Notes on the saints and feasts (and former feasts) of January

Some time ago I put together summary pages of my notes on assorted feasts and saints for each month of the year.  The old posts are rather out of date though, so herewith an updated version.

giving thanks for the year past, and the year to come

1 JANUARY 

Octave Day of Christmas/Circumcision of Our Lord

Monastic saints whose feasts fall on this day:

St Fulgentius of Ruspe  (d533)

St Eugendus, Abbot  of Condat (d 510)

2 JANUARY

St Thomas of Canterbury (Thomas a Becket), bishop & martyr  (In some places)

Pre-1960 calendar

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus

Octave Day of St Stephen (pre 1960)

3 January  

Pre-1960 calendar

Once was...Octave Day of St John the Evangelist

4 January 

St Titus, bishop &confessor (memorial)

St Elizabeth Anne Seton (in some places)

Octave Day of the Holy Innocents

5 January 

St John Neumann (in some places)

Pre 1960 calendar:

Once was..and sort of is again...vigil of the Epiphany

Saints of the martyrology: SS Telesphorus, Apollinaris, Emiliana

6 January

Feast of the Epiphany
More on the Epiphany
Twelfth Day

Sunday after Epiphany

Sunday after Epiphany or Holy Family?
Pick your feast

7 January – Class IV

Still Christmastide... But not the Octave of the Epiphany!

8 January

Not the third day of the Octave

St Wulsin OSB

9 January 

Not the fourth day within the Octave

Monastic saints of interest:

SS Julian and Basilissa

10 January 

St Paul the first hermit, confessor (memorial)




Pre 1960: Not the fifth day in the Octave of the Epiphany

Monastic saints of note:

St Peter Orseleo OSB

St Gregory of Nyssa  (Benedictine Confederation 1975 calendar)

11 January 

Pre-1960: Not the sixth day in the Octave of the Epiphany

12 January

Monastic saints of note:

St Benedict Biscop OSB - English Congregation



St Margaret Bourgeoys (Canada)

13 January

Commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord Class II

14 January

St Hilary of Poitiers, bishop and doctor (Memorial)

St Felix Nola (memorial)

15 January 

Pre-1960/in some places: St Maurus

Our Lady of Prompt Succor (in some places)

SS Maurus and Placid, disciples of St Benedict (Benedictine Confederation 1975 calendar; 5 October in the 1962 calendar)

16 January 

St Marcellus I (Memorial)

Monastic saints of note:

St Honorius of Fondi


17 January 



St Antony, abbot (Cl III)

18 January 

Pre-1960: St Prisca

19 January 

SS Marius, Martha, Audifax and Abachum, martyrs (Memorial)

St Wulfstan OSB (wiki) (English Congregation)

20 January 

St Fabian (Pope) and St Sebastian, martyrs Cl III

21 January

St Agnes virgin and martyr  (Class II/III)

St Meinrad OSB (in some places)

22 January 

St Vincent of Saragosa (memorial) and St Anastasius

St Peter's Chair (in some places)

23 January 

St Emerenthiana (memorial)

24 January 

St Timothy, bishop & martyr (Memorial)

25 January 

Conversion of St Paul (Class III)

From the martyrology: St Poppo OSB

26 January 

St Polycarp, bishop and martyr (Memorial)

St Bathildis (wiki), Queen of France (Le Barroux)

From the martyrology: St Paula

St. Robert, St. Alberic and St. Stephen, Abbots of Citeaux (New Clairvaux website) - Optional Memorial (Benedictine Confederation 1975 calendar)

27 January 

St John Chrysostom, bishop, confessor & doctor Matins reading on the saint Cl III

28 January 

St Cyril of Alexandria, bishop, confessor, doctor Matins reading (Memorial)

29 January

St Frances de Sales, bishop, confessor, doctor Matins reading (Roman Office) (Memorial)

30 January 

St Adelgundis OSB 

Blessed Columba Marmion OSB

31 January

St John Bosco (memorial)

St Alban Roe OSB, priest and martyr  (English Congregation)

Happy Christmas!

May you have a happy and holy Christmas!

The O Antiphons

Here in Australia it is 17 December, a date that marks the start of our Christmas novena, a period of increased intensity in the Office.

This is actually the most complex period of the year in terms of saying the Office, since you have to juggle the antiphons for the day, psalms of the day, and the proper texts for Advent.  The reward, though, comes in the richness of the texts, above all in the O Antiphons for the Magnificat.

They are of course most commonly sung in their plainchant form.  But I have to admit I kind of like the idea of an O antiphon flashmob...

Blog reorganisation

Just to let readers know I've done a little tidying up of the blog, and in particular transferred a lot of the links I had in sidebars to new pages, which can be accessed from the links on the top bar (under the blog title).

There are now pages for the Ordo (though I'll keep current month stuff in the sidebar), learning the Office, Benedictine spirituality and Office related resources.

