Wednesday of the 2nd week of Advent, or Our Lady of Loreto Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Our Lady of Loreto) Since the Middle Ages veneration for the Holy House of Loreto has been the origin of that particular shrine which still today is visited by many faithful pilgrims in order to nourish their faith in the Word of God made flesh for us.In the Holy House, before the image of the Mother of the Redeemer and of the Church, Saints and Blesseds have responded to their vocation, the sick have invoked consolation in suffering, the people of God have begun to praise and plead with Mary using the Litany of Loreto, which is known throughout the world. In a particular way all those who travel via aircraft have found in her their heavenly patron.In light of this, Pope Francis has decreed, by his own authority, that the optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Loreto should be inscribed in the Roman Calendar on 10 December, the day on which the feast falls in Loreto, and celebrated every year. This celebration will help all people, especially families, youth and religious to imitate the virtues of that perfect disciple of the Gospel, the Virgin Mother, who, in conceiving the Head of the Church also accepted us as her own.Catholic Liturgy Office (The Litany of Loreto) Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.Lord have mercy.Christ hear us. Christ graciously hear us.God, the Father of heaven,  have mercy on us.God the Son, Redeemer of the world,  have mercy on us.God the Holy Spirit,  have mercy on us.Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.Holy Mary,  pray for us.Holy Mother of God, pray for us.Holy Virgin of virgins,  pray for us.Mother of Christ,  pray for us.Mother of the Church,  pray for us.Mother of Mercy, pray for us.Mother of divine grace, pray for us.Mother of Hope,  pray for us.Mother most pure,  pray for us.Mother most chaste,  pray for us.Mother inviolate,  pray for us.Mother immaculate,  pray for us.Mother most amiable,  pray for us.Mother admirable,  pray for us.Mother of good counsel,  pray for us.Mother of our Creator,  pray for us.Mother of our Saviour,  pray for us.Virgin most prudent,  pray for us.Virgin most venerable,  pray for us.Virgin most renowned,  pray for us.Virgin most powerful,  pray for us.Virgin most merciful,  pray for us.Virgin most faithful,  pray for us.Mirror of justice,  pray for us.Seat of wisdom,  pray for us.Cause of our joy,  pray for us.Spiritual vessel,  pray for us.Vessel of honour,  pray for us.Singular vessel of devotion,  pray for us.Mystical rose,  pray for us.Tower of David,  pray for us.Tower of ivory,  pray for us.House of gold,  pray for us.Ark of the covenant,  pray for us.Gate of heaven,  pray for us.Morning star,  pray for us.Health of the sick,  pray for us.Refuge of sinners,  pray for us.Solace of Migrants, pray for us.Comfort of the afflicted,  pray for us.Help of Christians,  pray for us.Queen of Angels,  pray for us.Queen of Patriarchs, pray for us.Queen of Prophets, pray for us.Queen of Apostles,  pray for us.Queen of Martyrs,  pray for us.Queen of Confessors,  pray for us.Queen of Virgins,  pray for us.Queen of all Saints,  pray for us.Queen conceived without original sin,  pray for us.Queen assumed into heaven,  pray for us.Queen of the most holy Rosary,  pray for us.Queen of families,  pray for us.Queen of peace. pray for us.Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,  spare us, O Lord.Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,  graciously hear us, O Lord.Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,  have mercy on us.Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.  That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.Let us pray. Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord God, that we, your servants,may enjoy perpetual health of mind and body; and by the glorious intercession of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, may be delivered from present sorrow, and obtain eternal joy. Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.(St Melchiades (d. 314)) Born in Africa, Melchiades was pope in Rome when the Church obtained its freedom after centuries of persecution. He took advantage of the new favourable situation to organise the Church on solid foundations. He ordered the construction of many churches and was the first pope to occupy the cathedral of St John Lateran. He was pope for only 3 years.(St John Roberts (1575 - 1610)) He was born in north Wales and studied law. He travelled on the Continent in 1598 and was converted to Catholicism. He entered the English College at Valladolid to study for the priesthood; he then became a Benedictine monk. He was ordained in 1602 and set out on a mission to England. He was arrested and banished, returned to England, arrested and banished again, arrested, imprisoned, and banished yet again. By now it was July 1606. He spent fourteen months at Douai in northern France, where he founded the English Benedictine community of St Gregory, which, having been exiled from France at the time of the French Revolution, is now at Downside Abbey, near Bath. He returned to England and was arrested in October 1607, escaped, went on the run for a year, was arrested again and imprisoned: the intercession of the French Ambassador saved him from execution, and he was banished. He returned to England within a year, and was arrested on 2 December 1610 while celebrating Mass and taken to prison still wearing his vestments. He was tried on 5 December and convicted of being a priest, and hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 10 December.