Monday of week 16 in Ordinary Time, or Saint Laurence of Brindisi, Priest, Doctor Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Laurence of Brindisi (1559 - 1619)) He was born in Brindisi, joined the Capuchin Friars, and studied at the University of Padua, where he learned a number of languages (including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, French, and German) and acquired a deep knowledge of the Bible. His principal vocation was preaching. He preached all over Europe, not just to Catholics but to Protestants (because of his knowledge of Scripture) and to Jews (because of his knowledge of Hebrew). He wrote many sermons, commentaries, and works of controversy in support of this vocation.His administrative talents meant that he also held a number of high administrative offices in the Capuchin order. He was also entrusted with many important diplomatic missions. On one of these, he not only persuaded the German princes to help defend Hungary from the invading Turks, but also led their troops into battle, armed only with a crucifix. He was engaged in another delicate mission, to plead the cause of the oppressed people of Naples to King Philip III of Spain, when he died in Lisbon.For Laurence of Brindisi, preaching was the most important task of his life; but he took care to ensure that his preaching was backed by sound learning, so that he could preach to and not at his audiences. Let us take care that our own apostolate is similarly well founded.See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

16th Sunday in Ordinary TimeOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint Apollinaris, Bishop, Martyr) He was bishop of Ravenna, probably in the late second century, and was probably martyred there. Devotion to him was already common in the seventh century.(Blessed Czesław, Priest) (Saint Margaret of Antioch, Virgin, Martyr) (Saint Thorlak (1133-1193)) Thorlak Thorhallsson was born in 1133 at Hlíðarendi in the see of Skálholt in southern Iceland. He was ordained a deacon before he was fifteen and a priest at the age of eighteen. He studied abroad at Paris with the Victorines and then studied canon law at Lincoln. He returned to Iceland in 1165 and founded a monastery of Canons Regular at Þykkvabær. There he devoted himself to a strictly religious life, refusing to marry (many other Icelandic priests were married) and devoting himself to reciting the Our Father, the Creed, and a hymn, as well as fifty Psalms.Thorlak was consecrated bishop of Skálholt by Augustine of Nidaros and worked to regulate the Augustinian Rule in Iceland, as well as to eradicate simony, lay patronage, and clerical incontinency.He died on 23 December 1193 and after having been informally venerated as a saint for many centuries he was officially canonised by Pope John Paul II, who named him patron saint of Iceland.(St Elijah, Father of the Carmelites (1-2 Kings, Prophet)) On this day, together with the eastern rites of the Catholic Church, Carmelites commemorate the feast of the prophet Elijah. In Hebrew, Elijah means “My God is YHWH”. Elijah is held as a model of the contemplative life, particularly by Carmelites who first gathered on Mount Carmel, where Elijah contested the worship of the one true God of the Israelite people against that of the prophets of Baal. The Scriptures describe Elijah as a man who lived in the presence of God and whose zeal for the true God led him into moments of encounter with God both in silence and through his prophetic action. The inspiration found in the person of Elijah pervades the history of the Carmelite Order from its very beginnings and so he is also named “Father of all Carmelites”.MT

Saturday of week 15 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) ‘On Saturdays in Ordinary Time when there is no obligatory memorial, an optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary is allowed.‘Saturdays stand out among those days dedicated to the Virgin Mary. These are designated as memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This memorial derives from Carolingian times (9th century), but the reasons for having chosen Saturday for its observance are unknown. While many explanations of this choice have been advanced, none is completely satisfactory from the point of view of the history of popular piety.‘Whatever its historical origins may be, today the memorial rightly emphasizes certain values to which contemporary spirituality is more sensitive. It is a remembrance of the maternal example and discipleship of the Blessed Virgin Mary who, strengthened by faith and hope, on that “great Saturday” on which Our Lord lay in the tomb, was the only one of the disciples to hold vigil in expectation of the Lord’s resurrection. It is a prelude and introduction to the celebration of Sunday, the weekly memorial of the Resurrection of Christ. It is a sign that the Virgin Mary is continuously present and operative in the life of the Church.’Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001), §188(St John Plessington (c.1637-1679)) John Plessington was born at Dimples Hall, near Garstang, Lancashire, the son of Robert Plessington and Alice Rawstone, into a family at odds with the authorities for both their religious and political beliefs. Educated by Jesuits at Scarisbrick Hall, at Saint Omer’s in France, and then at the College of Saint Alban at Valladolid, Spain, he was ordained in Segovia on 25 March 1662. He returned to England in 1663 ministering to Catholics in the areas of Holywell and Cheshire, often hiding under the name William Scarisbrick. He was also tutor at Puddington Hall near Chester. Upon arrest in Chester during the Popish Plot scare caused by Titus Oates, he was imprisoned for two months, and then hanged, drawn and quartered for the crime of being a Catholic priest. His speech from the scaffold at Gallow’s Hill in Boughton, Cheshire was printed and distributed: He said: “I know it will be said that a priest ordayned by authority derived from the See of Rome is, by the Law of the Nation, to die as a Traytor, but if that be so what must become of all the Clergymen of the Church of England, for the first Church of England Bishops had their Ordination from those of the Church of Rome, or not at all, as appears by their own writers so that Ordination comes derivatively from those now living.” He was beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI, and canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs on 25 October 1970 by Pope Paul VI.DK

