St Anthony Mary Zaccaria (EF, July 5)

Saint Anthony Maria Zaccaria (1502 – 1539) was the originator of the Forty Hours devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

Born in Cremona, Italy in 1502 to noble parents, his father died when he was two his father died.  He took a private vow of chastity at an early age.

The saint studied philosophy at the University of Pavia, and, from 1520, medicine at the University of Padua. After completing studies in 1524, he practised as a doctor in Cremona for three years.  In 1527, he started studying for the priesthood and was ordained in 1528.

Initially he worked mainly working in hospitals and institutions for the poor.  He subsequently established three religious orders, initially in Milan: the Clerics Regular of St Paul, commonly known as the Barnabites; a female branch of uncloistered nuns, the Angelic Sisters of St. Paul; and a lay congregation for married people, the Laity of St. Paul (Oblates of St. Paul).  Their aim was the reform of the decadent society of their day, beginning with the clergy and religious.

While on a mission to Guastalla, Italy, in 1539, he caught a fever. Combined with the strict penances he performed, his health waned and he died on 5 July 1539, at the age of 37.

Feast of the Visitation (July 2)

Jacques Daret c1434

In Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict XVI commented on the story of the Visitation as follows:

"This close relationship between God’s word and joy is evident in the Mother of God. Let us recall the words of Saint Elizabeth: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (Lc 1,45). Mary is blessed because she has faith, because she believed, and in this faith she received the Word of God into her womb in order to give him to the world. The joy born of the Word can now expand to all those who, by faith, let themselves be changed by God’s word. The Gospel of Luke presents this mystery of hearing and joy in two texts. Jesus says: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Lc 8,21). And in reply to a woman from the crowd who blesses the womb that bore him and the breasts that nursed him, Jesus reveals the secret of true joy: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Lc 11,28). Jesus points out Mary’s true grandeur, making it possible for each of us to attain that blessedness which is born of the word received and put into practice. I remind all Christians that our personal and communal relationship with God depends on our growing familiarity with the word of God. Finally, I turn to every man and woman, including those who have fallen away from the Church, who have left the faith or who have never heard the proclamation of salvation. To everyone the Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Ap 3,20).

May every day of our lives thus be shaped by a renewed encounter with Christ, the Word of the Father made flesh: he stands at the beginning and the end, and “in him all things hold together” (Col 1,17). Let us be silent in order to hear the Lord’s word and to meditate upon it, so that by the working of the Holy Spirit it may remain in our hearts and speak to us all the days of our lives. In this way the Church will always be renewed and rejuvenated, thanks to the word of the Lord which remains for ever (cf. 1P 1,25 Is Is 40,8). Thus we too will enter into the great nuptial dialogue which concludes sacred Scripture: “The Spirit and the bride say: ‘Come’. And let everyone who hears say: ‘Come!’” The one who testifies to these things, says: ‘Surely I am coming soon!’. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”. (Ap 22,17)."

Feast of the Most Precious Blood, July 1

In the 1962 Roman Calendar (but not the 1962 Benedictine calendar), July 1 marks the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a first class feast, so with I Vespers of the feast.

The feast has its origins in the sixteenth century, but was extended to the universal Church in 1849, to recognition of the liberation of Rome.

It was originally always celebrated on the first Sunday in July; Pope St Pius X shifted it to July 1 as part of his clean out of feasts fixed for Sundays. 

Pope John XXIII went so far as to write an encyclical promoting devotion to the feast in 1960, and as a particularly liturgical devotion, one might have expected to escape the wreckovaters, but alas, it was abolished altogether in the 1969 calendar on the grounds that it duplicated other Solemnities (though it still exists as a votive mass).  One can't help suspecting, however, that the real reason those 1960s revolutionaries baulked at it was the perceived 'triumphalism' in its association with the return to the Papal States to their proper ruler...

It was in the older Benedictine calendar, so those with an Antiphonale Monasticum (or older form of the Breviary) will find the texts there.  Others wishing to say the Office of the feast could utilise the antiphons and proper texts from the Divinum Officium website, and apply them to the Sunday festal psalms.

You might want also to consider saying the litany of the Most Precious Blood, traditionally said each day during July.

Trinity Sunday

Pentecost Sunday

The Feast of the Ascension

Vigil of the Ascension, Class II