2025/26 Liturgical Calendar for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church

We are happy to share this information from the London-based Society of St John Chrysostom, about its newly published liturgical calendar. The calendar is free to access as a pdf at this link:

https://ssjc.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Calendar-AM-7534.pdf

Yesterday, the Byzantine rite began its liturgical year with the Indiction, entering the year 7534 according to the Anno Mundi calendar system, which was the official method of recording the civil year in the Byzantine Empire until 1453, and in the Tsardom of Russia until 1699. To mark this, the Society of Saint John Chrysostom in the United Kingdom – a Catholic society founded in 1926 to support the Eastern Catholic Churches and East-West reunion – has published a Byzantine liturgical calendar for the coming year, based on that used by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

The first thing to note is that this calendar is fully Gregorian, including the dates of Pascha (Easter) and its dependent feasts and fasts, as is now the practice in the UK and most of the UGCC diaspora. Currently the UGCC in Ukraine itself, along with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, follows the ‘revised’ Julian calendar, meaning that the dates of fixed feasts are synchronous with those of the Gregorian calendar, while the Paschalion remains that of the old, now inaccurate, Julian calendar.

In the calendar, edited for convenient use in English in the UK, the readings for the Divine Liturgy are included for each day, as well as festal readings for feasts ranked Class III and greater. In some traditions, both the moveable and fixed sets of readings are chanted each day at the Divine Liturgy. However, as the latter are mostly readings common to categories of saints, these are usually omitted in UGCC usage for lower-class feasts. The reader will, nonetheless, find a rich tapestry of feasts and commemorations in these pages. The UGCC liturgical calendar is ecumenical, being mostly composed of feasts inherited from Kyiv’s mother see, Constantinople, many of which commemorate ancient Western saints. But continuity is established with the second millennium, following the restoration of communion with the Roman see since 1595/96, as can be seen from the commemorations of Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), Mother Teresa of Kolkata (d. 1997), and Pope Saint John Paul II (d. 2005).

This works both ways, as the Metropolis of Kyiv was permitted to continue commemorating Saints canonized between the period of the so-called Great Schism and the 1596 Union of Brest. This includes many local saints, such as those of the Kyiv Caves Monastery (founded 1051) and the late-Byzantine theologian Saint Gregory Palamas (d. 1359), whose once-controversial theology led to the suppression of his feast on the Second Sunday of Lent between 1720 and 1974. Of great importance also are those local post-Union Ukrainian saints, many of whom, like Josaphat Kuntseyvich, the Thirteen Martyrs of Pratulin and Blessed Klymentiy Sheptytsky, were martyred for their Catholic faith by mobs, tsars and Soviet commissars for refusing to break communion with Rome. Sadly, this oppression has returned in the latest Muscovite brutalization of Ukraine. Another local commemoration of note is that of the Consecration of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv on August 18, which marks the return to Kyiv of the primatial see in 2005, after being in ‘exile’ in Lviv since the first liquidation of the UGCC by Moscow in 1805.

Divine Liturgy commemorating the consecration of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection in Kyiv, August 18, 2025. 

Another interesting feature of this calendar is its comprehensive fasting guide, which demonstrates just how austere the traditional Byzantine fasting rule is, to the point that it is almost never fully observed even by the Orthodox. The introduction makes it clear that this is not the point:

In Latin Christianity the obligation to fast has been penitential in nature and enforced ‘on pain of sin’. In recent times it has relaxed or adapted to different circumstances across the world and society. In Byzantine Christianity fasting is more extensive and frequent, but understood as an ideal towards which to strive. […] The rule is austere and rarely observed in its entirety, but is included here as a ‘gold standard’ from which we can adapt our practice to account for personal circumstances, health, and spiritual development.

The rule itself is from the fifth-century typikon (service book) of Venerable Sabbas the Sanctified which, while developed in Jerusalem, remains the primary point of reference for liturgical life in the East Slavic churches. It prescribes abstinence from meat, eggs, dairy, fish, oil and wine (alcohol) on most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year, as well as throughout Lent and the other fasting periods, subject to relaxation on certain feasts and days of the week. A detail which is often overlooked in some Orthodox fasting guides, however, is fasting itself, rather than abstinence only. The Sabbaite rule, according to the calendar’s introduction, prescribes a total fast until the Ninth Hour (about 3pm), which accords with Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae (Question 147). However, this year’s calendar also features in an appendix a translation of Canon 115 of the Particular Law of the UGCC, which mandates a much more lenient fasting rule as the canonical minimum.

It is hoped that this calendar will be of great assistance to English-language Byzantine rite Catholics in their daily prayer life, but also of interest to Latin Catholics who wish to learn more about the East and the many commonalities and differences between the Roman and Byzantine calendars.

Practical Steps for Transitioning from the 1962 to the Pre-1955 Roman Rite—Part 1: Introduction

The author of this series wishes to remain anonymous. He is an experienced master of ceremonies and chanter, intimately familiar with both the 1962 rubrics and the pre-1939 rubrics in ordinary parish contexts.

In the summer of 2022, almost as if to mark as well as the first anniversary of the lamentable papal motu proprio, Paul Cavendish and Peter Kwasniewski collaborated to produce and publish a much-needed summary of the changes made to the liturgy in three places:

1) the simplification of the rubrics outlined in Cum nostra hac ætate;
2) the introduction of the new rite of Holy Week in Maxima redemptionis nostræ mysteria;
3) the changes made in the reforms of 1960 and 1962, to the breviary and missal respectively.

This was followed by the publication of Dr. Kwasniewski’s The Once and Future Roman Rite, where he articulates a fundamental position on the inherently traditional and continuous nature of apostolic liturgy, critiques twentieth-century ruptures, and advocates total restoration of the Roman Rite. Dr. Kwasniewski formally plots the way forward with a final chapter on the pre-1955 liturgy, which deserves our thanks and consideration.

A green Sunday at the ICRSP seminary; these Sundays are perhaps the days outside of Holy Week where the 1955 and 1960 rubrics have the most impact for an ordinary parishioner in the pews.

Before proceeding, I should note that this essay takes for granted a reader’s knowledge of, or willingness to learn about the differences in the rubrics. This page is a good place to start.

