Mary, the Holy Mother of GodOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass

7th day within the octave of Christmas, (commemoration of Saint Silvester I, Pope) Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Pope St Silvester I (- 335)) He was made Pope in 314 and ruled the Church during the reign of the newly-converted Emperor Constantine. In his time the Donatist schism and the Arian heresy caused great trouble for the Church. He died in 335 and is buried in the cemetery of Priscilla in the via Salaria in Rome. His life has been so accreted with pious legends that very little else is known about him for certain, but his reign as Pope is the eighth longest on record. See the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

6th day within the octave of ChristmasOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass

5th day within the octave of Christmas, (commemoration of Saint Thomas Becket, Bishop, Martyr) Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Thomas Becket (1118 - 1170)) He was born in London and became a close friend of King Henry II. He was only a deacon when he was appointed chancellor of England. When he was ordained as archbishop of Canterbury, he underwent an abrupt conversion of life and began to defend the Church’s rights against the king. He had to take refuge in a French monastery for six years, and when he returned to his diocese four knights, inspired by careless words from the king, assassinated him in his cathedral on 29 December 1170. He was immediately acknowledged as a martyr and the king later did penance and endowed his shrine. He is remembered for his courage in defence of the rights of the Church. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.(Elijah and Elisha, a reflection on St Thomas) The prophets Elijah and Elisha are a bit of an embarrassment. Not only are the names similar but some of their miracles resemble one another so closely that some scholars have argued that Elijah and Elisha are the same person, with narratives from two different sources of the prophet’s life having been accidentally included one after the other.Today’s feast reminds us of another historical coincidence:A learned and worldly man called Thomas, a close and trusted friend of King Henry, is appointed by the king to a high office where he is expected to be loyal and take the king’s part against all others, even the Church. Conscious of his unworthiness for the office he has been given, Thomas suffers an interior conversion and resolves to follow his conscience, God’s voice within him. His upholding of truth and the Church’s rights leads to a conflict with the king, who feels betrayed by his trusted friend. Eventually Thomas is killed; subsequently he is canonized.Are we talking about Henry II of England and Thomas à Becket? Or Henry VIII of England and Thomas More? The same description applies equally to both.We can imagine a wise scholar of the 30th century arguing that there was only one Henry and only one Thomas, and that early sources accidentally split them into two. But the wise scholar would be wrong. Whatever doubts we hold about the history and transmission of Scripture, we should never quite forget that what we read about may be what really happened.

The Holy FamilyOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassThe Holy Family (The Holy Innocents, Martyrs) The Holy Innocents are the children who were slaughtered at the orders of King Herod, in the hope that by killing every boy born in Bethlehem at the same time as Jesus, he would succeed in killing the new-born King of the Jews.There was nothing about those baby boys that made them deserve death. Look at any one of them, and you can see that he had no chance to do anything, or be anyone, or become anyone. He had done nothing. He had done nothing bad, he had done nothing good. He was born, and then he died, and that was all there was to him. So passive are these babies that some people find it hard to understand how they can share the title of “martyr” with people like St Stephen (the day before yesterday), who insisted on preaching the truth until his hearers stoned him for it, or St Thomas Becket (tomorrow), who insisted on living the truth until his king had him killed because of it. These children did not insist on anything except their mothers’ milk; and unlike Stephen and Thomas, there was no voluntary act of theirs that we can see as making the difference between being martyred and not being martyred.So in our rational human terms these children are a puzzle, and that is one reason why God has inspired the Church to celebrate this very feast – to show us how inadequate our seemingly rational, worldly-wise thoughts are. As he reminds us again and again throughout salvation history, his thoughts are not our thoughts. Babies may not rank high on the scale as far as our human calculus is concerned; but then neither do sparrows, and yet God has told us that God sees and counts every one of those.The Holy Innocents can stand, therefore, for the “unimportant” and “unnecessary” pawns, child and adult alike, that permeate the whole of human history, the ones who can be sacrificed for some greater cause because they “don’t really matter”; the eggs that were broken to make an omelette... or even broken to make nothing at all. There are plenty of them, one way or another. The feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us that in God’s eyes (that is, according to the true value of things), no-one is unimportant, no-one is unnecessary, no-one “doesn’t really matter.” However meaningless their lives and deaths may seem to us, they shine glorious in heaven.On a more personal level, the honour given to the Holy Innocents reminds us that if we suffer or even die for God’s sake, it has value even if we have little or no say in it ourselves. Honouring them effectively honours also the martyrdom of the people these children could have become, and their children’s children as well; and at the same time we can remember the contemporary and continuing massacre of those who die before birth for the convenience of those who have them killed.

Saint John, Apostle, EvangelistOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassSt John the Evangelist James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were nicknamed by Jesus “the sons of thunder.” John is involved in many of the central events of Jesus’ life, including the Transfiguration, the Crucifixion, and the discovery of the Resurrection. He is “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and the one to whom he confided the care of his mother Mary.He is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles; later he was exiled to the island of Patmos. He is said to have died at Ephesus.He wrote a Gospel, three Epistles, and the Apocalypse. See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Saint Stephen, the first MartyrOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassSt Stephen, the first Martyr Stephen is the first martyr. He was one of the deacons appointed by the Apostles to organize the distribution of food to the poor. He performed many miracles and confounded the Jews in disputation. They fabricated false charges against him. At his trial he preached the risen Christ to them, so they stoned him to death. He prayed for his persecutors as he was dying. One of them, Saul of Tarsus, who was looking after the cloaks of the stone-throwers, was later converted and became the great missionary St Paul.See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.

Christmas DayOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassChristmas Day

24 DecemberOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass

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.