for his humble trust in God, and for his fearless preaching of the gospel to the very people who had enslaved him in his youth. See the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Monday of the 4th week of LentOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass

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.

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.