Friday of week 15 in Ordinary TimeOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint Simon of Lipnica, Priest) (Saint Edburga of Bicester, Religious)

Thursday of week 15 in Ordinary TimeOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint Kenelm (-821)) Saint Kenelm was the son of Kenwulf, who was King of Mercia from 796 to 821. There is a strong local tradition that identifies a particularly steep and narrow valley in the Clent Hills as the place where Kenelm was murdered. The site is marked by a medieval Church dedicated to him. A two-line Anglo-Saxon verse, which probably represents the folk-memory of the event, can be translated:On the Clent Hills · Kenelm is therein the cow valley · born to be kingunder a hawthorn tree · a headless corpse lies he.An eleventh-century Life of St Kenelm in Latin contains many fanciful legends but reflects the belief that the Prince was killed as the result of dynastic quarrels within the Mercian royal family; in fact his uncle Kelwulf succeeded to the throne. In an age when politics were conducted according to the maxim: “Kill or be killed”, it is probable that Kenelm’s reputation for holiness came from his refusal to adopt such methods to obtain power. He was remembered by the people of the West Midlands as a faithful follower of Christ in particularly difficult circumstances. Kenelm was buried with his father in the crypt of St Pancras’ Abbey at Winchcombe (Gloucestershire), which became a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. In the nineteenth century, Cardinal Newman was eager to encourage devotion to English saints; he would walk on pilgrimage from the Oratorian house at Rednal to St Kenelm’s Church on the Clent Hills.Birmingham Ordo (Blessed John Sugar, Priest, and Robert Grissold, Martyrs) Blessed John Sugar was born at Wombourne near Wolverhampton about 1558 and studied at St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, becoming a clergyman of the Established Church at Cannock in Staffordshire. He later became a Catholic, studied at the English College, Douai, and was ordained a priest on 21 April 1601. His ministry was in Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire, where he travelled on foot and especially looked after the “poorer and meaner sort of Catholics”. Blessed Robert Grissold lived at Rowington in Warwickshire; he was the son of a weaver and is described as a “husbandman”; he had a special reverence for Catholic priests. He and John Sugar were arrested on the highway on 8 July 1603 after a raid on the Grissold house; Robert was given the chance of escaping by his first cousin, Clement Grissold, who was with the search party and had probably led it to the house, but he refused to leave the priest. Both were offered their freedom if they would conform. They were executed at Warwick on 16 July 1604. Sugar said on the scaffold “Be ye all merry, for we have not occasion of sorrow but of joy: for although I shall have a sharp dinner, yet I trust in Jesus Christ that I shall have a most sweet supper”. They were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987.Birmingham Ordo (Blessed Inácio de Azevedo (1528-1570)) He was born at Oporto in Portugal in 1528 and entered the Society of Jesus at Coibra, 28 December, 1548, and became successively rector of the Jesuit college at Lisbon, provincial of Portugal, and rector at Broja. In 1565 St Francis Borgia gave him the task of visiting and inspecting the Jesuit missions in the Portuguese colony of Brazil. He spent two years on this work, from 1566 to 1568, and went to Rome to make his final report. He asked to be sent back as a missionary to Brazil. With thirty-nine companions he started on his voyage on 5 June 1570, but on 15 July their ship was captured by French Huguenot corsairs and Azevedo and his companions were seized and martyred. They were beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1854, and in 1999 forty concrete crosses were placed on the sea bed at the site of their martyrdom.(Bl Thérèse of Saint Augustine and Companions) These Discalced Carmelite nuns lived in a quiet town of Compiègne, France, offering intercessory prayer for those who asked for help at the Monastery of the Incarnation. In 1789, their community numbered 20, with their prioress Thérèse of St Augustine. In the same year, in the midst of the French Revolution, the French National Assembly declared all religious vows null and void, assuming that most religious men and women were held in religious life against their will. The Assembly believed their act would ‘liberate’ religious who would gratefully leave to enter the workforce. In August 1790, a government official visited the monastery of Compiègne and was surprised that each member of the community refused the “ridiculous freedom” that was being offered. The nuns were given a two-year ultimatum after which they would have to leave religious life. Under the leadership of Mother Thérèse the community prepared for the ordeal to come, appealing to God for help and offering themselves as an instrument for the peace between France and their Church. They resolved to follow Jesus in his crucifixion and resurrection. Following their expulsion from the monastery, the community split into groups of four, living in separate houses, adopting secular dress and continuing their simple and prayerful life.Soon after, sixteen of the sisters were arrested for living religious life in violation of the constitution. They were taken to Paris, where they were all found guilty of being religious fanatics and supporters of the King, with their sentence being death on the 17th July. On the night before their execution, the sisters renewed their desire for reconciliation between church and state. The sisters arrived at the guillotine singing the Veni Creator Spiritus. Thérèse of St Augustine asked to be the last to die, so that she could encourage her sisters in their commitment, in the midst of the pointless violence. By the end of the same month the terror of the French Revolution had come to an end.MT

