Here continueth the Second Part of TRINITYTIDE
Adoration of the Name of God, Francisco Goya.
13 Jul. Fourth Sunday after Trinity
14. St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), Virgin, “the lily of the Mohawks,” first American Indian saint
15. St. Bonaventure (1221-1274), Bishop and Doctor, “the Seraphic Doctor”
16. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, patroness of the Carmelite Orders
20. Fifth Sunday after Trinity
22. St. Mary Magdalene (c. 10?-c. 80?), apostola apostolorum (“apostoless to the apostles”), patroness of converts and penitents
25. St. James the Greater the Apostle (c. 1?-44), elder brother of St. John the Apostle, patron of oyster fishers
26. SS. Joachim (c. 50 BC??-20??) and Anne (c. 40 BC??-30??), parents of the Mother of God, patron of grandparents and patroness of travelers
27. Sixth Sunday after Trinity
29. SS. Martha, Lazarus, and Mary of Bethany (all c. 10??-c. 75??), patronesses: (St. Martha) of cooks, servants, and housewives; and (St. Mary) of lectors
31. St. Ignatius de Loyola (1491-1556), Priest, founder of the Jesuits, patron of soldiers and spiritual retreats
1 Aug. St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), Bishop and Doctor, patron of vocations, confessors and moralists, lawyers, and arthritics
3. Seventh Sunday after Trinity
4. St. Jean-Marie Vianney (1786-1859), Priest, patron of parish priests
5. Dedication of St. Mary Major (434)
6. Transfiguration of the Lord (c. 30-31)
8. St. Dominic de Guzmán (1170-1221), Priest, founder of the Dominican Order, patron of astronomers
9. St. Edith Stein (1891-1942), Virgin and Martyr, also called Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, patroness for the loss of parents
10. Eight Sunday after Trinity
11. St. Clare of Assisi (1194-1253), Virgin, patroness for eye diseases
14. St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), Priest and Martyr, patron of prisoners and drug addicts
15. Solemnity of the Assumption of the Mother of God
Hereafter beginneth the Third Part of TRINITYTIDE, called “Saint Michael’s Lent”
NOTES ON THE CALENDAR
I. In General
This calendar follows the Ordinariate in the US, also called the Anglican Use: we are Catholics, in full communion with the Pope, but retain a heritage from the Church of England as the Anglican patrimony, i.e. a cultural expression of faith. Sundays, solemnities, and feasts are marked in boldface (solemnities are always stated to be such); distinctives of the Anglican patrimony are in blue; extra info is in italics.
Catholics normally must attend Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.* Holy Days in the US are normally as follows:
– Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8th
– Christmas Day, Dec. 25th
– Solemnity of the Mother of God, Jan. 1st
– Ascension, ten days before Pentecost (widely transferred to the following Sunday)
– Assumption of Mary, Aug. 15th
– All Hallows, Nov. 1st
Catholics also normally must do some form of penance on all Fridays of the year. Abstinence from meat (not including fish and shellfish) is the obligatory form of Friday penance in Lent (and, in the Ordinariate, on the Ember Fridays of September and Advent); outside Lent, the choice of penance is left to personal discretion, though abstinence is traditional. Penances of all kinds (both communal and personally chosen) are suspended on all Sundays and solemnities, even during Lent.
*The duty to attend Mass is waived for those with a serious reason to omit it: e.g. lack of transport, not wanting to spread illness, etc. (Contrary to common belief, Ash Wednesday has never been a Holy Day of Obligation.)
II. The Month of July
July is traditionally dedicated to the Precious Blood. This is one of the most frequent motifs in Christian, especially Western Christian, art and devotional literature. I assume July has this association because the Feast of the Precious Blood, removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, used to be celebrated on the first Sunday in July. July also features two Marian feasts I’m fond of: Our Lady of the Atonement on the 9th, a feast specially associated with the Graymoor Franciscans, who were founded as an Anglican society which later entered the Catholic Church, and are in a way ancestral to the whole of the Anglican Use; and on the 16th, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, co-patroness (with the prophet Elijah) of the Carmelite Orders, both friars and cloistered.
III. The Second Part of Trinitytide
The second part of Trinitytide is nearly identical with July and the first half of August. This continues our focus on the saints, but with more of a sense of them as individual exemplars for the Christian life. This demi-season opens with a remembrance of the first martyrs of the Roman church, those who (like Peter and Paul) died under Nero; it closes on the departure of the Mother of God from earthly life. As Cranmer rendered the Media Vita in Morte Sumus:
In the midst of life we be in death:
Of whom may we seek for succor, but of Thee,
O Lord, who for our sins art justly moved?
Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty,
O holy and most merciful Savior,
Deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.
There are a number of other noteworthy holy days in the second part of Trinitytide. These include the memorials of St. Mary Magdalene (the first direct witness of the Resurrection), of SS. Joachim and Anne (the parents of the Blessed Virgin), and of SS. Martha, Lazarus, and Mary of Bethany (of Luke 11 and John 11-12 fame), the feast of the Transfiguration, and the memorials of St. Edith Stein and St. Maximilian Kolbe (both martyred by the Nazis).
Transfiguration and St. Edith Stein are also the dates on which the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively—events that I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about and grieving for. (Despite having no Japanese ancestry myself, I was born in Misawa (Navy brat), and have always felt a probably irrational but nonetheless deep affection for Japan.) Nagasaki was, and remains, the principal center of Japanese Catholicism. It is home to Urakami Cathderal, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception (which, in a nightmarish irony, is the same title under which the Mother of God is patroness of the United States). After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when religious freedom became Japanese law, Catholic missionaries discovered that the kakure Kirishitan or “hidden Christians” had survived their three-century isolation, and in fact, nearly the whole populace in the Urakami district of Nagasaki belonged to the faith; the cathedral was therefore built in Urakami, over a site at which, during the persecutions of the Edo period (1603-1868), those suspected of being kakure Kirishitan were forced to commit ritual apostasy by stepping on fumi-e, flat images of Christ and and the Virgin. Nagasaki was not the originally-planned target for the second bombing; it was going to be Kyoto, the old capital: However, Secretary of War Henry Stimson had visited Kyoto and knew of its importance in Japanese culture, and, with President Truman’s assent, it was spared. On 9th August 1945, Urakami Cathedral was full of worshipers, preparing for the upcoming celebration of the Assumption. The bomb hit the ground within less than two thousand feet of the cathedral; there is a pretty story in some circles that no one in the church was hurt, but this is a lie. Everyone inside was killed in the blast.
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