(St John Roberts OSB (1575-1610)) John Roberts was born in 1575, the son of John and Anna Roberts from North Wales. He matriculated at St John’s College, Oxford, in 1595-6, but left after two years without taking a degree (possibly because he was unable to take the Oath of Supremacy) and was very briefly a law student at one of the Inns of Court. In 1598 he travelled on the continent and, through the influence of a Catholic fellow-countryman, was received into the Catholic Church at Notre Dame in Paris. He then entered the English College at Valladolid, Spain where he was admitted in 1598. The following year he joined the Abbey of St Benedict in Valladolid. After ordination in 1602 he set out for England. Although observed by a Government spy, Roberts and his companions succeeded in entering the country in April, 1603; but, his arrival being known, he was soon arrested and banished. He almost immediately returned to England where he worked for a time among the plague-stricken people in London, where he became known as “the parish priest of London”. In 1604, while embarking for Spain with four postulants, he was again arrested, but not being recognized as a priest was soon released and banished, but returned again at once. He was immediately rearrested and though acquitted of any crime was imprisoned in the Gatehouse at Westminster for seven months before again being exiled. Back at Douai he founded a house for the English Benedictine monks; this was the beginning of the monastery of St Gregory at Douai which today exists as Downside Abbey. In October, 1607, he returned to England, was once more arrested and placed in the Gatehouse, from which he contrived to escape after some months. He now lived for about a year in London before being taken and this time was committed to Newgate; he would have been executed but for the intercession of the French ambassador, whose petition reduced the sentence to banishment. However he returned to England within a year, and was captured on 2 December, 1610. On 5 December he was tried and found guilty under the Act forbidding priests to minister in England, and on 10 December was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn.DK (St Edmund Gennings (1567-1591)) Edmund Gennings (or Jennings), born in 1567, came from Lichfield, Staffordshire. He was a thoughtful, serious boy naturally inclined to matters of faith. At around sixteen years of age he converted to Catholicism. He went immediately to the English College at Reims where he was ordained a priest in 1590. He soon returned to England under the assumed name of Ironmonger. His missionary career was brief. He and Polydore Plasden were seized by Richard Topcliffe and his officers whilst celebrating Mass in the house of Swithin Wells at Gray’s Inn in London on 7 November 1591 and was hanged, drawn and quartered outside the same house on 10 December. His execution was particularly bloody, as his final speech angered Topcliffe, who ordered the rope to be cut down when he was barely stunned from the hanging. It is reported that he uttered the words, Sancte Gregori ora pro me while he was being disembowelled. His martyrdom was the occasion of the conversion of his younger brother John, who had disowned him but who later became a Franciscan, and wrote his biography, published in 1614 at Saint-Omer.DK (St Eustace White (1559-1591)) Eustace White was born in Louth, Lincolnshire in 1559, he was a convert to Catholicism who travelled to Europe to study for the priesthood. He was ordained, probably at the Venerable English College, Rome in 1588, and returned to England for his ministry later that year – the year of the Spanish Armada. He thus began his ministry just as anti-Catholic feeling was reaching fever pitch. A friendly conversation with a fellow traveller led to his arrest in Dorset three years later. Eustace put up a very articulate defence in the West Country but was given no chance to defend himself when he was taken to London to face trial. He was severely tortured. He is recorded as having described his torture in the following way: “The morrow after Simon and Jude’s day I was hanged at the wall from the ground, my manacles fast locked into a staple as high as I could reach upon a stool: the stool taken away where I hanged from a little after 8 o’clock in the morning till after 4 in the afternoon, without any ease or comfort at all”. After several days of such treatment he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 10 December 1591.DK (St Polydore Plasden (1563-1591)) Polydore Plasden, aka Oliver Palmer, was born in London in 1563. He was the son of a London horner. He was educated at Reims and at Rome, where he was ordained priest on 7 December, 1586. He remained at Rome for more than a year, and then was at Reims for some months in 1588, before being sent on the mission to England. He was captured on 8 November 1591, in London, at Swithin Wells’s house in Gray’s Inn Fields, where Edmund Gennings was celebrating Mass. At his execution he acknowledged Elizabeth as his lawful queen, whom he would defend to the best of his power against all her enemies, and he prayed for her and the whole realm, but said that he would rather forfeit a thousand lives than deny or fight against his religion. By the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh, he was allowed to hang till he was dead, and the final part of the sentence was carried out upon his already dead body.DK (St Swithin Wells (c.1536-1591)) Swithin Wells was born at Brambridge, Hampshire, around 1536, and was christened with the name of the local saint and bishop Swithin. He was for many years a schoolmaster at Monkton Farleigh in Wiltshire. During this period, he attended Church of England services, but in 1583 was reconciled to the Catholic Church. In 1585 he went to London, where he took a house in Gray’s Inn Lane. In 1591, Edmund Gennings was saying Mass at Wells’s house, when the priest-hunter Richard Topcliffe burst in with his officers. The congregation, not wishing the Mass to be interrupted, held the door and beat back the officers until the Mass was finished, after which they all surrendered quietly. Wells was not present at the time, but his wife was, and was arrested along with Gennings, another priest, Polydore Plasden, and three laymen, John Mason, Sidney Hodgson, and Brian Lacey. On his return Wells was immediately arrested and imprisoned. At his trial, he said that he had not been present at the Mass, but wished he had been. He was sentenced to be hanged, and was executed outside his own house on 10 December 1591, just after Edmund Gennings. On the scaffold, he said to Topcliffe, “I pray God make you a Paul of a Saul, of a bloody persecutor one of the Catholic Church’s children.” His wife, Alice, was reprieved, and died in prison some 10 years later.St Swithin Wells was canonised by Paul VI on 25 October 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.DK (Saints Augustine Webster and Eustace White, and the Martyrs of Lincolnshire)

