The Queenship Of Mary - 31 May

Quoted from Wikipedia [1]:

Queenship of Mary is a Marian feast day in the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church, created by Pope Pius XII. On 11 October 1954, the pontiff pronounced the new feast in his encyclical Ad caeli reginam. The feast was celebrated on May 31, the last day of the Marian month. The initial ceremony for this feast involved the crowning of the Salus Populi Romani icon of Mary in Rome by Pius XII as part of a procession in Rome.

In 1969, Pope Paul VI moved the feast day to August 22, the former Octave day of the Assumption in order to emphasize the close bond between Mary's queenship and her glorification in body and soul next to her Son. The Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Church states that "Mary was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son" (Lumen gentium, 59).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Heaven, quoted without hyperlinks, references, italics original.

Pentecost Sunday - 28 May

Quoted from Catholic News Agency [1]:

Pentecost always occurs 50 days after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and ten days after his ascension into heaven. Because Easter is a moveable feast without a fixed date, and Pentecost depends on the timing of Easter, Pentecost can fall anywhere between May 10 and June 13.

...

In the Christian tradition, Pentecost is the celebration of the person of the Holy Spirit coming upon the Apostles, Mary, and the first followers of Jesus, who were gathered together in the Upper Room.

A "strong, driving" wind filled the room where they were gathered, and tongues of fire came to rest on their heads, allowing them to speak in different languages so that they could understand each other. It was such a strange phenomenon that some people thought the Christians were just drunk - but Peter pointed out that it was only the morning, and said the phenomenon was caused by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit also gave the apostles the other gifts and fruits necessary to fulfill the great commission - to go out and preach the Gospel to all nations. It fulfills the New Testament promise from Christ (Luke 24:46-49) that the Apostles would be "clothed with power" before they would be sent out to spread the Gospel.

...

It was right after Pentecost that Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, preached his first homily to Jews and other non-believers, in which he opened the scriptures of the Old Testament, showing how the prophet Joel prophesied events and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

He also told the people that the Jesus they crucified is the Lord and was raised from the dead, which "cut them to the heart." When they asked what they should do, Peter exhorted them to repent of their sins and to be baptised. According to the account in Acts, about 3,000 people were baptised following Peter's sermon.

For this reason, Pentecost is considered the birthday of the Church - Peter, the first Pope, preaches for the first time and converts thousands of new believers. The apostles and believers, for the first time, were united by a common language, and a common zeal and purpose to go and preach the Gospel.

[1] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/36152/everything-you-need-to-know-about-pentecost

Saint Bede Feast Day - 27 May

Quoted from Catholic News Agency [1]:

The Catholic Church will celebrate the feast of St. Bede on May 25. The English priest, monk, and scholar is sometimes known as “the Venerable Bede” for his combination of personal holiness and intellectual brilliance.

Bede was born during 673 near the English town of Jarrow. His parents sent him at a young age to study at a monastery founded by a Benedictine abbot who would later be canonized in his own right as St. Benedict Biscop. The abbot's extensive library may have sparked an early curiosity in the boy, who would grow up to be a voracious reader and prolific writer.

Later, Bede returned to Jarrow and continued his studies with an abbot named Ceolfrid, who was a companion of St. Benedict Biscop. The abbot and a group of other monks instructed Bede not only in scripture and theology, but also in sacred music, poetry and the Greek language.

Bede's tutors could see that his life demonstrated a remarkable devotion to prayer and study, and Ceolfrid made the decision to have him ordained a deacon when he was 19. Another Benedictine monk and future saint, the bishop John of Beverley, ordained Bede in 691.

He studied for 11 more years before entering the priesthood at the age of 30, around the beginning of the eighth century. Afterward, Bede took on the responsibility of celebrating daily Mass for the members of his Benedictine community, while also working on farming, baking, and other works of the monastery.

As a monk, Bede gave absolute priority to prayer, fasting and charitable hospitality. He regarded all other works as valueless without the love of God and one's neighbor. However, Bede also possessed astounding intellectual gifts, which he used to survey and master a wide range of subjects according to an all-encompassing vision of Christian scholarship.

Bede declined a request to become abbot of his monastery. Instead, he concentrated on writing, and produced more than 45 books –  primarily about theology and the Bible, but also on science, literature, and history. He also taught hundreds of students at the monastery and its school, which became renowned throughout Britain.

During Bede's own lifetime, his spiritual and intellectual gifts garnered wide recognition. His writings on scripture were considered so authoritative that a Church council ordered them to be publicly read in English churches. Some of the most illustrious members of English society made pilgrimages to his monastery to seek his guidance, and he was personally invited to Rome by Pope Sergius.

Bede, however, was unfazed by these honors. Perhaps inspired by the Benedictine monastic ethos, which emphasizes one's absolute commitment to the monastic community, he chose not to visit Rome, or to travel any significant distance beyond the Monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul in Jarrow, during his entire adult life.

Instead, the world came to him – through the visitors he received, according to the Benedictine tradition of hospitality, and through his voluminous reading. And Bede, in turn, reached the world without leaving his monastery, writing books that were copied with reverence for centuries and still read today. He is one of the last Western Christian writers to be numbered among the Church Fathers.