I have a particular knowledge of the office, above all those which would be more routinely prayed in parishes, Vespers and Compline but also Lauds and the minor hours, as I have prayed the 1962 office with some regularity for nine years, and in private, I prayed a combination of Divino Afflatu, Tridentine Compline and festal offices, and a pre-1962 office with the 1962 precedence (Sunday Vespers, with semidoubled antiphons and all but the highest feasts reduced to commemorations); now my circumstances permit me to always use Divino Afflatu, so I do. [*Note]

It is also worth noting in passing that I have only rarely assisted at a Mass with no interpolations whatsoever from a previous edition of the missal; in my experience, a Mass exactly according to 1962 will be celebrated only by American diocesan priests ordained after 2007. I first discovered the traditional Mass via the FSSP, known for preserving the “extra” Confiteor before communion; then in the diocesan parish of my adolescence, the priest bowed to the cross as required. The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, with which I am most familiar, is famous for “1962 in the hands of Frenchmen” and thus making popular a yet more traditional version of the “rite of Écône,” as described by the Rad Trad. In France, even priests who make their bows exclusively to the book are still incensed after the Gospel at sung Mass — J. B. O’Connell could not be clearer in indicating that this is abolished in the 1962 rubrics — and there is virtually always a Confiteor before the distribution of communion.

Altar cloths being put out on the altar on Good Friday as per the pre-1955 rubrics.

Also, this essay would not necessarily have been welcomed three or four years ago when it was easier to make changes, yet now many priests will feel pressure to toe the 1962 line lest they lose the right even to use that missal, even though, by the same token, now is a favorable time to act. I share their grief and distress, but I hope that they and the members of the flock assisting, such as masters of ceremonies or choirmasters, will read this with ideas for the future, if not for their own strictly private usage away from cameras and the internet, no matter what choice they make in the parishes.

It is somewhat trivial to explain why the Roman rite as it existed in 1954 is the point to which one should return: all of the essential practices are there, albeit with the weekly psalter rearranged by order of Saint Pius X, the antiphons created to accompany this new psalter, and even the new Mass for the feast and octave day of the Assumption instituted by Pope Pius XII. But explaining the extent of the damage even of the 1940s and 1950s is a thirty-minute conversation, without taking into account questions from your inquirer. A priest of my acquaintance who belongs to a traditional community explained it thus to a group of young people: “I don’t really know the details of the changes.” “We pray the 1962 breviary because we’re told to do so.” These are both reasonable answers given the demands of his apostolic activity and his state in life.

For the curious or daring person with some free time, one could prudently pray according to the 1910 office, then 1911/1954, and finally 1955/1960, in order to see what’s up, though looking at a hand missal from the 1940s will be the best most of us can do to see what happened to the Mass in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Precocious laymen might suggest that groups such as the FSSP and especially the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest have failed by sticking to 1962 entirely or by following certain things (e.g., the pre-55 Holy Week, the proper doxology of the hymn at Compline, some of the pre-1962 rubrics of the Mass) while following the 1962 calendar and rubrics in everything else.

On the other hand, their priests are subject not only to the bishop but to their superiors, and these parishes would attract people who know the difference. On the other hand, a diocesan bishop probably does not know the difference off the top of his head, and while his priests would have more freedom to act, they do not necessarily have the time to do the research and to transition the TLM community towards a more traditional observance.

Or do they? Can this be done? I believe this is possible, with careful planning and consideration both of the higher-level stakes (Rome, the bishop…) and of lower-level ones (the needs of the faithful).

In a parish well-known to this author, the pastor arrived and continued to follow the 1962 calendar (especially the precedence of Sundays over virtually all feasts), although the prayers of the foot of the altar and Last Gospel were always recited. Vespers strictly followed the 1962 rubrics, with the commemorations made according to the same.

Slowly but surely, suppressed feasts, like those of the first week in May (suppressed in 1960 as duplicates), came back along with vigils, like that of All Saints said the day before the feast. The Credo was restored to the feasts which previously required it before 1955 and 1960. Holy Week and the Pentecost vigil came back immediately; there is simply no reason to stick with the reformed versions (especially that of Pius XII, but also the version of Paul VI) if you really believe that it is worth reviving the traditional form of the Roman Rite. The priest introduced proper Last Gospels said on Sundays where the feast impedes a Sunday Mass or on certain other occasions required by the rubrics, then seasonal commemorations at Mass (that is, the prayers said after the main oration), and those of feasts; one of the genius aspects of the reforms of Pius X is this legal fiction elevating Sundays over most, but not all, feasts. Finally, the suffrages (the antiphon, versicle, and collect said per the rubrics: one is of “All Saints” sung most of the year; the other said in Paschal Time is “of the Cross”), then sanctoral commemorations (most all of the saints on Saturday evening and on Sunday are just dropped under 1962), and now semidoubled antiphons (intoned to the asterisk, followed by the psalm, then sung in full after the psalm) along with the precedence of the Divino Afflatu rubrics have been restored at Vespers.

So that’s what happened in this parish: a pretty full restoration of the Roman Rite. How, then, does one get there?

In the next three parts, we will look at the Mass, the Office, and the question of Posture. I shall refrain from a detailed treatment of the pontifical ceremonies, since that depends on acquiring a suitable pontifical and a willing bishop (already difficult enough), and the scope is simply too grand for such a series.

Such a transition can sometimes be confusing, as much as for the priest as for the faithful, and one would do well to briefly instruct from the pulpit and in the bulletin or at other appropriate times, such as on Saturday mornings, where there is more time to consider the finer details. Priests should remember a few things: one, that while one must be “all things to all men,” one should never act as if the audience is unintelligent and cannot, through some work, come to learn and appreciate these details according to their capacities.

Note

By the way, the translated general rubrics of the 1920 missal are also available in a beautifully-prepared PDF, though the rubrics to the office appear to be lacking; one gets very far, but only so, with a copy of Learning the Breviary by Fr. Hausmann, S.J. (not to be confused with Learning the New Breviary for the 1960 rubrics), since the Additiones et Variationes to the rubrics of Saint Pius V (under the form known as the Jubilee Rubrics issued in 1900), are what make the Divino Afflatu rubrics so complex.

On the Sanctification of Time

In “Processing through the Courts of the Great King,” I spoke of how the many courtyards and chambers of the King’s palace prior to his throne room, or the many precincts and rooms of the Temple leading up to the Holy of Holies, could be a metaphor of a healthy Catholic spiritual life that culminates in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but surrounds it with concentric layers of other kinds of prayer, devotion, and piety. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the fons et culmen (font and apex) of the Christian life, but it is not the sum total of it — nor can it bear the weight of every need. I concluded the article thus:

We owe it to our King to prepare ourselves for His royal banquet, His wedding feast, and the Church has given us an abundance of ways in which we can do that: the Divine Office; Eucharistic Adoration; Lectio Divina; Confession; the Rosary; and so forth. The Mass is the crown jewel, to be sure, but it is not the entire crown; indeed, the jewel is given its appropriate place by the other materials that hold it and complement it.

The Divine Office

After the Mass, the most important public prayer offered by the Catholic Church is the Divine Office, a “sacrifice of praise” consisting of psalms, prayers, canticles, hymns, and readings divided into particular “hours” such as Lauds (morning prayer), Vespers (evening prayer), and Compline (night prayer). The shape and content of these magnificent liturgies come down to us from the monks of antiquity — in the West, above all from St. Benedict and the monastic empire inspired by his example and his Rule.