Tuesday of the 2nd week of Advent, or Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474 - 1548)) He was born in about 1474 in Cuauhtitlan in the kingdom of Texcoco, part of present-day Mexico. As an adult he embraced Christianity and he and his wife were baptized. In 1531 the Mother of God appeared to him, on the hill called Tepeyac near Mexico City, and told him to ask the bishop to have a church built on the spot. Through the purity of his faith, his humility and his fervour, a church was built, in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe (whose feast is celebrated on 12 December). He left everything and devoted himself to the care of the sanctuary and the reception of pilgrims until his death in 1548.

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin MaryOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassThe Feast of the Immaculate Conception The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin, that twist in our nature that makes our will tend not to follow what it knows to be right. It was this grace that enabled Mary to give a true and considered “Yes” to the request, conveyed by the Angel Gabriel, that she should consent to be the mother of the incarnate God.Because it is so old, this is one of the Marian doctrines that Islam shares with the Catholic Church, though of course the theological details are very different. ‘in a famous Hadith attributed to the Prophet, it is affirmed that: “Every child is touched by the devil as soon as he is born and this contact makes him cry. Excepted are Mary and her Son”. From this Hadith and from verses 35-37 of Sura III, Moslem commentators have deduced and affirmed the principle of Mary’s original purity.’ (Giancarlo Finazzo. L’Osservatore Romano, 13 April 1978). The full text of the article is here.The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was almost universally believed over the centuries but was only formally defined as a doctrine of the Church by Pope Pius IX in 1854.

2nd Sunday of AdventOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Ambrose of Milan (340? - 397)) Ambrose was born in Trier (now in Germany) between 337 and 340, to a Roman family: his father was praetorian prefect of Gaul. Ambrose was educated at Rome and embarked on the standard cursus honorum of Roman advocates and administrators, at Sirmium, the capital of Illyria. In about 372 he was made prefect of Liguria and Emilia, whose capital was Milan.In 374 the bishopric of Milan fell vacant and when Ambrose tried to pacify the conflict between the Catholics and Arians over the appointment of a new bishop, the people turned on him and demanded that he become the bishop himself. He was a layman and not yet baptized (at this time it was common for baptism to be delayed and for people to remain for years as catechumens), but that was no defence. Coerced by the people and by the emperor, he was baptized, ordained, and installed as bishop within a week, on 7 December 374.He immediately gave his money to the poor and his land to the Church and set about learning theology. He had the advantage of knowing Greek, which few people did at that time, and so he was able to read the Eastern theologians and philosophers as well as those of the West.He was assiduous in carrying out his office, acting with charity to all: a true shepherd and teacher of the faithful. He was unimpressed by status and when the Emperor Theodosius ordered the massacre of 7,000 people in Thessalonica, Ambrose forced him to do public penance. He defended the rights of the Church and attacked the Arian heresy with learning, firmness and gentleness. He also wrote a number of hymns which are still in use today.Ambrose was a key figure in the conversion of St Augustine to Catholicism, impressing Augustine (hitherto unimpressed by the Catholics he had met) by his intelligence and scholarship. He died on Holy Saturday, 4 April 397.

Saturday of the 1st week of Advent, or Saint Nicholas, Bishop Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Nicholas) He was bishop of Myra, in Lycia (now part of Turkey) and died about the middle of the fourth century. He has been venerated throughout the Church, especially since the 10th century. Because of his help to the poor he is the patron saint of pawnbrokers, whose insignia of three golden balls represent the three purses of gold he is said to have given secretly to a poor man who could not afford dowries for his three daughters. See the article in Wikipedia.

