The Church Year: Mar. 18, 2012

Today is the 4th Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday). The liturgical color is rose or violet.

Note: Tomorrow is a holyday of obligation (St. Joseph). Be sure to go to Mass either this evening or tomorrow.

Saints & Celebrations:

On March 18, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Cyril of Jerusalem, bishop, confessor, and doctor of the Church who died in A.D. 386. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Cyril, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

We continue our series on St. Joseph. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

222. St. Joseph plays a prominent part in popular devotion: in numerous popular traditions; the custom of reserving Wednesdays for devotion to St. Joseph, popular at least since the end of the seventeenth century, has generated several pious exercises including that of the Seven Wednesdays; in the pious aspirations made by the faithful; in prayers such as that of Pope Leo XIII, A te, Beate Ioseph, which is daily recited by the faithful; in the Litany of St Joseph, approved by St. Pope Pius X; and in the recitation of the chaplet of St Joseph, recollecting the Seven agonies and seven joys of St. Joseph.