Characteristic of the Benedictine way of life is the sanctification of time through a calmly recurring cycle of prayer that permeates the day and night. In addition to the celebration of the Mass, the traditional Benedictine monk or nun prays communally seven times a day and once in the middle of the night, with the long office called Matins. In this way they fulfill what is said in the Book of Psalms: “Seven times a day I praise you” (118, 164), “I rose at midnight to give praise to thee” (118, 62), and “the just man meditates on the law day and night” (1, 2).

How beautiful is this patient, persevering dedication to set times of prayer, in order that the whole of time — the whole span of the day and stretch of the week, the month’s reach and the cycle of seasons, the passing years and decades and centuries, all of this human time — may be divinized, offered up to its unchanging Lord, penetrated with His grace, pregnant with sacred meaning and fruitful with a host of virtues!

This is the monastic life, this is the angelic life (says the Byzantine tradition), and we lay people are called to imitate it in some fashion, according to our ways and means. While the schedule of most modern lay people does not make it particularly easy to pray the Divine Office, it is often possible to find enough time in the morning for a short office like Prime, or in the evening for Vespers, or before bedtime for Compline. In fact, I am given to understand that before the Council, some used the expression “Prime and Compline Catholics” to refer to laity who made these two short hours the bookends of their day.

Being composed almost entirely from Scripture, the Divine Office is the most natural way to become intimately familiar with the Word of God, which will form our minds and hearts as Catholics. Lectio divina and the Divine Office fit together like hand in glove.

Sacred Conception of Time

It has struck me over the years how infrequently Catholics reflect on, or are even aware of, the difference between the secular conception of time and the sacred conception of time. Isaac Newton introduced the notion of absolute space and time, where space is seen as a giant grid of Cartesian coordinates, and time is seen as an equable ticking of a clock, all seconds, minutes, and hours being equal. This may be called temporal egalitarianism.

The premodern notion of time, in contrast, sees it as hierarchical, organic, and malleable. The day is understood to have a spiritually significant rhythm from dawn to noon to dusk to night, and each one of these parts has its own character, its own “weight” and role in the spiritual life, not to mention its function as a sign. The week has an internal dynamism emanating from the Sunday past and straining towards the Sunday to come, with certain days connected customarily to certain mysteries or saints, above all Friday’s connection to the Passion (hence, the rule of abstinence from flesh meat on the day when the flesh of God was crucified). Into the seasons of the year the great mysteries of the Catholic faith are woven, so that the cycle of nature mysteriously symbolizes the cycle of grace, each providing a key to the other. In short, the Catholic mind sees time as differentiated by days and seasons of feasting and fasting, by Sundays and Solemnities, by memorials, novenas, and processions.

As individuals and as communities, we should strive in big and little ways to live out a properly Catholic sense of time, understanding the calendar of days, weeks, and months as a recurrent cycle of celebrations of different persons—especially Our Lord and His Mother, but also the saints and angels. We should try to be aware of the Church calendar. “Whose feast is it today?” ought to be a question we ask every morning. Do we know when it is a major feast, e.g., the Nativity or Birthday of Our Lady, or the Exaltation of the Holy Cross? On the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, one might choose to pray the Stations of the Cross or the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. If it’s the feast day of a saint, we should invoke that saint in our prayer, think about him or her, and congratulate a fellow Catholic who shares the saint’s name.
 

The traditional Roman calendar

Levels of Time: (1) The Year

At the level of the year, numerous and profound are the differences between ecclesial time and secular time, especially in an explicitly secular country like the United States. For example, our secular year begins on January 1st, but the Western Church’s year begins with the First Sunday of Advent, while the Eastern Church’s begins in September.

The weeks before Christmas are a time of quiet expectancy (even called by the Eastern tradition “little Lent”), whereas they are an orgy of fake Christmas music and commercialism in the surrounding secular culture. Americans celebrate a Puritan Thanksgiving once a year, whereas Catholics celebrate thanks­giving every day with the Eucharistia, a Greek word that means “Thanksgiving.” Nowadays there are witches who dance around on the summer and winter solstices, but we have always celebrated these astronomical events by our own feasts: the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ in December and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist in June. As St. John himself said: “He must increase, I must decrease.” John’s birthday is observed right around the time when daylight begins to lessen; Jesus is born right around the time when daylight begins to lengthen. Easter, for us, lasts two months, whereas in the secular world it lasts for one weekend of bunny rabbits and chocolate.

The United States gives days off for things like dead presidents, dead soldiers, and labor; we Catholics celebrate the living saints who are at rest in heaven. When you start to think about it, the whole mentality is different. We need to be spiritually attuned to the universal Church calendar rather than taking our bearings from the secular and American. Not that we should disdain our secular holidays, but they are not holydays, and our own true and proper holydays should take precedence.

Levels of Time: (2) The Week

The week has a kind of sacred rhythm, beginning from and culminating in Sunday, the “Little Easter.” The secular world’s week is five days of work and two days of rest and relaxation to kick back and do whatever you feel like doing (which usually means taking it easy on Saturday and mowing the grass or doing other forbidden manual labor on Sunday).

The Christian perspective is different. There are six days of work, and one day of genuine rest—a rest of worship and prayer, of feasting and rejoicing with one’s family and friends. That is more than, and better than, mere “R&R.” We resist the reduction of the Lord’s Day to mere “time off” when we make Sunday Mass the pinnacle not only of Sunday but of the entire week. We get dressed up. We take time to prepare before Mass and make a thanksgiving afterwards, circumstances permitting. Perhaps one can come back to the chapel later on in the day to pray. In any event, one should not be thinking “what’s the most convenient way to get Mass over with so that I can get back to work or get out to play.” Sunday is not merely a means to something else; it is an image or echo of the ultimate end itself. In fact, for the Church Fathers, Sunday is a symbol of heaven and eternal life, so the way we treat Sunday is a bit like telling God what we think of the end or goal of our lives.

Levels of Time: (3) The Day

The day has its own internal rhythm. Not all hours are equal.

The morning, upon first waking, is the best time to consecrate our day to the Lord. When we retire for bed is the best time to examine our conscience, express sorrow for our sins, and commend our day’s work and our soul to God before entering the “little death” of sleep.

The source and summit of the day should be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Eucharist is the sun from which all grace radiates, so if we want to be in the sun, we have to put ourselves in its direct rays. If one goes to morning Mass, one is establishing the day on its foundation, and the rest of the day flows from it. If one goes to Mass at or around noon, one is approaching it as a kind of peak or summit towards which the morning rises and from which the afternoon descends, a centerpoint on which the day is poised. If one goes to Mass in the evening, one is gathering up the day’s work into an offering to be made to the Lord.