Friday of the 1st week of AdventOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St John Almond (c.1565-1612)) John Almond (or Lathom or Molyneux) was born at Allerton near Liverpool of Catholic parents about 1565 and went to school at Much Woolton. After studying at Reims he went to the English College in Rome, where in due course he was ordained priest. In 1602 he returned to England as a secular priest and ministered to Catholics there. He was arrested briefly in 1608, and then again in 1612. In November of that year, seven priests had escaped from prison, and this may have sharpened the zeal of those who interrogated him. He displayed to the last great skill in argument; the account of his death describes him as “a reprover of sin, a good example to follow, of an ingenious and acute understanding, sharp and apprehensive in his conceits and answers, yet complete with modesty, full of courage and ready to suffer for Christ, that suffered for him.” He refused to sign the Oath of Allegiance in the form in which it was offered him, but offered to swear that he bore in his heart “so much allegiance to King James as he, or any Christian king, could expect by the law of nature, or the positive law of the true Church, be it which it will, ours or yours.” He was committed to Newgate and within a few months was brought to trial as a seminary priest. Having been duly convicted he was hanged, drawn, and quartered on 5 December 1612 at Tyburn, London.DK (Saint Birinus) Saint Birinus was sent to England as a missionary by Pope Honorius I about the year 634; on his way, he was consecrated bishop in Genoa. He had intended to work in a remote part of Britain but when he found that the West Saxons were still pagan he stayed among them and baptised their King and a good number of his followers during his fifteen years’ apostolate. He died about 650 and the main Church of the West Saxons which he had established at Dorchester-on-Thames was later moved to Winchester, as were the relics of Saint Birinus.Birmingham Ordo (Saint Birinus (-649)) Birinus was a Frank, had been ordained a bishop in Genoa. He was sent to Wessex by Pope Honorius I, arriving in 634 at the port of Hamwic, now in the St Mary’s area of Southampton. He had intended to work in a remote part of Britain but when he found that the West Saxons were still pagan he stayed among them. He baptized the West Saxon king Cynegils, probably in 635. The king granted him the See of Dorchester, where he established a church. He is reputed to have baptised the king’s son and his grandson (and to have been godfather to the latter). During his 15-year apostolate, he founded churches across Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. He died on 3 December 649, and it is thought that his relics were later taken to Winchester, the capital of Wessex, when the See was moved from Dorchester to Winchester by St Hedda.Portsmouth Ordo (Saint Hedda (-705)) Hedda (Haeddi), whose feast is celebrated in Winchester on this day, was educated at Whitby, and ordained bishop in 676 by Theodore of Canterbury. He was appointed Bishop of the West Saxons, and moved his See from Dorchester to Winchester, which transformed it not only into the ecclesiastical centre of the kingdom but also for a time its capital. He died in 705.Portsmouth Ordo (Bl Bartholomew Fanti (c.1428-1495)) Bartholomew Fanti was born in Mantua around the year 1428. In 1452 he is known to have already been a Carmelite priest of the Congregation of Mantua. For thirty-five years at the Order’s church in Mantua he was the spiritual director and rector of the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for which he composed a rule and statutes. He was a teacher of Bl Baptist Spagnoli and is especially remembered for his devotion to and love of the Eucharist. He died in 1495 in Mantua.MT

Thursday of the 1st week of Advent, or Saint John Damascene, Priest, Doctor Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint John Damascene, priest, Doctor) He was born of a Christian family in Damascus in the second half of the seventh century, where his father was a high official under the Umayyad caliph; a post which he inherited. When the Iconoclast movement (seeking to prohibit the veneration of icons) gained acceptance in the Byzantine court, John, being under Muslim rather than Byzantine rule, was able to write effective treatises attacking Iconoclasm and attacking the emperor for supporting it. At about this time he retired to the monastery of Saint Sabas near Jerusalem, where he became a monk and was ordained. He died in the middle of the eighth century.He wrote many theological treatises in a dangerously clear and accessible style which made the issues understandable even by non-experts. His name was reviled and execrated by the imperial Iconoclast party even after his death. Sometimes known as “the last of the Church Fathers,” he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII in 1883. See the article in Wikipedia.(Saint Barbara, Virgin, Martyr)

Saint Francis Xavier, PriestOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassSt Francis Xavier (1506 - 1552) He was born in the Basque country of Spain in 1506. He met Ignatius Loyola when he was a student in Paris, and he was ordained priest in 1537. In 1541 the Pope sent him as part of a mission to India, and he spent the rest of his life in the East, preaching the Gospel in Goa and Malacca. He made many converts and fought against the exploitation of the native population by the Europeans. He spent two years on a successful mission to Japan, laying the foundations of many Christian communities; and in 1552, after entering China secretly to preach the Gospel there, he died of fever and exhaustion on the Chinese island of Shangchwan.See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Tuesday of the 1st week of AdventOffice 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.