But Bede understood that love, rather than learning, was his life's purpose. “It is better,” he famously said, “to be a stupid and uneducated brother who, working at the good things he knows, merits life in heaven, than to be one who –  though being distinguished for his learning in the Scriptures, or even holding the place of a teacher – lacks the bread of love."

Bede died on the vigil of the feast of the Ascension of Christ in 735, shortly after finishing an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel of John. Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1899.

[1] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-bede-the-venerable-466

Ascension Thursday - 18 May

Quoted from Wikipedia [1]:

The Solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus Christ, also called Ascension Day, Ascension Thursday, or sometimes Holy Thursday, commemorates the Christian belief of the bodily Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. It is one of the ecumenical (shared by multiple denominations) feasts of Christian churches, ranking with the feasts of the Passion and Pentecost. Following the account of Acts 1:3 that the risen Jesus appeared for 40 days prior to his Ascension, Ascension Day is traditionally celebrated on a Thursday, the fortieth day of Easter, although some Christian denominations have moved the observance to the following Sunday....

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Ascension, quoted without bold type, hyperlinks and references.

Feast Day Of Saint Phillip And Saint James - 11 May

Quoted from thenalc.org [1]:

May 1 has been kept as the feast day of St. Philip and St. James since ca. 560 when on May 1 the supposed remains of the two saints were interred in the new Church of the Holy Apostles in Rome....

To acknowledge the twentieth-century dedication of May 1 to labor and the working classes, Pope Pius XII in 1955 made May 1 the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, and shifted the feast of Philip and James to May 11; the present Roman calendar (1969) moved the commemoration of the two apostles to May 3, closer to the original date.

Quoted from My Catholic Life! [2]:

In the sixth century, Pope Pelagius I traveled to Constantinople and brought the relics of the Apostles Philip and James back to Rome, placing them in what is today called the Church of the Holy Apostles. It is for this reason that we honor these two Apostles together with one feast.

Quoted from Loyola Press [3]:

Philip and James were both apostles, and both served Christ faithfully during the very early days of the Church.

Philip seems to have been an enthusiastic person. He was the one who brought his friend Nathanael to Jesus, insisting to Nathanael that he had found the person about whom Moses had written. Some years later it was Philip who made arrangements, with the help of Andrew, to have a group of Greek Gentiles brought to Jesus. ... Philip also had a practical, down-to-earth mind. He was the apostle who commented that it would take a considerable amount of money to feed a crowd of more than 5,000 hungry men, women, and children. It was Philip who asked to see the Father when Jesus spoke about him at the Last Supper.

James was the son of Alphaeus and seems to have been born in Caesarea. He is mentioned less frequently in the New Testament than Philip is. Sometimes James is called the Less, which might be a hint that he was a short person or else that he was younger than the other apostle named James.

After Jesus’ death James continued to preach the Gospel and is believed to have become the first bishop of Jerusalem. Assuming that James and the first bishop of Jerusalem are one and the same person, then he met his death as a martyr in that city about the year a.d. 62. Tradition identifies James as the author of the epistle associated with his name.

[1] https://thenalc.org/worship-resources/festivals-commemorations/st-philip-and-st-james-apostles-may-1/

[2] https://mycatholic.life/saints/saints-of-the-liturgical-year/may-3-saints-philip-and-james-apostles/

[3] https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/saints/saints-stories-for-all-ages/saints-philip-and-james/

Apparition Of Saint Michael The Archangel - 8 May

Quoted from michaeljournal.org [1]:

     The Prince of the Heavenly Host was sent to miraculously end two horrific plagues on the same date, April 25th, centuries apart. These are the amazing stories behind the Castle of the Angels in Rome and St. Michael’s Well in Tlaxcala, Mexico.

First Apparition: The plague in Rome miraculously ended. —The Virgin Mary and St. Michael appear to Pope St. Gregory the Great.

    In the year 590, when Saint Gregory the Great was elected pope, Rome and all of Italy was in the midst of a deadly plague. In fact, Pope St. Gregory was elected because his predecessor, Pope Pelagius, had himself died of the epidemic on February 7th, 590. On April 25th, of that year, the holy pope, St. Gregory, requested a public procession through the streets of Rome to beg for an end to the epidemic. An icon of Our Lady that was painted by Saint Luke the Evangelist was carried at the head of the prayerful entourage.

    As the procession wound along the Tiber River, the Litany of Saints was intoned. At the conclusion of the litany, Saint Gregory’s gaze was drawn upwards and he suddenly saw the heavens open. Saint Michael the Archangel, along with numerous other Angels, descended above the crowd and a heavenly perfume seemingly filled the air. The angels began singing the “Regina Cœli” to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was seated on a throne above St. Michael and the Angels.

    Completely overwhelmed by the incredible sight, Saint Gregory concluded the angelic chorus by singing out the closing lines of the Regina Cœli: “Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia! Gaude et lætare, Virgo Maria, alleluia! Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.” (Pray for us to God, alleluia! Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia! For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia!).