It’s good for us to be consciously aware of the meaning that belongs to the choices we make and the actions we perform, so that we can leverage that awareness for our spiritual benefit. Moreover, it is highly praiseworthy to form a specific intention for each Mass one attends: “Lord, I desire to offer up this Holy Sacrifice with you for [X, Y, or Z].” By doing this, you have invested yourself in the Mass—something is at stake for you.

Holiness Above All

A last word about holiness. Blessed Ildefons Schuster, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan until his death in 1954, said this to his seminarians a few days before his death:

I have no memento to give you apart from an invitation to holiness. It would seem that people are no longer convinced by our preaching; but faced with holiness, they still believe, they still fall to their knees and pray. People seem to live ignorant of supernatural realities, indifferent to the problems of salvation. But when an authentic saint, living or dead, passes by, all run to be there…. Do not forget that the devil is not afraid of our [parish] sports fields and of our movie halls: he is afraid, on the other hand, of our holiness.

In the battle for souls that is raging in the world around us (and within us), holiness will always take precedence over any other weapon we can fight with. If we want to make the kingdom of God present in time, our holiness, which is inseparably linked with our life of prayer, is truly what comes first and last. Without it, we do not make God’s kingdom present, no matter how much we build, how much we persuade, how much we campaign and conquer the field. With God’s grace in our souls, however, even the smallest things we do gain inestimable value, while the great things we attempt are blessed—not necessarily with success as the world understands it, but with a fruitfulness that touches many souls. In the words of Blaise Pascal:

Do the little things as though they were great things, remembering that the majesty of Christ within us works them and lives our life; and do the great things as though they were no more than little things easily done, remembering the power of Christ within us. 

The Feast of St Timothy

Today is the feast of St Timothy, bishop of Ephesus and martyr, the disciple to whom St Paul addressed two of his letters; he is also mentioned four times in the Acts of the Apostles, and eleven times in other Paul’s letters. Apart from the information recorded about him in the Bible, there is an ancient tradition that he was martyred in his episcopal city in the year 97, beaten to death by a mob after publicly protesting at an idolatrous religious festival. In the reign of the Emperor Constantius (337-361), his relics were translated to Constantinople, and placed in the church of the Holy Apostles, alongside those of Ss Andrew and Luke. In his treatise Against Vigilantius, who had written against the devotion and honor shown to the relics of the Saints, St Jerome sarcastically asks, “Was the Emperor Constantius guilty of sacrilege, when he transferred the sacred relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople? In their presence the demons cry out, and those who dwell in Vigilantius confess that they feel the presence (of the saints).”

St Timothy as a child, with his grandmother Lois, by the Dutch painter Willem Drost (1650s), now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. St Paul writes to Timothy in the second letter (1, 5) of “that faith which is in thee unfeigned, which also dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and in thy mother Eunice, and I am certain that in thee also.” (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Prior to the Tridentine liturgical reform, St Timothy’s feast was kept in several parts of northern and eastern Europe, (Germany, the Low Countries, followed by the Premonstratensian Order, Bohemia and Poland), and in some dioceses in Spain (followed by the Carmelites), but not at Rome itself. He is consistently assigned to January 24th, but there is an interesting discrepancy between the northern European and Spanish liturgical books; in the former, he is generally termed an Apostle, in the latter, a Bishop and Martyr. Of course, the term “apostle” is not used exclusively of the Twelve, but also applied to other early witnesses of the Apostolic preaching and teaching, St Paul first among them. The church of Rome traditionally honors another of his disciples, St Barnabas, as an Apostle, and the Byzantine Rite keeps a “Synaxis of the 70 Apostles” on January 4th, commemorating by name most of the people mentioned in passing in the Pauline letters.

St Timothy’s inclusion in the very first liturgical book of the Tridentine reform, the Roman Breviary issued by St Pius V in 1568, was therefore a novelty for Rome, but not an absolute novelty. It is noteworthy, however, that he was added to the Roman books as a Bishop and Martyr, even though at the time, the majority of places that kept his feast had it as that of an Apostle. As with the retention of St Catherine of Alexandria, and the completely ex novo addition of St Gregory the Wonderworker, this feature of the Tridentine calendar should be understood as part of the Catholic Church’s answer to the ideas of the Protestant reformation.

The story is told that at the end of his life, Luther lamented the fact that, having endeavored to rid the world of one Pope, he had ended up creating a thousand more of them, and if this story is not true, it is certainly indicative of the truth. The chaos which inevitably arose (and still arises to this day) from the concept of private interpretation of the Scriptures led almost immediately to violent disputes between the various groups of reformers; one of the most important such disputes was that between the Calvinists and Anabaptists. Calvin’s work was to a large degree a matter of both systematizing and radicalizing Luther’s very scattered ideas, but he was not at all willing or prepared to accept the much more radical teaching of the Anabaptists; namely, that if Scripture is indeed sufficient as the only rule of the Christian faith, any kind of clerical ministry is superfluous, and should be done away with.

In reaction to the logical conclusion of his own ideas, Calvin largely recreated the authority of the Church that he had rejected. As stated in the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Calvinism, “The Reformers felt that they must restore creeds and enforce the power of the Church over dissidents. Calvin … built his presbytery on a democratic foundation — the people were to choose, but the ministers chosen were to rule. Christian freedom consisted in throwing off the yoke of the Papacy, it did not allow the individual to stand aloof from the congregation. He must sign formulas, submit to discipline, be governed by a committee of elders. A new sort of Catholic Church came into view, professing that the Bible was its teacher and judge, but never letting its members think otherwise than the articles drawn up should enjoin. … the great iconoclast … makes the visible Church supreme over Christians, assigns to it the prerogatives claimed by Rome, enlarges on the guilt of schism, and upholds the principle Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.”

The words “presbytery” and “committee of elders” are particularly significant here, for it was in the Swiss theocratic republics like Calvin’s Geneva that episcopal governance of the Church was replaced by presbyterian government, “presbyteros” being a Greek word for “elder.” From there, it was copied by John Knox and brought to Scotland, where the new religion came to be known as Presbyterianism, to distinguish it from that of the Anglican Church, which retains the office of the bishop.

In the figure of St Timothy, therefore, who is received into the liturgical tradition of the Roman Church not as an Apostle, but as a Bishop and Martyr, we have a clear statement that the episcopacy as an institution rests on Scriptural foundations. St Paul, in whose letters the reformers claim to find their teaching, writes to him as follows: “A faithful saying: if a man (singular) desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.”, and then lays down the qualities necessary for such a man “who will have care of the Church.” (1 Tim. 3, 1-5). At the very beginning of this letter (1, 3), Paul writes that he had commanded Timothy to remain at Ephesus, the city to whose church Paul himself had previously addressed a letter, whose angel St John addresses in the Apocalypse (2, 1-7), and where the latter is traditionally said to have died.

