Here continueth the second part of TRINITYTIDE
15 Jul. St. Bonaventure (1221-1274), Bishop and Doctor, “the Seraphic Doctor”
16. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, patroness of the Carmelite Orders
20. Elijah the Prophet—not normally commemorated in the West
21. Eighth Sunday after Trinity (16th in Ordinary Time)
22. St. Mary Magdalene, “Apostle to the Apostles,” patroness of people ridiculed for their faith
25. St. James the Greater, Apostle and Martyr, son of Zebedee and elder brother of St. John, patron of Spain
26. SS. Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Mother of God
28. Ninth Sunday after Trinity (17th Ord. Time)
29. SS. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany
31. St. Ignatius de Loyola (1491-1556), Priest, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
1 Aug. St. Alphonse Liguori (1696-1787), Bishop and Doctor, patron of lawyers, moralists, and confessors
4. Tenth Sunday after Trinity (18th Ord. Time, 2024)
5. Dedication of St. Mary Major (434), first church in the West dedicated in honor of the Theotokos
6. Transfiguration of the Lord
8. St. Dominic (1170-1221), Priest, founder of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans)
9. St. Edith Stein (1891-1942), Virgin and Martyr, victim of the Holocaust
10. St. Lawrence (225?-258), Martyr, deacon of the Church of Rome, patron of those who work with open flame and of comedians
11. Eleventh Sunday after Trinity (19th Ord. Time, 2024)
14. St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), Priest and Martyr, victim of the Holocaust, patron of prisoners, drug addicts, and those with eating disorders
15. Solemnity of the Assumption of the Mother of God
Hereafter beginneth the third part of TRINITYTIDE, called “ST. MICHAEL’S LENT”
NOTES ON THE CALENDAR
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; 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 this penance during Lent (and, in the Ordinariate, on the Ember Fridays of September and December); outside Lent, the choice of penance is left to personal discretion (though abstinence is traditional).
*The duty to attend Mass is waived for any Catholic with a serious reason not fulfill 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.)
†If a solemnity falls on a Friday, the duty of Friday penance is waived, even during Lent.
Trinitytide: The First to Fifth Parts
The season of the Trinity is continuous, from the Sunday following Pentecost all the way to the last Saturday before Advent. However, it can be divided for convenience into five unequal parts:
i. Trinity Sunday through the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June)
ii. 30 June through the Solemnity of the Assumption (15 August)
iii. Informally known as St. Michael’s Lent, the third lasts from the day after Assumption through 28 September (a period of forty-five days)
iv. Informally known as Hallowtide, this sub-season runs from Michaelmas (29 September) through the Solemnity of All Saints (1 November)
v. The last begins on All Souls’ Day (2 November) and lasts through the Saturday before Advent; it is colloquially called Doomtide
The first part is variable in length, due to the movability of Easter; the second and third each last a month and a half; and the fourth and fifth are nearly equivalent to October and November.
The third part of Trinitytide, at least according to the (minimal) research I’ve had time for, began with St. Francis, who personally observed a period of fasting after Assumption to prepare for Michaelmas (St. Michael the Archangel being a great favorite of his).
The Months of July and August
July is customarily associated with the Precious Blood. This makes it a particularly appropriate month for devotions like the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Anima Christi prayer. It is notable for the commemoration of several saints who have what we might call a “missionary” theme: we honor St. Mary Magdalene, who first told the Eleven of the empty tomb, on the 22nd, and SS. Thomas and James the Greater the Apostles on the 3rd and 25th; we also remember St. Benedict on the 11th, St. Ignatius de Loyola on the 31st. July is also a key month for the Carmelite family of orders, who are held to have one founding mother and one founding father: on the 16th, we celebrate the Mother of God under her title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, held to be the foundress of the Carmelites, while the Maronite Catholic Church* additionally memorializes Elijah the Prophet on the 20th, considered the founder.
August is traditionally associated with the Blessed Sacrament. A week into it, we find the Feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration; the solemnity of the Assumption (also known, chiefly in the East, as the Dormition) of the Mother of God is its midpoint; nearly at the end, we commemorate the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist. The first and third of these events, when they historically took place, looked forward to the Passion and therefore to the Resurrection, while the second looked back to them. It may not be mere coincidence that August also sees the memorials of two martyrs of the Second World War—St. Edith Stein (also known by her name in religion, Teresa Benedicta), a Jewish Carmelite, and St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan; among other things, the Nazi cause was a bitter rejection of the body of Christ, in every sense of the phrase.
*The Maronite Church is one of the Eastern bodies in full communion with the Catholic Church (sometimes referred to, a little inaccurately, as “Eastern Rite Churches”). The Maronites, named for St. Maron (?-410), are strongly associated with the nation of Lebanon—the poet Kahlil Gibran was a Maronite Catholic—and are one of the branches of Syriac Christianity. Syriac (or Aramaic), along with Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Greek, and Latin, is considered one of the ancient “base” traditions of the faith, from which all further variants are held to derive: Syriac Christians were once known as far afield as Mongolia and China, and the Syriac tongue is still a liturgical language among the Mar Thoma Christians of India. For several hundred years, the Maronites fell out of contact with the Roman hierarchy, but the connection, and with it, communion, was re-established in the twelfth century.
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