May 4: St Monica, Memorial

St Monica was the mother of St Augustine, and is famous for her prayers and other efforts towards his conversion. As such, she is patroness, amongst other things of those who have disappointing children...

May 3: Once was the Feast of the Finding of Holy Cross

Gury Nikitin, 1680

Today is not the feast of the Finding of Holy Cross.

But it should be.

The Finding of Holy Cross is one of those feasts that fell victim to the calendar reforms of the 1950s and early 1960s, when it was combined with the Feast of the Exaltation of Holy Cross (which celebrates the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcre).

It celebrated St Helena's (mother of Constantine the Great) discovery of the Holy Sepulcre in Jerusalem, and subsequent discovery of the Cross at the site.

So a nice feast, one that is still maintained by some monasteries, and can licitly be marked by a votive mass.

May 3: SS Alexander, Eventius And Theodolus, memorial

Alexander, Eventius, and Theodolus were martyrs in Rome under Trajan, being  burned and beheaded c.113 on the Via Nomentana in Rome, Italy.  They were arrested by the tribune Quirinus, who, with his daughter, they converted to Christianity by performing miracles.  Their relics are interred in the Dominican church of Santa Sabina, Rome (pictured above).

From the martyrology:

"At Rome, on the Via Nomentana, the holy martyrs Pope Alexander and the priests Eventius and Theodulus. Alexander was bound, imprisoned, racked, lacerated with hooks, burned, and had all his limbs pierced with pointed instruments, and finally met death, under Emperor Hadrian and the judge Aurelian. Eventius and Theodulus after a long imprisonment were exposed to flames and then beheaded."

May 2: St Athanasius, Class III

St Athanasius, bishop and doctor of the Church is perhaps most famous as a theologian and for his struggle against the Arian heresy. From the monastic point of view, however, his Life of St Anthony was enormously influential in articulating a theology of monastic life and promoting the monastic life in the West.

Pope Benedict XVI devoted a General Audience to the saint on 20 June 2007, here are some extracts from it:

"...Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most important and revered early Church Fathers. But this great Saint was above all the impassioned theologian of the Incarnation of the Logos, the Word of God who - as the Prologue of the fourth Gospel says - “became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1: 14).

For this very reason Athanasius was also the most important and tenacious adversary of the Arian heresy, which at that time threatened faith in Christ, reduced to a creature “halfway” between God and man, according to a recurring tendency in history which we also see manifested today in various forms.

In all likelihood Athanasius was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in about the year 300 A.D. He received a good education before becoming a deacon and secretary to the Bishop of Alexandria, the great Egyptian metropolis. As a close collaborator of his Bishop, the young cleric took part with him in the Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical Council, convoked by the Emperor Constantine in May 325 A.D. to ensure Church unity. The Nicene Fathers were thus able to address various issues and primarily the serious problem that had arisen a few years earlier from the preaching of the Alexandrian priest, Arius...

In 328 A.D., when Bishop Alexander died, Athanasius succeeded him as Bishop of Alexandria. ...At least five times - during the 30 years between 336 and 366 A.D. - Athanasius was obliged to abandon his city, spending 17 years in exile and suffering for the faith. But during his forced absences from Alexandria, the Bishop was able to sustain and to spread in the West, first at Trier and then in Rome, the Nicene faith as well as the ideals of monasticism, embraced in Egypt by the great hermit, Anthony, with a choice of life to which Athanasius was always close.

St Anthony, with his spiritual strength, was the most important champion of St Athanasius’ faith. Reinstated in his See once and for all, the Bishop of Alexandria was able to devote himself to religious pacification and the reorganization of the Christian communities. He died on 2 May 373, the day when we celebrate his liturgical Memorial. ...

Lastly, Athanasius also wrote meditational texts on the Psalms, subsequently circulated widely, and in particular, a work that constitutes the bestseller of early Christian literature: The Life of Anthony, that is, the biography of St Anthony Abbot. It was written shortly after this Saint’s death precisely while the exiled Bishop of Alexandria was staying with monks in the Egyptian desert. Athanasius was such a close friend of the great hermit that he received one of the two sheepskins which Anthony left as his legacy, together with the mantle that the Bishop of Alexandria himself had given to him.

The exemplary biography of this figure dear to Christian tradition soon became very popular, almost immediately translated into Latin, in two editions, and then into various Oriental languages; it made an important contribution to the spread of monasticism in the East and in the West.

It was not by chance that the interpretation of this text, in Trier, was at the centre of a moving tale of the conversion of two imperial officials which Augustine incorporated into his Confessions (cf. VIII, 6, 15) as the preamble to his own conversion.

Moreover, Athanasius himself showed he was clearly aware of the influence that Anthony’s fine example could have on Christian people. Indeed, he wrote at the end of this work: “The fact that his fame has been blazoned everywhere, that all regard him with wonder, and that those who have never seen him long for him, is clear proof of his virtue and God’s love of his soul. For not from writings, nor from worldly wisdom, nor through any art, was Anthony renowned, but solely from his piety towards God. That this was the gift of God no one will deny.

“For from whence into Spain and into Gaul, how into Rome and Africa, was the man heard of who dwelt hidden in a mountain, unless it was God who makes his own known everywhere, who also promised this to Anthony at the beginning? For even if they work secretly, even if they wish to remain in obscurity, yet the Lord shows them as lamps to lighten all, that those who hear may thus know that the precepts of God are able to make men prosper and thus be zealous in the path of virtue” (Life of Anthony, 93, 5-6).... "

May 1: St Joseph the Worker, Class I

Georges de la Tour, 1640s

Feasts of St Joseph have had a rather tumultuous history over the last two centuries. 

Traditionally in the West at least, March 19 was Saint Joseph's Day. 

But in 1870 Pope Pius IX declared St Joseph patron of the universal Church and instituted another feast, with an octave, to be held on Wednesday in the second week after Easter.

This was abolished, however, by Pope Pius XII in 1955, when he established the Feast of "St. Joseph the Worker", to be celebrated on 1 May, in order to displace socialist celebrations on that date, a feast that is perhaps arguably looking somewhat outdated today. 

In the Novus Ordo calendar, it is an optional memorial only, and so not celebrated this year being displaced by Low Sunday; but in the 1962 calendar, it remains a solemnity.  Oh well, great saints deserve lots of festivities!

Sunday 1 May: Low Sunday, Class I

Cima da Conegliano, c1459-1518
National Gallery, London

The Octave Day of Easter - aka Quasimodo Sunday aka White Sunday aka...- has a lot of aliases!

The Quasimodo appellation comes from the first word of the Introit for the day ('Like newborn babies..'), which you can listen to below; the name White Sunday comes from the tradition of the neophytes putting aside their white garments; and Low Sunday comes as a contrast to the 'High' Sunday of Easter itself.

The Gospel is John 20:19-31, the story of Doubting Thomas.

April 30: Saturday in the Octave of Easter, Class I

James Tissot, circa 1886-94

The Gospel today is John 20:1-9, SS Peter and John at the tomb.