The Martyrdom of St Timothy, depicted in a Byzantine Menologion of the second quarter of the 11th century; now in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons, cropped.)

Shortly after Timothy’s martyrdom, St Ignatius of Antioch, while passing through Asia Minor on the way to his death in Rome, wrote a letter to the church of Ephesus, in which he refers to the “presbytery” of the city three times, but always in connection with the bishop. “For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp.” (chapter 4) His other letters speak in similar terms of the importance of the bishop’s role in the Church, except, significantly, the one addressed to the Church of Rome, which “presides in charity”; they repeatedly extol the importance of peace, harmony and a real, visible unity within the Church, all of which are conspicuously lacking among the early reformers. Therefore, if episcopal governance of the Church is a yet another corruption, it is one that rests on the foundation of the Bible, and was built by the Apostles themselves and their immediate successors.

St Paul speaks of his disciple Titus less often than Timothy, four times in 2 Corinthians, and once each in Galatians and 2 Timothy, but also addressed an epistle to him, “my beloved son according to the common faith.” (1, 4) In the latter, before enumerating the qualities of the good bishop, he says that he left him on the island of Crete “to establish elders (presbyterous) from city to city”; it is the bishop who establishes the “elders”, not the other way around. (1, 5-10) There does not appear to be any tradition of devotion to St Titus in any Western liturgy before 1854, when Blessed Pius IX added his feast to the universal calendar, while raising the ranks of Ss Timothy and Ignatius of Antioch. This would seem to be a liturgical answer to some of the Biblical and Patristic scholarship of that age, which often claimed quite openly that the Apostles themselves and their immediate successors did indeed corrupt Christ’s teaching, with Paul the first and worst among them.

In the post-Conciliar calendar reform, Ss Timothy and Titus were consolidated into a single feast, and moved to January 26th. St Timothy’s former day is now occupied by St Francis de Sales, who died on the feast of the Holy Innocents in 1622. As a priest of the diocese of Geneva, then as its bishop for 20 years (1602-22), he helped to bring over 70,000 persons, the majority of them Calvinists, back to the Catholic Church.

2025 Liturgical Calendar from Papa Stronsay Now Available for Purchase

The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer write in from their monastery on the Scottish island of Papa Stronsay to let us know that their 2025 liturgical calendar is now available for purchase. As always, it has a wealth of information, including the liturgical calendar of 1962, particular and local feasts that are of special note to their order, traditional days of abstinence, and the anniversaries of the births and deaths of many Saints. This year, they have also introduced the virtues for each month, a part of the traditional Redemptorist spirituality, going back to the very foundation of our Order. Their purpose is to make it easier for us to imitate the holy life of Our Blessed Redeemer, by concentrating on the practice of one virtue at a time. They calendar also has plenty of photos that give an overview of life in their various houses.

https://papastronsay.com/publications/DWFPress/product.php?ID=61

A New Liturgical Calendar for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church

We are happy to share this information from the London-based Society of St John Chrysostom, about its newly published liturgical calendar. The calendar is free to access as a pdf at this link: https://ssjc.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Calendar-AM-7533.pdf 

On September 1st, the Byzantine rite began its liturgical year with the Indiction, entering the year 7533 according to the Anno Mundi calendar system, which was the official method of recording the civil year in the Byzantine Empire until 1453, and in the Tsardom of Russia until 1699. To mark this, the Society of Saint John Chrysostom in the United Kingdom — a Catholic society founded in 1926 to support the Eastern Catholic Churches and East-West reunion — has published a Byzantine liturgical calendar for the coming year, based on that used by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

The first thing to note is that this calendar is fully Gregorian, including the dates of Pascha (Easter) and its dependent feasts and fasts, as is now the practice in the UK and most of the UGCC diaspora. Currently the UGCC in Ukraine itself, along with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, follows the ‘revised’ Julian calendar, meaning that the dates of fixed feasts are synchronous with those of the Gregorian calendar, while the Paschalion remains that of the old, now inaccurate, Julian calendar. This makes little difference once the Paschal cycle begins on 2nd February, since the Julian and Gregorian calculations for Pascha coincide in 2025, whereas the numbering of the weeks after Pentecost differ before this date. As the Byzantine lectionary recites almost the entire New Testament throughout the year, beginning at Pascha, the readings for these days will differ, too.

In the calendar, edited for convenient use in English in the UK, these readings are included for each day, as well as festal readings for feasts ranked Class III and greater. In some traditions, both the moveable and fixed sets of readings are chanted each day at the Divine Liturgy. However, as the latter are mostly readings common to categories of saints, these are usually omitted in UGCC usage for lower-class feasts. The reader will, nonetheless, find a rich tapestry of feasts and commemorations in these pages. The UGCC liturgical calendar is ecumenical, being mostly composed of feasts inherited from Kyiv’s mother see, Constantinople, many of which commemorate ancient Western saints. But continuity is established with the second millennium, following the restoration of communion with the Roman see since 1595/96, as can be seen from the commemorations of Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), Blessed Dominic Barberi (d. 1849), Mother Teresa of Kolkata (d. 1997), and Pope Saint John Paul II (d. 2005).

This works both ways, as the Metropolis of Kyiv was permitted to continue commemorating Saints canonized between the period of the so-called Great Schism and the 1596 Union of Brest. This includes many local saints, such as those of the Kyiv Caves Monastery (founded 1051) and the late-Byzantine theologian Saint Gregory Palamas (d. 1359), whose once-controversial theology led to the suppression of his feast on the Second Sunday of Lent between 1720 and 1974. Of great importance also are those local post-Union Ukrainian saints, many of whom, like Josaphat Kuntseyvich, the Thirteen Martyrs of Pratulin and Blessed Klymentiy Sheptytsky, were martyred for their Catholic faith by mobs, tsars and Soviet commissars for refusing to break communion with Rome. Sadly, this oppression has returned in the latest Muscovite brutalization of Ukraine. Another local commemoration of note is that of the Consecration of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv on August 18, which marks the return to Kyiv of the primatial see in 2005, after being in ‘exile’ in Lviv since the first liquidation of the UGCC by Moscow in 1805.

Divine Liturgy commemorating the Consecration of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection in Kyiv, 18 August 2024.