Most of this material is not new, just (hopefully) a bit better organised.

There is one new section of material you want to take a look at though, and that is the Office Resources page.  Contains listings of chant books for the Office available online, books about the hymns of the Office and a lot more.  I'd love to add in any other useful resources you are aware of that I may have missed.

PS Feedback on the org, especially if you hate it and want me to put something back n the sidebars, is welcome!

Interested in saying the Benedictine Office?

If you've just bought a book to say the traditional Benedictine Office with, such as the (Farnborough edition) Monastic Diurnal, or are considering doing so, let me welcome you to a wonderful source of spiritual nourishment!

There are, though, some things you need to consider before embarking on this journey.

(1) The traditional Benedictine Office is said in Latin.

The Monastic Diurnal provides the text of the Office in both Latin and English, however the English is not approved for liturgical use, it is there for study purposes only.  Pope Benedict XVI confirmed in Universae Ecclesiae that permission to use the 1962 books is for the Latin text only.  While that clarification was made specifically in relation to the Roman Office, it almost certainly applies to the Benedictine as well.

That doesn't mean you have to have studied Latin formally though - you just need to learn to pronounce the words adequately (for example by listening to monastic podcasts of the Office, or working with sound files or videos of the psalms), and get a general sense of what it is that you are saying.

(2) The traditional Benedictine Office is properly sung

While monks and nuns away from their monasteries can and do just say the Office quietly to themselves, the Benedictine Office is properly sung.  This reflects the instruction of numerous of the Fathers who attested to the benefits of singing the psalms, which are the core of the Benedictine Office.

You don't have to be an expert singer  though, or know Gregorian chant - most monasteries sing at least some of their Office each day on one note.  But if you are interested in Benedictine spirituality, you should at least try and make the effort to listen to the Office being sung, and/or sing it yourself, as a  regular part of your regime.

 (3) The Monastic Diurnal is keyed to the 1962 Extraordinary Form calendar

The Office and the Mass are linked, and the calendar used in the Diurnal is that of the 1962 Extraordinary Form, with some small differences in saints and a few feast days to reflect its use by Benedictines.  In particular:

• the collect used each day at most of the hours (except Prime and Compline) is normally the same as at Sunday or the weekday Mass;
• the 'antiphons'  used on feast days and Sundays normally reflect the feasts celebrated at Mass.

It is possible to use the traditional calendar for the Office and the modern one for Mass, but this is obviously not ideal.  And it is possible to adapt the Office as set out in the Diurnal to reflect the modern calendar, but most people find that this requires too much effort.

(4)  The Monastic Diurnal only covers the day hours of the Office

The Diurnal contains the 'hours' of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, those parts of the Office that are said during the day (prayers said at first light to those said before bed).

It is not compulsory (for laypeople) to say any or all of these hours, and for most people one or two hours (Prime and Compline are good choices for morning and evening prayer for example) will be enough.

If you really want to say all of the psalms, however, be aware that the Diurnal does not include the Night Office, Matins, and there is no equivalent semi-official Latin-English book for Matins.

(5) The Benedictine Office contains a lot of repetition

If you said all of the day hours (ie those contained in the Diurnal), you would be saying 26 psalms each day.  That adds up to 182 in total each week.

But although this form of the Office spreads all of the psalms over the course of a week, St Benedict wanted a lot of the psalms to be repeated each day, presumably because he thought those particular psalms were important for the formation of his particular spirituality.  

In fact overall, ten psalms are said every day in the Benedictine office (Ps 3, 4, 50(51), 90 (91), 94 (95), 133 (134), and 148-150).  An additional nine psalms (the first of the Gradual Psalms, 119(120)-127(8)) are said five days a week.

The hours repeated psalms - Compline is the same each night, five of the psalms at Lauds each day, Terce to None are the same five times a week - give the individual hours a particular flavour, and contain key messages worth memorising.  

But if you are looking for lots of variety, you either need to pick your hours (Prime doesn't have any repeated psalms, and Vespers is normally different each day, aside from special sets of psalms used on feasts) or consider whether this is really the Office for you.  In fact Matins is the workhorse of the Benedictine Office with twelve different psalms each day.

(6) The Monastic Diurnal uses the Vulgate 

It is also worth noting that the Diurnal uses the traditional Vulgate translation of the Psalms into Latin (attributed to St Jerome), not the 1979 'neo-Vulgate' Latin on the Vatican site and used by some monasteries (ie monasteries using the Ordinary Form of the Mass but retaining Latin for the Office).

There are key advantages to using the traditional Vulgate.  First, it is closer or identical to the Latin used by the Fathers, so lines up better with the Patristic readings used in the Office.  It also aligns with the antiphons and other texts used in the chants of the Office.  Moreover, as it turns out, the 1979 neo-Vulgate is rapidly proving to be a product of its time, with more recent scholarship (reflecting research based on the Dead Seas Scrolls in particular) casting down on the desirability of many of the translation decisions taken.