Wednesday of week 15 in Ordinary Time, or Our Lady of Mount Carmel Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel) Mount Carmel is celebrated in Scripture for its beauty, and it was there that the prophet Elijah was victorious through the power of the Lord, in his famous contest with the priests of the pagan god Baal.In the late twelfth century AD, near a spring called after Elijah, a group of hermits were living a life of solitude, prayer and absolute poverty by a chapel dedicated to ‘Saint Mary of Mount Carmel’. In the early 13th century the tides of history made it impossible for them to continue there, and they made foundations in Cyprus, Sicily, France and England. They were the nucleus of what became known as the Order of Carmelites.The Carmelites regard the Blessed Virgin as their Mother, and their model first of all in leading the contemplative life, and later in sharing the fruits of their contemplation with others. The Solemn Commemoration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was first celebrated in England in the fourteenth century, but was gradually adopted throughout the Carmelite Order as an occasion of thanksgiving for the countless blessings which Our Lady had bestowed on the Carmelite family.(St Helier (-555)) St Helier was a 6th-century ascetic and hermit. He was born to pagan parents in Tongeren in what is now Belgium. His wanderings led him across Normandy to the monastic community of St Marculf at Nantus (now Nanteuil, St-Marcouf-de-l’Isle). However, the contemplative life did not bring him the peace that he sought, and he was sent with St Romard to Jersey where he settled on a tidal island, today known as the Hermitage Rock, next to L’Islet. He was killed on the beach there by robbers or infidel barbarians, traditionally in AD 555.While he is known in Jersey as the saint who brought Christianity to the Island, in Normandy and Brittany he is better known as a healing saint. Today he is invoked for diseases of the skin and eyes.Portsmouth Ordo

Saint Bonaventure, Bishop, DoctorOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassSt Bonaventure (1218 - 1274) Bonaventure was born at Bagnoregio in Etruria in about 1218. He became a Franciscan in 1243 and studied philosophy and theology at the University of Paris. He became a famous teacher and philosopher, part of the extraordinary intellectual flowering of the 13th century. He was a friend and colleague of St Thomas Aquinas.At this time the friars were still a new and revolutionary force in the Church, and their radical embracing of poverty and rejection of institutional structures raised suspicion and opposition from many quarters. Bonaventure defended the Franciscan Order and, after he was elected general of the order in 1255, he ruled it with wisdom and prudence. He is regarded as the second founder of the Order.He declined the archbishopric of York in 1265 but was made cardinal bishop of Albano in 1273, dying a year later in 1274 at the Council of Lyons, at which the Greek and Latin churches were (briefly) reconciled.Bonaventure wrote extensively on philosophy and theology, making a permanent mark on intellectual history; but he always insisted that the simple and uneducated could have a clearer knowledge of God than the wise.He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V.See also the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.(St Swithun (- 862)) Little is known of St Swithun’s life. Born in Wessex, his name is sometimes spelled ‘Swithin’. He died on 2 July 862, though the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says 861. He left orders that his body was not to be buried within the church but outside in a “vile and unworthy place”.Egbert, King of Wessex, chose Swithun as his chaplain and entrusted to him the education of his son Æthelwulf, who succeeded to the throne in 839. Æthelwulf appointed Swithun Bishop of Winchester in 852 and during the ten years of his episcopate he became famous for his charitable gifts and for his activity in the building of churches. He is reputed to have accompanied King Alfred to Rome in 856.His body was moved from its almost unknown grave into the Old Minster at Winchester on 15 July 971, and this day became his feast-day. His transferral was preceded and followed by numerous miracles. His body was probably later split between a number of smaller shrines. His head was certainly detached and taken to Canterbury Cathedral, while one of his arms found a resting place in Peterborough Abbey. His main shrine was transferred to the present (then new) Norman cathedral of Winchester in 1093. His remains were installed on a ‘feretory platform’ above and behind the high altar (the feretory chapel still exists). His shrine became a great focus for pilgrims, and the cathedral’s retrochoir was built in the early 13th century to accommodate the large numbers of people wishing to visit his shrine and enter the ‘holy hole’ beneath him. His shrine was moved into the retrochoir in 1476. It was demolished in 1538 during the ‘English Reformation’, and a modern representation was placed on the site by the Dean and Chapter in 1962.Portsmouth Ordo (St Osmund of Salisbury (-1099)) Osmund, bishop of Sarum or Salisbury, was Norman by birth, the son of Henry, count of Seez; he followed William the Conqueror to England. Here he became Royal Chaplain, until he was promoted to be Chancellor in 1072. He wrote royal letters and charters, obtaining useful experience as an administrator. In 1078 he succeeded Herman as Bishop of Salisbury. The see had been formed by uniting those of Sherborne and Ramsbury and making the new centre at Old Sarum, where the cathedral was built in the same enclosure as the royal castle. Osmund completed and consecrated this cathedral, and formed a chapter with its own constitution, which later became a model for other English cathedrals.Osmund died on 3rd or 4th December 1099 and was buried in his cathedral at Old Sarum. His chasuble and staff were among the treasures there in 1222; but in 1226 his body and its tomb were translated to the new cathedral of Salisbury.Plymouth Ordo