The Society has gone further in providing for the commemoration of British and Irish saints observed in the local Latin Catholic dioceses, from oft-forgotten Anglo-Saxon hierarchs, kings and religious, to the many martyrs of the penal era, and those more recently canonized, such as St John Henry Newman. Of particular note on September 19th is the feast of St Theodore of Tarsus who, although a Greek hailing from the same city as St Paul, served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690. St Theodore stands as a witness to the universality of the Church, not only because he was a Greek monk serving as primate of the English Church, but also because he was patron of the first Ukrainian Greek Catholic parish in the United Kingdom — and continues to be so for an Anglophone mission point of the UGCC Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. As the introduction to the calendar says, ‘The Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is at once universal, particular and local’, and these characteristics frequently overlap.

An icon of Saint John Henry Newman by Br. Richard Maidwell, CSsR

Another interesting feature of this calendar is its comprehensive fasting guide, which demonstrates just how austere the traditional Byzantine fasting rule is, to the point that it is almost never fully observed even by the Orthodox. The introduction makes it clear that this is not the point:

In Latin Christianity the obligation to fast has been penitential in nature and enforced ‘on pain of sin’. In recent times it has relaxed or adapted to different circumstances across the world and society. In Byzantine Christianity fasting is more extensive and frequent, but understood as an ideal towards which to strive. […] The rule is austere and rarely observed in its entirety, but is included here as a ‘gold standard’ from which we can adapt our practice to account for personal circumstances, health, and spiritual development.

The rule itself is from the fifth-century typikon (service book) of Venerable Sabbas the Sanctified which, while developed in Jerusalem, remains the primary point of reference for liturgical life in the East Slavic churches. It prescribes abstinence from meat, eggs, dairy, fish, oil and wine (alcohol) on most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year, as well as throughout Lent and the other fasting periods, subject to relaxation on certain feasts and days of the week. A detail which is often overlooked in some Orthodox fasting guides, however, is fasting itself, rather than abstinence only. The Sabbaite rule, according to the calendar’s introduction, prescribes a total fast until the Ninth Hour (about 3pm), which accords with Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae (Question 147). However, as the introduction makes clear, the canonical minimum for the UGCC is not substantially different from modern Latin observance.

It is hoped that this calendar will be of great assistance to English-language Byzantine rite Catholics in their daily prayer life, but also of interest to Latin Catholics who wish to learn more about the East and the many commonalities and differences between the Roman and Byzantine calendars.

Celebration of the Divine Liturgy on the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God at St Theodore of Tarsus Greek Catholic Mission, London, 8 September 2024. This is an Anglophone mission point of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family of London, delivered with the aid of the Society, and established in November 2022.

The Society’s monthly Divine Liturgy in English at Holy Family Cathedral, London. Since 2013 the Society has served the Divine Liturgy in English at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family on the second Saturday of each month. This was at the invitation of then-eparch Bishop Hlib.

The Feast of the Holy Maccabees

August 1st is the feast of the Seven Maccabee Brothers, long celebrated as a commemoration on the feast of St Peter’s Chains. Theirs is the only feast of Old Testament Saints kept on the general calendar, although certain others are found on local calendars, such as that of the Prophet Elijah, whom the Carmelites honor as their founder. From very ancient times, it is one of the most universally attested feasts in liturgical books of the Roman Rite, and is kept on the same day in the Ambrosian and Byzantine Rites.

In 332 BC, Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Persian Empire, under which the Jewish people had been living for over two centuries, made them subjects of the Greeks. After Alexander’s death and the break-up of his empire, their land became the frontier between two of the successor states, the Egyptian kingdom ruled by his general Ptolemy, and the vast territory which fell to his general Seleucus, known as the Seleucid Empire. In the course of a series of wars, Judaea passed to the control of the latter in 198 BC.

The two biblical books of the Maccabees tell the story of the persecution of the Jews initiated by the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV, who succeeded to the throne in 175 BC, as part of his empire-wide policy of forced Hellenization. The first book begins with some harrowing stories of the terrible punishments inflicted on the Jews for continuing to observe the Law of Moses; it goes on to narrate the rebellion which broke out against the Seleucids in 167 BC, led by a priest named Mattathias, which would ultimately lead to the reestablishment of an independent Jewish kingdom.

“Maccabee” is derived through Latin and Greek from Aramaic “maqqaba – the hammer”, and is properly the nickname only of Judas, the third of Mattathias’ five sons, who on his father’s death took over the leadership of the rebellion (1 Macc. 2, 4). This nickname is extended to the two Biblical books, as well as several apocryphal works, and likewise to the other sons of Mattathias, and the Saints honored in today’s feast. However, nothing is known about the latter apart from the narration of their martyrdom in the seventh chapter of Second Maccabees, which does not give their names, and there is no reason to think they were related to Judah Maccabee and his family. There is a very ancient tradition that the name of the mother was Solomone, the Greek feminization of the name “Solomon”, although this is not stated in the Bible either.

A fresco of the 6th or 7th century in the church of Santa Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum, showing Solomone in the middle, with a halo and her name written next to it, and Eleazar to the left, with his name written above his head.

The second half of 2 Maccabees 6 tells of the martyrdom of an elderly scribe of the Law named Eleazar, who refused to eat pork, or even pretend to eat it, in obedience to the Emperor’s edict, and for this was beaten to death. Some of the Church Fathers assumed that he was the father of the seven brothers, although this is also not stated in the Bible. In the Roman Breviary of St Pius V, this passage and the beginning of chapter 7 were read in the first nocturn of the fifth Sunday of October; in the second nocturn, a reading of St Gregory of Nazianzus commends Eleazar as “the first-fruits of those who suffered in this world before Christ… (who) offered seven sons, the fruits of his discipline, a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, more splendid and pure than every sacrifice of the Law; for it is most right and just to refer to the father what belongs to the sons.” [1]

The liturgical texts of the Byzantine Rite, on the other hand, refer to Eleazar several times not as their father, but as their teacher. This seems to have been inferred from the last verse of chapter 6, “Thus did this man die, leaving not only to young men, but also to the whole nation, the memory of his death for an example of virtue and fortitude,” since his death is followed immediately by the heroic martyrdom of the seven young men. At Orthros, for example, the following text is sung in their Canon. “Rejoice, Eleazar, seeing your holy disciples piously contending on this day for the laws and commandments of their fathers, and with wise words reproving the madness of the persecutor Antiochus.” The reading of the Synaxarion (the Byzantine equivalent of the Martyrology) for their feast day also gives names to the seven brothers, Abim, Antonius, Gurias, Eleazar, Eusebonas, Akhim and Marcellus; it should be noted that at least two of these are highly improbable, since Antonius and Marcellus are Roman names.

