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Catholic Culture Liturgical Year
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As the earth cycles annually through its seasons, just so the Church celebrates with quiet, deliberate rhythm the seasons of the liturgical year – always the same, yet ever new and renewing.
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Sep. 5 Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sunday
"If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple."
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Sep. 4 Saturday of the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, Weekday
Saint Rosalia, born in 1130 at Palermo in Sicily, was the daughter of a noble family descended from Charlemagne. While still very young she despised worldly vanities. When her remarkable beauty caused her to be sought in marriage by several lords of Sicily, the Blessed Virgin appeared to her and advised her to leave the world. She obeyed, taking with her only a crucifix and her instruments of penance; and guided by Angels, she made her first dwelling in a nearby grotto, which the snows of winter concealed. Then, when she began to be the object of searches instigated all over Sicily by her desolate family, she was advised by Angels to move to a low cave on Mount Pellegrino, three miles from Palermo. There, during sixteen years' time, she completed the sacrifice of her heart to God by austere penance and manual labor, sanctified by assiduous prayer and the constant union of her soul with God. She died in 1160. -- Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints
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Sep. 3 Memorial of St. Gregory the Great, pope and doctor, Memorial
St. Gregory, senator and prefect of Rome, then in succession monk, cardinal and pope, governed the Church from 590 to 604. England owes her conversion to him. At a period when the invasion of the barbarians created a new situation in Europe, he played a considerable part in the transitional stage, during which a great number of them were won for Christ. At the same time he watched over the holiness of the clergy and preserved ecclesiastical discipline, as well as attending to the temporal interests of his people of Rome and the spiritual interests of the whole of Christendom. To him the liturgy owes several of its finest prayers, and the name "Gregorian chant" recalls this great Pope's work in the development of the Church's chant. His commentaries on Holy Scripture exercised a considerable influence on Christian thought, particularly in the Middle Ages. Together with St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and St. Jerome, he is one of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church.
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Sep. 2 Thursday of the Twenty Second Week of Ordinary Time, Weekday
According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Stephen of Hungary. His feast in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is celebrated on August 16.
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Sep. 1 Wednesday of the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, Weekday
God's great work is the creation and redemption of the world wrought through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The one essential work in which we are all callled to participate is God's transforming love.
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Aug. 31 Tuesday of the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, Weekday
According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Raymund Nonnatus who devoted his life to the ransoming of Christians held prisoner by the Mohammedans. He was one of the first members of the Order of Our Lady of Ransom (or Mercedarians) founded by St. Peter Nolasco and St. Raymund of Penafort. Having been sent to Africa he obtained the freedom of many captives; he offered his own person as a pledge for ransom that was not forthcoming in order to preserve from apostasy those whose faith was wavering. When he was set free he was made a Cardinal by Gregory IX and died on his return to Rome in 1240.
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Aug. 30 Monday of the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, Weekday
Sts. Felix and Adauctus were two Roman martyrs under the Diocletian persecution. They are buried in the cemetery of Commodilla at the gates of Rome on the Ostian Way. St. Fiacre, who is in the Roman Martyrology, is from the diocese of Meaux and is the patron saint of gardeners. According to the Tridentine Calendar today is the feast of St. Rose of Lima. The General Roman Calendar now celebrates her feast on August 23.
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Aug. 29 Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sunday
Then he said to the host who invited him, "When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
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Aug. 28 Memorial of St. Augustine, bishop, confessor and doctor, Memorial
St. Augustine (354-430) was born at Tagaste, Africa, and died in Hippo. His father, Patricius, was a pagan; his mother, Monica, a devout Christian. He received a good Christian education. As a law student in Carthage, however, he gave himself to all kinds of excesses and finally joined the Manichean sect. He then taught rhetoric at Milan where he was converted by St. Ambrose. Returning to Tagaste, he distributed his goods to the poor, and was ordained a priest. He was made bishop of Hippo at the age of 41 and became a great luminary of the African Church, one of the four great founders of religious orders, and a Doctor of the universal Church.
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Aug. 27 Memorial of St. Monica, Memorial
St. Monica (333-387) was born in Tagaste, northern Africa and died in Ostia, near Rome. Monica was a Christian, but her husband Patricius was a pagan and a man of loose morals. Monica's virtues and prayers, however, converted him, and he was baptized a year before his death. When her son, Augustine, joined the Manichean sect and went astray in faith and morals, Monica's tears and prayers for her son were incessant. She followed him to Milan, where Augustine went to teach, and there continued to storm heaven with her prayers for her son. Finally, she had the joy of witnessing St. Ambrose baptize Augustine in 387. She died in Ostia, as she and her son gazed at the sea and discoursed about the joys of the blessed.
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