It does mean, however, that the numbering of the psalms mostly does not line up with modern Bibles.

I should also note that there is a version of the Benedictine Office available using the neo-Vulgate published by Solesmes, however there is no official English version of it.

(7) Learning the Office requires effort

Finally, in part because of the factors listed above the Office takes some effort to learn how to say correctly.

The traditional Benedictine Office is quite different to the modern Liturgy of the Hours in many respects, and the Diurnal is not a very user friendly book.  The Diurnal does include most of the instructions necessary to say the Office (albeit with a bit of work), but it does not contain a translation of the full 1962 rubrics.

The Diurnal basically assumes you already know the rubrics and are familiar with this form of the Office.  Accordingly, you will almost certainly need some help to learn to say it.

And given that this is liturgy, the formal, official prayer of the Church, and not just a devotion, being prepared to make that effort is important.

(8) How to get started

If the above hasn't put you off, and you are interested in doing a comprehensive course on the Benedictine Office, you can find extensive notes on how to say the Office here.

A good starting point is my post on finding your way around the Diurnal.

And the best place to start in terms of actually saying the Office is Compline.  

The Office in Christmastide and the Sundays after the Epiphany

The season of Christmas (or Nativitytide) has two parts: the 'twelve days of Christmas', from Christmas Eve (I Vespers of Christmas) to January 5; and the season of Epiphany, which officially runs up to 13 January.

There is a bit of a trick to it though, because older versions of the liturgy actually treated all of the time up until the Feast of the Purification on February 2 as the season of Epiphany, and the Office retains traces of that: the Sundays are still labelled 'after Epiphany' up until the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima, and the readings on them reflect Epiphany themes. 

In fact the readings for the original six Sundays of Epiphanytide allowed for (before addition of Septuagesima under St Gregory the Great) continue to be said, with any Sundays displaced by an early start to Septuagesimatide moved to the end of the liturgical year.

In addition, the Office of Our Lady on Saturday continues to be said in its Christmastide form right up until February 2.

The other key point to note is that there are a number of texts to be said on particular dates in addition to the main (fixed) feast days.

The twelve days of Christmas

The Christmasy feel for the Office really starts on December 24, with the Vigil of the Nativity.  But in fact that day, at least up until None, is technically part of Advent.

Christmas has a second class octave, and so the Office is effectively that of Christmas for a whole week, but displaced to some degree by the series of second class feasts that occur in this period.

Between January 2 and January 5, the 'ordinary of the ferial office after the Octave of the Nativity', which includes chapter verses, hymns and so forth for Lauds to Vespers, is used, MD 119*.  

During this period, the antiphons and psalms are of the day of the week as set out in the psalter for ‘throughout the year and in Nativitytide’. At Matins, the Invitatory, hymn, versicles and chapter are of the season, and three readings are of the date.  At Terce, Sext and None, the antiphons is as for throughout the year; the chapter and versicle are particular to Nativitytide (set out in the psalter section of the Diurnal, as well as at MD 122-3*.  At Lauds and Vespers, the chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle and canticle antiphon are for the season, and can be found at MD 119-25*.

The Ordinary of the Office in Epiphany (January 7-12)

Epiphanytide is part of the greater season of Christmastide, hence at all hours, antiphons and psalms are of the day of the week as in the psalter for ‘throughout the year and in Nativitytide’.

At Matins, the Invitatory antiphon, hymn, versicles, responsories and chapter are of the season.  At Lauds and Vespers, the chapter, responsory, hymn, and versicle are for the season, and can be found at MD 133-9*.  

In the not too distant past the feast of Epiphany had an Octave, and the proper antiphons for the canticles set for each day are remnants of that octave.  Similarly, the feast of the Commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord is said as if it were an octave day.

Office of Our Lady after Christmas

On fourth class Saturdays up until the feast of the Purification, the Office is of Our Lady after Christmas.

Matins: As for Office of Our Lady throughout the year except for collect.  Reading 3 is of Our Lady (the breviary provides readings for Saturdays 1, 2, 3, and 4&5.

Lauds to None: Office of Our Lady after Christmas, MD (133) ff.  

January 14 - Septuagesima: Ordinary of Time Throughout the Year

Nativitytide officially ends with the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord; from January 14 until Septuagesima, the Offices uses the default texts set out in the psalter section of the Diurnal or Breviary for ‘time throughout the year’.

August 15: The Assumption of Our Lady

The Assumption is perhaps the most important of the Marian feast of the year, and a Holy Day of Obligation (even in countries that have largely abandoned the concept such as Australia).

The Diurnal offers a choice of two versions of the Office for this feast - the first is the ‘new approved Office’ was written after the official proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption.

And in honour of the feast, Psalm 121 (122), 'I rejoiced when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord', in the setting from the fabulous Vespers of the Blessed Virgin by Monteverdi.