In the traditional Ambrosian liturgy, the Maccabee Martyrs share their feast with St Eusebius [2], who was the first bishop of Vercelli in northern Italy from roughly 345 until his death in 371. As one of the great defenders of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity against the Arians, and a staunch supporter of St Athanasius, he suffered a long exile in the East at the command of the Roman Emperors; he was therefore one of the first “Confessors” in the original sense of the term, one who suffered for the Faith without undergoing a violent death. (In the Roman liturgy, he is traditionally honored as a Martyr.) The lengthy Ambrosian Preface of the Maccabees celebrates this day also as that of St Eusebius’ birth unto eternal life.

The reliquary of St Eusebius in the cathedral of Vercelli. (Photo by Nicola)

“Truly it is worthy and just, meet and profitable to salvation, that we, o Lord, in honor of Thy name, in the yearly feast of Thy Holy Martyrs the Maccabees, should celebrate with all wonderment those who, being brothers by birth, were companions in martyrdom. Their glorious mother conceived them in body and in spirit, so that those whom she had born into this world according to the flesh, she might also beget for glory unto almighty God, in spiritual fecundity. For those who were born according to the flesh that they might die, died piously unto life. Their tongues were cut our, their scalps taken, but in the midst of these things, these most glorious youths did not grieve for the cruelty of their torments, but exsulted that they died all the more gloriously, that they might each be a comfort and example to the others. After the rest, their mother by both blood and faith followed them at last, not that she might be last, but that before herself she might send to God the fruits of her womb, and so in peace follow her beloved sons. What then can we say, and with what exsultation, for the fact that on the day of their passion, there passed from this world to the seat of eternity the witness of the faith and confessor of the truth Eusebius? who on that very day, on which the martyrs of the Old Law suffered, as a champion of the New Testament was also taken to heaven. The former departed observing the commandments of the Jewish law; the latter fell asleep, affirming the unity of the undivided Trinity. Through Christ our Lord etc.”

In the official account of the post-conciliar changes made to the calendar, published by the Vatican Polyglot Press in 1969, it is stated that “the memorial of the Holy Maccabees, although it is very ancient and nearly universal, is left to local calendars; until the year 1960, it was kept only as a commemoration on the feast of St Peter’s Chains.” It would have been more accurate to say that the feast of the Maccabees was kept as part of the feast of St Peter’s Chains, since the same Roman basilica that houses the chains also keeps directly underneath them, in a crypt under the altar, the relics of these Saints. It not certain when or how exactly these relics came to be in Rome, and it is known that they were venerated at Antioch in the 4th century. Antioch, which was built by Seleucus and named for his father at the very end of the 4th century BC, was severely damaged by a terrible earthquake in 526, and never really recovered from the blow; it is quite possible that the relics were taken to Rome shortly thereafter.

This paleo-Christian sarcophagus in the crypt of St Peter in Chains is partitioned internally into eight compartments, which contain the relics believed to be those of the Maccabees. (Image from Wikipedia by Luciano Tronati, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The calendar commentary goes on to say “But now, the memorial of St Alfonse-Maria de’ Liguori is kept on August 1st, and according to the rubrics, another memorial cannot be kept on the same day.” This refers, of course to yet another innovation of the post-Conciliar reform which was not asked for nor even hinted at in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the almost total abolition of commemorations. The suppression of such an ancient feast for the sake of a merely rubrical expedient speaks very poorly for the reformers’ capacity to correctly identify which feasts were “truly of universal importance.” (SC 111)

[1] The reading from St Gregory was removed from the Breviary when the feast of Christ the King was instituted, which permanently impeded it; the readings from 2 Maccabees were redistributed through the week, with a special rubric to guarantee that they would almost always be read.

[2] In the post-Tridentine editions of the Ambrosian liturgical books, St Eusebius is completely detached from the feast of the Maccabees and transferred to August 17th; this error was corrected by revisions made in the early 20th century.

Summer Feasts and Multiple Feasts

On July 11, 2022, I published an article here entitled “The Feasts of St. Benedict and Their Proper Texts in Benedictine Churches,” in which I discussed how certain very eminent saints have multiple feastdays. St. Benedict has at least five proper Masses that developed in the monastic tradition: his dies natalis or transitus on March 21; July 11 as the translatio of his relics; July 18 as the octave of the translation (with different texts); December 4 for the “illation,” that is, rediscovery, of at least some of his relics; and its octave on December 11 for the veneration and reinstatement of the holy relic of the head of St. Benedict. Maybe there are still others I don’t know about.

St. Walburga’s Many Feasts

A reader of this blog notified me that Benedict isn’t the only monastic to enjoy so many feasts. At the glorious Benedictine Abbey of Saint Walburga (founded in Eichstätt, Germany, in 1035), four feasts are still observed for Saint Walburga:

February 25: The Solemnity of Saint Walburga (the anniversary of her death) [see A Benedictine Martyrology, Feb. 25, pg. 54]

Last Sunday of April: The Memorial of Saint Walburga’s remains being found incorrupt in her grave (see A Benedictine Martyrology, May 1, pg. 118]; traditionally, however, May 1st was the feastday, and this is why April 30th earned the name “Walpurgisnacht” (Walburga’s Night).

August 4: The Memorial of Saint Walburga’s arrival from England

October 12: The Memorial of the first flowing of the Holy Oil from Saint Walburga’s bones

Regarding April 30:

Because Walpurgisnacht falls on the same date as Beltane Eve, one of the four great pagan Gaelic holidays, this will be, for some pagans and witches, a night much like Hallowe’en (the Eve of All Saints), when the pagan Samhain coincides calendrically with our Feasts for the dead. In Germany, where sometimes this night is called “Hexennacht,” witches are said to fly to the top of the often mist-covered mountain named the Brocken (or Blocksberg) in order to rendezvous with the devil. And like Hallowe’en, the veil between this world and the afterworld is said to become thin tonight, the damned dead are believed to become restless, and devils are said to cause trouble…. The spooky nature of Walpurgisnacht because of witches’ doings is recalled in Goethe’s Faust, and in his poem The First Walpurgis Night which was set to music by Felix Mendelssohn.

Saint Benedict’s summer feast brings mind to the tradition of other saints who have summer feasts in addition to their usual feasts.

The translation of St Thomas Becket’s relics. (Photo by Fr Lawrence Lew)

Other Summer Feasts

July 4: Translation of Saint Martin of Tours, which is also the anniversary of his ordination as a bishop

In German, “Sommerfest des heiligen Martin,” or “Martinus aestivus.” Gregory DiPippo talks about this here. Martin’s main feast is November 11.

July 7: Translation of Saint Thomas Becket

According to an article by Dr. John Jenkins:

The organisation of Becket’s translation was the work of Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of the most important figures in the drafting of Magna Carta. In his own struggles against King John, he saw himself as something of a Becket figure, and in translating Becket’s relics he wanted to make a powerful statement about the importance of the cause—the rights and freedoms of the Church – that the saint had died for. The date chosen for the event, 7 July 1220, was both symbolic and practical. It was the ‘jubilee’ anniversary of Becket’s martyrdom, not simply 50 years but calculated according to the Biblical definition of 49 years, 7 months, and 10 days after the event. It fell on a Tuesday, a day of great significance in Becket’s life as supposedly it was also on a Tuesday that he was born, was condemned by the King’s council, fled into exile, had a vision of his martyrdom, returned from exile, and was martyred.

