The Living Spirit and Liturgical Calendar

Let us renounce our self-love and self-will, and our attachment to earthly things. Let us practise penance, prayer, mortification, obedience, and all the other good works that you know of… Let the silkworm die — let it die, as in fact it does when it has completed the work which it was created to do. Then we shall see God and shall ourselves be as completely hidden in His greatness as is this little worm in its cocoon …

ST TERESA OF AVILA FROM THE INTERIOR CASTLE, TRANSLATED BY E. ALLISON PEERS (DOUBLEDAY, 1990)

After that, there was no escape. Like C.S. Lewis, I could not ignore “the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.” How much later was it that I was finally pinned down? I don’t remember. I was at a concert at my son’s music school. We were in a hotel function room, full of children ready to play their instruments and proud parents ready to film them doing it. I was just walking to my chair when I was overcome entirely. Suddenly, I could see how everyone in the room was connected to everyone else, and I could see what was going on inside them and inside myself. I was overcome with a huge and inexplicable love, a great wave of empathy, for everyone and everything. It kept coming and coming until I had to stagger out of the room and sit down in the corridor outside. Everything was unchanged, and everything was new, and I knew what had happened and who had done it, and I knew that it was too late. I had just become a Christian.

PAUL KINGSNORTH FROM “THE CROSS AND THE MACHINE” (FIRST THINGS, JUNE 2021)

The heart of Christ is “ecstasy”, openness, gift and encounter. In that heart, we learn to relate to one another in wholesome and happy ways, and to build up in this world God’s kingdom of love and justice. Our hearts, united with the heart of Christ, are capable of working this social miracle.

POPE FRANCIS FROM THE ENCYCLICAL LETTER DILEXIT NOS (ON THE HUMAN AND DIVINE LOVE OF THE HEART OF JESUS CHRIST), 2024

✦ CALENDAR ✦

Sunday 26 October:
Thirtieth Sunday of the Year

Monday 27 October:
Feria

Tuesday 28 October:
Sts Simon and Jude, Apostles

Wednesday 29 October:
Blessed Martyrs of Douai

Thursday 30 October:
Feria

Friday 31 October:
Feria

Saturday 1 November:
Feria

Sunday 2 November:
All Saints

For the calendar for the Missal of 1962
go to www.lms.org.uk