    At the conclusion of the vision, the great pope witnessed Saint Michael sheathing his sword, and to the great joy of all the inhabitants, the horrific plague came to an end. The beautiful Church called Castel Sant’Angelo stands at the site where Saint Michael and his fellow angels had appeared on that day along with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

    From then on, April 25th, the date of the apparition marking the end of the plague, has become the date for the annual procession that would come to be known throughout the Catholic world as the “Greater Litanies”, since it was St. Michael along with the Angels who joined in reciting the Litanies on that day. Nowadays the “Greater Litanies” processions are sometimes called “St. Mark’s processions” because the date also coincides with the feast of St. Mark.

Second Apparition: The plague in Tlaxcala, Mexico, 1631: St. Michael appears once again during the the [sic] April 25th, “Greater Litanies” Procession.

    More than a millennium after ending the plague in Rome, and exactly 100 years after Our Lady’s apparitions to St. Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill (Our Lady of Guadalupe, 1531), we come to the year 1631, with another Mexican apparition, which like the Romans, finds the native people of Nativitas, Tlaxcala, Mexico also ravaged by a merciless plague. The illness, called “cocolixtli” by the locals, was a horrible form of smallpox that was devastating the people with immense sufferings and numerous deaths. As had been done on April 25th, throughout the Catholic world since the time of Pope St. Gregory, the people of Tlaxcala took part in the procession of the Greater Litanies, praying for an end to the plague that was mercilessly afflicting them. It was once again at a time of great suffering that God chose to send Saint Michael to mitigate the plague.

    On this occasion, instead of appearing to a saintly Pope, the great Archangel was sent by God to manifest himself to a lowly native Indian named Diego Lázaro de San Francisco (sometimes called Diego de San Lázaro), who was only seventeen years old at the time. Towards the conclusion of the Greater Litanies procession, Diego Lázaro suddenly saw Saint Michael in a vision, and the great Archangel spoke to him in his own native language (Náhuatl) stating:

“You are to know that I am Saint Michael the Archangel, and I have come to tell you that it is the will of God and mine that you tell the inhabitants of this place, and everywhere abroad, that near a valley between two mountain ridges you will find a miraculous spring of water that will cure the people of their ills. You will find it beneath a great boulder. Do not doubt what I have told you and do not neglect what I have sent you to do.”

    As soon as St. Michael disappeared, Diego Lázaro was initially filled with holy joy. Astounded by the heavenly vision, he immediately asked others in the procession if they too had seen Saint Michael. The puzzled looks and replies of those around him made it clear he was the only one who had seen the Prince of the heavenly host. Confused, Diego Lázaro thought perhaps he imagined the whole encounter, and he decided not to tell anyone about his experience.

[1] https://www.michaeljournal.org/articles/roman-catholic-church/item/miraculous-apparitions-of-st-michael-the-archangel-rome-and-mexico, quoted without bold type; italics original.

Feast Of Saint John Before The Latin Gate - 6 May

Quoted from traditioninaction.org [1]:

In the reforms of 1960, not even the “Beloved Disciple” of Our Lord, St. John the Apostle, was spared the indignity of losing a feast day in the Calendar – the usual treatment meted out by Pope John XXIII’s Liturgical Commission to Saints with the (mis)fortune of having more than one feast day. The feast of St. John before the Latin Gate (May 6) had been celebrated for well over 1500 years. It commemorates the occasion of St. John’s attempted martyrdom at the Latin Gate in Rome and his miraculous deliverance.

The 2nd century Christian writer, Tertullian, recorded these events which took place in 95 A.D., taking his cue from the account that had been handed down by three generations of persecuted Christians.

On the orders of the Emperor Domitian, St. John was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil from which he emerged unscathed, even reinvigorated as from a refreshing bath....

A similar account below is quoted from The Fatima Center [2]:

IN the year 95, St. John, who was the only surviving apostle, and governed all the churches of Asia, was apprehended at Ephesus, and sent prisoner to Rome. The Emperor Domitian did not relent at the sight of the venerable old man, but condemned him to be cast into a caldron of boiling oil. The martyr doubtless heard, with great joy, this barbarous sentence; the most cruel torments seemed to him light and most agreeable, because they would, he hoped, unite him forever to his divine Master and Saviour. But God accepted his will and crowned his desire; He conferred on him the honor and merit of martyrdom, but suspended the operation of the fire, as He had formerly preserved the three children from hurt in the Babylonian furnace. The seething oil was changed in his regard into an invigorating bath, and the Saint came out more refreshed than when he had entered the caldron. Domitian saw this miracle without drawing from it the least advantage, but remained hardened in his iniquity. However, he contented himself after this with banishing the holy apostle into the little island of Patmos. St. John returned to Ephesus, in the reign of Nerva, who by mildness, during his short reign of one year and four months, labored to restore the faded lustre of the Roman Empire. This glorious triumph of St. John happened without the gate of Rome called Latina [San Giovanni a Porta Latina]. A church which since has always borne this title was consecrated in the same place in memory of this miracle, under the first Christian emperors.

[1] https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/f174_Dialogue_90.htm, quoted without references.

[2] https://fatima.org/fatima-messages/saint-of-the-day/st-john-before-the-latin-gate/