But this next bit is of particular importance, as it verbalizes something one often notices when studying the sanctoral calendar—namely, that summer feasts are often preferred to winter ones for reasons of weather, or a summer feast is added in order to heighten a figure’s importance:

The date of the anniversary of Becket’s martyrdom, 29 December, was awkward as it not only fell during the Christmas celebrations but was at a time in midwinter when pilgrims were unlikely to travel. By establishing another anniversary of equal importance in the middle of summer, at the height of the pilgrimage season, and at a time when it would not clash with other church feasts, Archbishop Langton ensured that the feast of the translation would become one of the highlights of the English religious calendar.

July 29: Translation of the Blessed Emperor Charlemagne

Celebrated in Aachen for about a century, ending in 1932. Ripe for integralist restoration? Aachen currently celebrates a Mass in honor of the emperor on the last Sunday of January, which is near to his dies natalis of January 28. (I am not saying Charlemagne was above-board in all his actions; but if the Emperor Constantine can be venerated by our Eastern brethren as “Equal to the Apostles,” then we can make some room for an analogous figure in the West.)

August 3: The Finding of Saint Stephen

Sadly, this is one of many long-observed feasts that was abolished in the 1960 revisions to the Roman calendar that guide the rubrics of the 1962 missal. This feastday commemorates the “invention” or finding of the body of the Protomartyr Stephen:

His relics were found in the year 416 by a priest named Lucian. A church was built and dedicated to him at the site of the discover—outside the Damascus Gate—and his relics were housed there for centuries. In 1882, the ruins of the church were discovered by the Dominicans, and a new church was built there; however, his relics were subsequently moved to the Papal Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls (San Lorenzo fuori le Mura) in Rome, Italy. The church is one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome, and it is a fitting place for Stephen’s relics to reside, as the church commemorates the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, one of the first seven deacons of Rome to be martyred in 258.

So, it sounds like Stephen was found not just once, but twice—reminiscent of the entry in the Roman Martyrology for the “third finding of the head of St. John the Baptist”!

August 17: Festival of Saint Agatha

The Festival of Saint Agatha is the most important religious festival of Catania, Sicily, commemorating the life of the city’s patron saint. It takes place annually from 3 to 5 February and (again) on 17 August. The earlier dates commemorate her martyrdom, while the latter date celebrates the return to Catania of her remains, after these had been transferred to Constantinople by the Byzantine general George Maniaces as war booty and remained there for 86 years. (source)

A site devoted to Sicily notes:

The night of the 17th August the sound of bells woke up the people of Catania announcing the return of the mortal remains of St. Agatha from Constantinople. The citizens came out their houses barefoot and in their nightgowns to greet the arrival of the Saint. This is the reason why during the feast devotees wear white dresses (called “sacco”), that represent the white clothes of those citizens…. The celebration starts in the morning with different liturgies at the Cathedral dedicated to St. Agatha. In the evening at 20.30, there is a short procession near the Cathedral and piazza Duomo. The reliquary casket and the half bust of St. Agatha go around from piazza Duomo to Uzeda Door, via Dusmet, via Porticello, piazza San Placido, via Vittorio Emanuele II and then come back to piazza Duomo. As every celebration of the Patron Saint of Catania, this feast is also features spectacular fireworks in piazza Borsellino when the relics leave and return to the Cathedral.

However, the February celebration of St. Agatha is considerably more extensive, lasting for days. And that’s good, because I’ll be leading a pilgrimage to Sicily in February 2025, accompanied by a chaplain who will offer the traditional Mass daily (sung whenever possible), and we’ll be in Catania for the feast. Read more about that trip here or here.

Sr. Wilhelmina (courtesy of Benedictines of Mary)

New Summer Feasts?

The tradition continues as a new summer feast seems to be emerging:

August 11: Saint John Henry Newman

Although he died on August 11, his appointed feastday is October 9—but one notices that a number of people privately celebrate August 11 in addition to the official feast of October 9. On the other hand, the weather in most places in early October is pleasant, and the two dates are quite close together, so it would be improbably that an August date would ever attract broad observance, let alone find its way on to a liturgical calendar.

And one may well speculate about this date:

May 29: Death of Sr. Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB

Yes, she is not yet a saint, nor has a process for her beatification been officially opened (as far as I know); and yet, she has four things very much in her favor: (1) a reputation for holiness among the many sisters who lived with her for years at the monastery she founded; (2) an incorruptible body exhumed on April 28, 2023; (3) a steady flow of pilgrims to her body, on a scale that has not been seen in this country since the Council, and who knows how long before that, indicating popular devotion, that once-indispensable adjunct to any valid case for canonization; (4) many stories of healings and other possible miracles attributed to her intercession, which are being carefully collected.

May 29 is already observed on the old calendar as the feast of St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, but a future Benedict XVII or Leo XIV could certainly add a commemoration, if it ever comes to that…

Celebrating in style: The Feast of Saint John by Jules Breton (1875)

Lost jewels of May

A last note about the month of May itself.

Given the wonderful, edifying second feasts in the traditional Roman calendar—the Conversion of Saint Paul; the Chair of Saint Peter; the Second feast of Saint Agnes on January 28—it is most regrettable that a number of second feasts were abolished under John XXIII in the 1960 calendar: think of the Finding of the Holy Cross on May 3, Saint John at the Latin Gate on May 6, and the Apparition of Saint Michael on May 8. All of these fall in the merry merry month of May, which, although not technically summer, is, as Newman says at the beginning Meditations and Devotions, “the month of promise and of hope.” He continues: “Even though the weather happen to be bad [at least in the UK…], it is the month that begins and heralds in the summer” (italics in original).

Indeed, even Christmas is reprised in the summer. As Gueranger observers in his Liturgical Year: “The Nativity of St. John Baptist [June 24], indeed made holy [in the womb], is celebrated with so much pomp…because it seems to enfold within itself the Nativity of Christ, our Redeemer. It is as it were midsummer’s Christmas day. From the very outset, God and his Church brought about, with most thoughtful care, many such parallel resemblances and dependences between these two solemnities.”

One might make the same observation about the thoughtful care that went into many other parallelisms between feasts.

It is good to do what we can to remember, to retain, and to celebrate these special feasts, at least for saints that have a connection to our parish or community, or to whom we have a personal devotion, or some other connection such as when one bears the saint’s name.