Monday of week 15 in Ordinary Time, or Saint Camillus of Lellis, Priest Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint Camillus of Lellis (1550 - 1614)) He was born in Italy of a noble family. He became a soldier but his taste for gambling and riotous living eventually lost him everything. At the age of 25 he converted as the result of hearing a sermon. He twice tried to join the Capuchin friars but was rejected because of his poor health. Having had experience of hospitals from the inside, he determined to improve them, and he devoted the rest of his life to the care of the sick. He offered himself to the hospital of San Giacomo in Rome and eventually became its bursar. Hospitals were as filthy, and hospital staff as brutal and inadequate, then as they are in many places today. He introduced many reforms and founded a congregation of priests and lay brothers, the Servants of the Sick (later known as the Camillians) to serve the sick both spiritually and physically. He was ordained priest in 1584. He resigned as head of his congregation in 1607 but continued to look after and visit the sick almost until the day of his death. See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.(Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (1656 - 1680)) Known as the “Lily of the Mohawks” and the “Geneviève of New France,” she was born in the Mohawk fortress of Ossemenon in what is now New York State, the daughter of a Mohawk warrior and a Catholic Algonquin woman whom he had saved from captivity at the hands of the Iroquois. When she was about four, smallpox killed her parents and her brother and left her scarred and with impaired eyesight. She was adopted by her uncle, the chief of the Turtle clan, and had many offers of marriage. She received some knowledge of Christianity from Jesuit missionaries when she was 11, and she determined to live the life not only of a Christian but of a Christian virgin: a heroic determination at the time. She was baptized when she was 20 and eventually, to escape persecution and death threats, she fled to an established Christian community at Kahnawake in what is now Québec. She advanced in union with God, with bodily mortification and intense prayer, and died at the age of 24. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 22 June 1980 and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 21 October 2012.(Blessed Richard Langhorne, Martyr)

15th Sunday in Ordinary TimeOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(St Henry (973 - 1024)) He was born in Bavaria in 973 and succeeded to the dukedom at the age of 22. He became Holy Roman Emperor in 1014. He was noted for his support for the reform of the Church and for his encouragement of its missionary activity. He set up many bishoprics, and he and his wife Cunegunda founded many monasteries. He died in 1024 and was canonized by Pope Eugenius III in 1146.See also the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.(Saints Andrzej Świerad and Benedict, Hermits) (St Teresa of Los Andes) Juana Fernández Solar was born in Santiago, Chile on 13 July 1900. Her parents Miguel Fernández and Lucia Solar raised her in the Christian faith along with her three brothers and two sisters. She grew up surrounded by her extended family. Juana was educated in the college of French nuns of the Sacred Heart. At age fourteen, she became strongly convinced that God was calling her to the life of a religious. Juana’s desire was realised on 7 May 1919, when she entered a tiny monastery of Discalced Carmelite Nuns in the township of Los Andes, some 90 kilometres away from her hometown of Santiago. On 14 October Juana was clothed in the Carmelite habit and began her novitiate with the religious name Teresa of Jesus. She expressed a fervour for her mission to make God known and loved. Early in the following year Sister Teresa contracted typhus and faced both interior struggles and physical suffering. On 7 April, because of danger of death, she made her religious profession and soon after, on the evening of 12 April 1920, entered into the loving embrace of the God she desired. Juana’s life on earth was short, but like those Carmelites named Teresa before her, she discovered the simplicity of faith in living, believing and loving.MT

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.